Mom! The floor's bothering me, it broke my ukulele!

I was shaping the neck block on this uke and suddenly it jumps out of my hand, flew up almost to the ceiling and came down and hit the tile floor, BANG!

................

Workin' on it - here's the fix so far.

Put down some cushion vinyl or chipboard on your floor. All 5 of my workshops have had wooden floors. Keep sane

I am glad you have option to fix it, otherwise, it really sad after putting in so much effort.
I accidentally drop the tenor uke I am building (my first uke build, I was sanding it, ready for finishing) on the cement floor of my garage. A big Oh sh.....
To my surpise, my uke survives this drop test, no ding, no scratch, no crack. I must have built it too thick !!! Next weekend, I will string it up and test its sound.
I do have garage floor rubber mats, I will use it to cover my work area. I don't think my uke can stand another drop like this.

Good example of "grain run out" I believe

I can't afford rubber mats/vinyl floor/ chipboard covering for the concrete floors in my shop, but I would never have considered them anyway. Flattened cardboard boxes are far easier on the feet, easily replaceable and extremely cheap!

Ken, I think you're right - it may have had something to do with the grain runout. It seems pretty stable though, and didn't present any typical runout problems during bending. I guess it just took that extra WHAM for it to come out and show itself.

As to the floor, keep in mind this is not a shop - it's a worktable in the corner of our kitchen! I do have a rug covering the area right at the worktable, and many an instrument has hit the floor there before. But this time the instrument didn't just fall down - it went flying through the air and landed on the tiles clear on the other side of the room. I'm glad it didn't land in our dinner - Mrs. Muttcrew would have killed me

Anyway, after a few deep breaths, I realized that it was a good thing after all. Better to have it crack now, early on in the build... I decided right away to try putting a cutaway in and went to work. It's now in place, but...



The cutaway piece was shaped right, the neck block and the little support block were cut and shaped for the curve, everything looked fine. But somehow after the pieces were glued together the whole structure shifted and now it's slanted like this. It fits in the mold OK and with some clamping will straighten out, but I must say I'm hesitant to put that much tension into the wood - a little bit is OK, but in this case I'm afraid it might explode at some point.

I did come up with an idea how to make it work as is, but I'm not sure I really want to do it:



This picture is backwards, by the way (as if you were looking at the inside of the top).

Nah. Stick it in the mold and go for solid linings. I think you'll be fine.

when ever I have one that has a drama and I patch it up, it has more dramas down the track. It must be a bad juju thing. I say toss it and start again.

This one has all the signs of becoming a "Lemon"...burn it I say and start again