Kamaka neck cracks - Stan and other Kamaka experts

garyg

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Greetings pickers, seven or eight months ago I bought a 70-71 Kamaka soprano on ebay that had a very shallow crack in the heel. Easily repaired and it sounds great. I was just looking at ebay and I found another white label kamaka that has a deeper but similar crack in pretty much the same place. That made me wonder if this is a common defect and what would cause such a separation about one inch up the heel from where it joins the back of the neck. The crack seemed unusual because there was no bruise or indication of damage, just a shallow crack with irregular edges (you wouldn't have known it was there unless someone told you or you ran your fingers over every inch of the uke). TIA, g2
 
Aloha Gary,
i have had a gold label tiki with that same issue ..could have
been glue failure or starving of the glue at the joint....is my best guess...
it happens with older types of glues they used at the time..
 
Thanks Stan, I knew that you'd have some information on this. So now when I go back and look at mine it is where the heel joins the neck but weren't these solid pieces of wood, mine certainly looks like it has continuous grain and no seam? And the crack is irregular rather than a separation of two joined pieces of wood. Here's the ebay listing with a similar but much worse crack http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kamaka-Sopr...302?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c64248b6 . That crack does look suspiciously like a join crack, unlike mine. Inquiring minds want to know. Thanks again, g2
 
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Pictures tell a thousand words!

BTW, the absolute most invisible repair glue joints are with hot hide glue...if the parts fit back together and there's no missing wood. I repaired a broken heel on a Compass Rose (performer fell on stage...)...a fairly nasty but clean break with no splinters missing, then I refinished the neck. I could not find the break once it was done.
 
I have another uke with a two piece heel that had a glued joint failure..many kamaka get sent back for glue failure.
I have this same white label..I am on my laptop now and the picture is too small to be sure but I'm guessing it
is about 1976 to 1982...my same uke like this one is my best sounding kamaka soprano I own currently....doesn't mean all of them are, but mine certainly is...
 
Could have been a bad batch of glue, but if it's a chronic problem, then I'd suggest that it might be from too little glue or too much clamping pressure too quickly applied. I know from experience that it's really hard to train people in proper gluing techniques.
 
Looking at the eBay ad, I thought that the wood has shrunk over time and the two pieces of the stacked heel have pulled away from one another a bit. The Kamaka in the ad. appears to have a stacked heel, not a one piece heel. I have a ukulele from the 20's which has that type of shrinkage issue. Could that be the issue on some Kamaka ukuleles?
 
I have a late '30s special pineapple with the same thing. I think Kamakas can sound awesome but that the build quality overall is not really super from all the older Kamakas I have seen. My personal feeling is that the general builds were done to a basic formula with tourist purchases in mind, rather than longevity or quality.
 
When wood is not fully cured/dried, it doesn't take glue well, and it shrinks. Depending on the grain orientation, it can certainly pull a glue joint apart if there was insufficient glue in the joint.
 
I have a late '30s special pineapple with the same thing. I think Kamakas can sound awesome but that the build quality overall is not really super from all the older Kamakas I have seen. My personal feeling is that the general builds were done to a basic formula with tourist purchases in mind, rather than longevity or quality.

Well said Teek, there is a lot of love for Kamaka in the ukulele world. However, I don't often see it mentioned that the quality of their builds through their history has not always been top notch. Not that it necessarily makes them play or sound bad. My early 30's Kamaka Pineapple is in good condition, but the build quality is pretty rough compared to the mainland ukuleles I have from the same era.
 
Wow, great information, thanks everyone! Yeah, my Kamaka sounds great, unlike no other uke that I own and I own Koolau, A nuenue and KoAloha ukes but that quality control does appear to be an issue. I was the one grousing about 3 months ago about the fact that my Kamaka has a *plastic* nut and saddle! Although the advantage of that was that Stan was able to give me a precise date on its manufacture <g>. cheers, g2
 
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