My adventures in making a ukulele wall hanger

FOREWORD TO YA'LL;
I am by no means a professional woodworker. I'm lucky to carve bone like I do with any level of skill. So you guys will have to pardon me if I make very simple mistakes. I'm open to critiques so if you see me doing something wrong or stupid, just tell me.




SO! The other day I went to a antique market and found a very old 1950s plastic Fin-Der Ukulele. Man was I happy about that, because thus far my collection consisted of very cheap and crappy Hobby Lobby ukuleles that can hold a tune about as well as a sieve holds sand.

Man were they ugly too, but after a little sanding and painting, I found them worthy of at lest wall art. Since I at that time did not have my carving work station made, I just molded the one wall hanger I have out of clay.



Not the best quality item, but it works for wood ones.
However my wall is sorrily lacking. I only have one of the cheapy wood ukes hanging because I've yet to finish the second one. The plastic uke will be a welcomed addition to my very bare wall.

Now I didn't want to make a clay one for the plastic uke, because I don't know if any of you are familiar with polymer clay, but that crap will melt plastic. (Will peal off wood finish too. So many table tops ruined...) And I didn't want to take that chance with my antique ukulele, so I decided I would put my minimal woodworking skills to the job and make a nice wood one!

My father ever so graciously bought me a nice piece of poplar to use as the headboard. So I quickly went to work drawing out some tropical designs to carve out on the scroll saw.
After all it is a ukulele, and I love topical things. It's the only choice in my mind.




I decided to make a pig-nose triggerfish, a fishhook, and a palm tree. Since I'm a wee bit lazy I'll only work on one at a time. Starting with the palm tree.

First thing I did was stain it. I had some leftover green from IKEA a few years ago. It was starting to congeal so the quality of the stain is... well it's bad to say the lest. But I like things to look worn, so I'm cool with it. (I'm no professional.)
Plus I've worked with much worse.
The other stains, mahogany and something like a dark oak, were still in fine shape and stained wonderfully.

I love the palm tree one. Definately looks antique to me. I have to come up with a solution to get instruments off of stands in the middle of the floor and get them on my walls.

Dan

Good job!

Yours are fancier then mine. I just bought plaques from Michael's, painted them to match the room, and screwed one of those hammer hook things in it.

You're fancy!

Thanks for sharing. I've been wanting to carve some fish, tropical birds, etc. Hadn't thought about turning them into uke holders......great inspiration. Thanks again.

Cool idea. I've always liked the idea of wall hangers but never thought they were appropriate for the living room decor (such as it is). This is something I'd actually want to see on my walls. Maybe I should attempt a couple tikki carvings for my walls

BUT WAIT THERE'S MAOR!


Thank ya'll for your kind words :3 I'm sure there's a few things I can learn to do better once I made a few more. Like carving the grooves in the wood for starters. The tools I use are kinda heavy duty, I need to see what I got that may not chew into it so badly.

Now I'm not a needless spender. In fact I'm quite cheep. I could have bought a foam covered peg to screw into the palm tree and have been done with it, but the nearist wal-mart is like a half an hour drive for me and gas is almost four dollars a gallon and my tux didn't get back from the cleaners the moon was in the third house I'll use just about any excuse I can think of to not have to make that trip. And I have bamboo laying around. So I opted to use the bamboo instead. I think it looks better anyways. More tropical you know. And I'm all on board with that. It's also free.



They were pre-glossed rods. All I had to do was cut them down to size. But after doing so I realized that I could not screw them in... Because they were in fact hallow and I have no screws large enough to bite into such a large hole.

This is nothing to stop me from finding a way. I just threw it onto the drill press and made a nice deep hole for each peg.

Then used my dremel to widen the hole. The bamboo was not completely round. I had to carve it out in such a way to allow them to squeeze in. (Good god, I love that dremel.)




A heaping mother-load- I mean a wee-bit of wood glue to help them stay in place.

I used a cedar board and some dowels. Used a neck/headstock shape and flipped it to get it double ended.

Wow very nice! I use a small hook in the wall and a piece of leather to hold mine. Yours are much cooler!

Oh I like that. How did you hang it on the wall? I don't see any screw holes.

Window frame hooks? Do you have any problems with the ukes slipping off the pegs? I worry mine may do that.

ukulele-melee said:

I used a cedar board and some dowels. Used a neck/headstock shape and flipped it to get it double ended.
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So it's the weekend finally and now I have some more free time for my wall holders. I'll start were I left off;

So after looking around my work station I realized I didn't have any picture frame holders. And I didn't want to drill a hole trough my new wall hanger, that looks kinda ugly in my opinion. So I grabbed the next best thing.
A highly technological hanging apparatus. Took me years to design this you know. Years.



After some yelling and cursing at the wall for getting my nails uneven I now have myself a nice home made Ukulele holder!






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My family has a long standing saying of 'You don't get anything done until you hurt yourself'.
I was lucky to get thought this project unscathed, however that means I did not get anything done. I still have two other wall-hangers to finish, so I will keep ya'll updated on their progress and any tweaks I do on the finished ones.

You have crafted masterpieces, I must say. The question which bugs me is how did you manage to hang it on the wall as you do not have any screw holes there.

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Well hurting yourself is a rite of passage for anyone who works with their hands..
Wear it like a badge of honor.. Lol

Bt on a different note..
Nice job..
And I love the repurposed "hangers".
Man it must have been a chore to get them..
I can only imagine the struggle of chugging thoose beers.. Lol

Those look great. I've also made my own double hanger by going to our local "make your own pottery" shop. It was fun and only cost me 10 bucks!

Those look great and give me inspiration for additional gifts this year, And I always say, " It's not real work unless some blood was spilled."