Getting started - wood for practice?

Jim Kirby

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Hi, I'm a new member here, and I'm starting out on my first uke building adventure after having most of my experience in building classical and flamenco guitars. My interest in uke's is provoked by a commission, and I don't have much a priori sense of the instrument. (This is what happened to me with classical guitars as well - I started out seeing myself as mainly interested in steel strings.)

I'd like to build a couple of practice instruments to get a sense of how far to push the build-at-the-point-of-collapse envelope, before embarking on fancy flamed koa instrument the customer wants, and I'm wondering what to saw up for practice. The woodpile is offering up some quartersawn cherry, and I was wondering if this would be a reasonable direction or if there is something about this choice that would send me in the wrong direction. (Other choices are padauk, and some mahogany but I don't think the mahogany is going to be that well quartered.)
 
Thanks, I think cherry will be it. I also just found a board of ovangkol that I didn't remember I had - probably set aside because it was a little too cupped to get maximum yield out of for resawing guitar plates. It could make some ukes if suitable.
 
Yep...I love the look and sound of quartersawn cherry.
 

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May I offer an alternative suggestion. In my experience, the variance in koa in terms of how you build with it, is the most of any tone wood that I have used. Building a couple of cherry ukuleles is probably not going to prepare you very well to undertake building a fancy koa ukulele for a commission. If I were you, I would contact Bruce Creps of Notable Woods. Tell Bruce you want some less than perfect koa to make some practice ukuleles from. He can usually supply you with some nice figured wood with some small knots or other defects that will be much better practice, at a reasonable price. Tell him Brad Donaldson sent you.
Bradford
 
Some day I'll learn to keep my fingers still until wiser men have answered. Of course Brad is correct. Do exactly what he says to practice for a harder koa build, but do try cherry as a very good wood on it's own.

Sven
 
Brad,

What size do you buy for your archtops? Do you purchase from Bruce's violin or mandolin sets? Thanks!

Shaun
 
OK, thanks for that opinion Brad. I know about Bruce at Notable from guitar work, and will be glad to throw him some business, both for practice sets and the final fancy set. I haven't built a koa guitar yet, and don't have much interest at this stage in doing so unless someone orders one, but I have some sets from Hank Maul that could possibly be pieced into smaller soprano uke sets as well - possibly get a couple of sets out of each guitar set.

The QS Cherry I thought I had wasn't so QS after all, so I actually sawed up some Black Walnut which was. Anyone willing to comment on Walnut ukes?
 
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