Does anybody refinish scratched and dinged ukes?

How do you strip a compromised finish, what products/ process do luthiers use to refinish a uke? Is this not worth it on any but the best of ukes? Does anyone do this kind of stuff?
I'm definitely going nuts now...

(wood + beautiful form + music + the girls don't flirt with me no more = I'm crazy about these little instruments)

michaeloceanmoon said:

How do you strip a compromised finish, what products/ process do luthiers use to refinish a uke? Is this not worth it on any but the best of ukes? Does anyone do this kind of stuff?
I'm definitely going nuts now...

(wood + beautiful form + music + the girls don't flirt with me no more = I'm crazy about these little instruments)

Click to expand...

Just do a search on re-finishing or finishes in general..this is all over the UU forum pages

or you can try to contact Addam Stark in Santa Cruz calif..he does finish work..

Cool!
How do you make the time to play all your ukes?

michaeloceanmoon said:

Cool!
How do you make the time to play all your ukes?

Click to expand...

Thanks
every morning i get up at 5:30 am and practice for 1 to 2 hours..then i practice as much as possible in the evening..all those ukes motivate me to practice!! and i have lessons once a week>> but if you heard me you would think i don't practice at all Haha

Just remember that on vintage ukes, refinishing them will bring their value down about 30-40% depending on the amount refinished.

Being an upholsterer who strips and refinishes furniture has given a boldness to work on my own stuff as well as others. Commercial paint stripper is far more effective than the best buy-it-in-a-store stuff one can find. If there is a decal on the front of the peghed, usually that section stays the original finish. Using a comparable wood fillermakes a big difference on a mahogany instrument. Then acomparable finish as original, or as the owner wants , finishes it off. Often an instrument comes that someone else has "improved" to a wall decoration level. One Kamaka was so bad that it was given to me. I figured I couldn't make it any worse. It was stripped to bare wood. It got a new Kamaka decal. The buyer was told what had been done to it, and was pleased to buy it for $350.00. A teardrop uke came in that had been coated with black varnish over the entire instrument. When it was stripped there was wood inlay, mahogany, walnut, spruce top and an ebony fretboard. Someone had handmade it. It's worth far more than the $40 it cost on eBay. Perhaps each instrument should be judged on its own merits rather than a blanket statement about value being lost.

Occasionally I scratch and ding refinished ukuleles. Does that help?