My First Ukulele Build

I see a lot of first builds on here, so I thought I'd document mine here as well. I've picked up a lot of great info here to help me along the way. This being my first attempt at a ukulele I didn't have many of the necessary tools and fixtures. So that's where I started. Here are my body mold, radius dish, side bender and go deck. The radius dish concept came from this site and my side bender is light bulb powered, I didn't want to invest in a heat blanket.

It will be most all walnut. Here are pics of the thicknessed and joined top and back and the material for the sides.


I was a bit concerned about bending the sides but it seemed remarkably easy. My bender worked flawlessly. Here are the sides "cooking" and just out of the bender. I used some thin pieces of tape to mark the waist location of the sides.


I made up the mold cauls and some simple expansion clamps with threaded rod, some washers and nuts. The sides are trimmed here and in the mold.



Then the neck and tail blocks were glued in.

Looking great Phil. I assume the neck will be a bolt on?
Max

Thanks Max! I actually am a bit farther along than shown so far, the neck is going to be glued with a tenon and mortise. I just fitted that this week, stay tuned for more pics.

I thought that bloodwood trim would make a nice contrast with the walnut. Here is the back strip. I purchased the inlay strip from L. M. but I thought the outer bass highlight strips were too thin on this piece so I glued on an additional 1/32" piece on each side before laying it in the back.



Finished back panel, rough cut...

I'm sure most all of this is old hat to the folks who have been doing this for years but it was mostly new to me. I've made a few dulcimers but this is a different animal. Anyway, here is my set up for making kerf linings. First cutting the kerf slots on the band saw. I slotted both edges of the board.


Then I made a cut down the center.


And finally cut the strips free from the board.

After posting a question on this forum, I was convinced that quarter sawn spruce was the way to go for the bracing. No need to argue with experience. Here's the back bracing on the go deck. 15' radius dish.

I put the linings in my side bender to preshape them, here one is cut and fitted in the sides and another is laying on top of the mold.


With the prebent sides, clothes pins seemed to make suitable clamps for gluing the linings.

Nice looking walnut

Thanks, there is a neat burl on the back. I'm planning to use more of the burl for the headstock laminate piece.

As I already said, this is all pretty basic stuff for the experienced guys around here. This next task had me wondering if I bit off more than I could handle. The rosette inlay. I planned a bloodwood inlay surrounded by thin basswood strips in a non-concentric arrangement. In hindsight, I probably should have used thicker wood but I had ordered veneer thickness bloodwood. I believe that is 1/42" thick. I ultimately found I could not route it to shape without it splitting all to pieces so I glued it to a 1/64 aircraft birch ply backer to get it to work. That was only one of the issues I worked through before I got it done...

Here is the top routed and the bloodwood veneer. I already edge glued the veneer to get a wide enough piece for the inlay. The basswood was cut to a thin strip then wetted and shaped around a can with a hobby iron. Similar to shaping bent sides of the uke.


I split the formed bass ring into two pieces and using CA glued them in place. I used an Xacto knife to trim them fairly close.


I know when inlaying shell or other types of material it is quite common to color epoxy with saw dust to match the base material but I didn't want to rely on filler. I wanted this to fit! It took quite a number of tries to get perfect but I finally did pretty good I thought. Here is the completed inlay. The gap in the white ring will be covered by the fretboard so that wasn't of great concern.


Here's another shot with the sound hole routed.

Once the rosette was done, I was ready to start bracing the top. First I cut these two patches, one to brace the rosette area and the bridge patch. They are also walnut but will be cross grain relative to the top.


I wanted a very slight radius in the bridge area but flat at top so I again used Dave Higham's method to make what he calls a trough thingie. Except mine is only curved at one end through about the center then transitions to flat.


Then the glue up on the go deck.

for gluing thin pieces, like your bridge patch, and the backing for your rosette, especially when clamped with a small point of contact clamp like a go-bar, IMO, it is a good idea to use a 'caul, for clamping the pieces. The caul can be a solid block of some sort, sized and shaped to match what you are gluing. The clamp presses the caul. The cauls I use for pressing bridge patches have a radius sanded into them. The difference in integrity between a glue joint that is pressed by 'small points', and one properly pressed, adequately backed with cauls, is significant. The glue film inside will be much more evenly spread, potentially less glue, at least better distribution. Without cauls, it is still probably not going to fail, but... it is just better to use cauls. Just my opinion..

That sounds reasonable to me, thanks for the tips!

After the patches it is on to the rest of the top bracing. Everything was pre-cut and fitted. Here it is again on the go-deck.

Once the braces are dry, I carved them to shape, here working on the top.



Here are the finished top and back.

Then on to more tool/fixture making. I wanted to glue on the top and back in the mold so I needed to modify it to add the clamping cauls.

First I glued up some ply strips and drilled them, some have been cut in separate pieces here. Still need to finish cutting them apart.



Then I drilled the top of the mold to insert threaded rods which will hold the cauls. I'm taping the holes here.



I cut pieces of 1/4" threaded rod and screwed them into the threaded holes


I also had to add a bottom so I would have a surface to bear against.


I added cork pads to the cauls to keep from damaging the top and back when clamping pressure was applied.


Just about set to glue on the top!

Looking good, Phil. Nice and clean. The crotch figure in the back is very pretty.

Thanks John! There is a lot of new ground here for me but I did a lot of study before getting going. I have high hopes for the figure in the back. I've done some "test" finishing of other slices from the board and I think it going to look really nice.

All the tooling is now ready so I glued on the top!