mr79
Well-known member
Hey up,
A couple of weeks ago I grabbed a bargain Kiwaya KS-0 from a car boot sale... it was missing its nut, saddle and strings as the previous owner had a string buzz problem, attempted to fix it, and then given up.
Anyway, over the past couple of weeks I've amused meself making a new bone nut and saddle for it. The hardest part was finding a long enough piece for the saddle, but luckily I remembered that when we first moved here (a converted flat in the top floor of a Victorian seafront house) I found a pincer type thing under the floorboards in the roof, which I was pretty sure were made out of bone. I took them to a friend of mine who deals in antiques to check they weren't valuable before I cut them up (they weren't!), and he confirmed that they were a pair of bone glove stretchers, probably ox bone from about 1880 (which is about when this house was built). I like that my uke will have a piece of our home's 130-year history in it!
Each 'arm' was big enough to make a nut and saddle from each, so I had two runs at it if it went wrong. Another friend of mine has a KS-0, so I was able to take measurements from his... after that is was just a matter of cutting and filing. If you ever plan to do this (and especially if you use only hand tools like I did) be warned - there will be a lot of dust. A lot.
Anyway, the bone, being really old and aged, was beautiful to work, and smoothed up lovely. I don't have a buffing wheel, so polishing them foxed me for a while. In the end I rubbed them vigorously with whitening toothpaste on my finger, and then rubbed them up and down my be-jeaned thigh (!). It worked a treat!
After that it was just a matter of fitting and restring with Worth browns... there was a lot of hard glue residue in both the nut and saddle slot I had to clean out first (not sure if that's a factory thing or the attempted repair by the previous owner. Interesting thing: my friend's KS-0 has a compensated saddle, factory fitted. But the compensation actually seems to make all his strings (Freemonts or Worths) really flat or really sharp at the 12th... I decided to make my saddle uncompensated, and it's almost spot on at the 12th for all strings. Why fit a compensated saddle if it's not going to do what a compensated saddle should?
I also carefully cleaned off the weird black paint the fingerboard had on it, revealing a lovely brown grained wood beneath it, which I then re-oiled with a beeswax/neatsfoot oil mix.
How does it sound? Like caramelised gold running down a sheet of mahogany... like angels singing inside a small wooden box... like I should practice more.
When I'm brave enough, I'll post up sound samples and maybe do a comparison review with the flat Bruko (almost exactly the same dimensions yet totally different sounds), and I think I may fit strap buttons (it's very easy to smother it!). But at the minute I am very pleased... anyway, thought some folks might be interested!
A couple of weeks ago I grabbed a bargain Kiwaya KS-0 from a car boot sale... it was missing its nut, saddle and strings as the previous owner had a string buzz problem, attempted to fix it, and then given up.
Anyway, over the past couple of weeks I've amused meself making a new bone nut and saddle for it. The hardest part was finding a long enough piece for the saddle, but luckily I remembered that when we first moved here (a converted flat in the top floor of a Victorian seafront house) I found a pincer type thing under the floorboards in the roof, which I was pretty sure were made out of bone. I took them to a friend of mine who deals in antiques to check they weren't valuable before I cut them up (they weren't!), and he confirmed that they were a pair of bone glove stretchers, probably ox bone from about 1880 (which is about when this house was built). I like that my uke will have a piece of our home's 130-year history in it!
Each 'arm' was big enough to make a nut and saddle from each, so I had two runs at it if it went wrong. Another friend of mine has a KS-0, so I was able to take measurements from his... after that is was just a matter of cutting and filing. If you ever plan to do this (and especially if you use only hand tools like I did) be warned - there will be a lot of dust. A lot.
Anyway, the bone, being really old and aged, was beautiful to work, and smoothed up lovely. I don't have a buffing wheel, so polishing them foxed me for a while. In the end I rubbed them vigorously with whitening toothpaste on my finger, and then rubbed them up and down my be-jeaned thigh (!). It worked a treat!
After that it was just a matter of fitting and restring with Worth browns... there was a lot of hard glue residue in both the nut and saddle slot I had to clean out first (not sure if that's a factory thing or the attempted repair by the previous owner. Interesting thing: my friend's KS-0 has a compensated saddle, factory fitted. But the compensation actually seems to make all his strings (Freemonts or Worths) really flat or really sharp at the 12th... I decided to make my saddle uncompensated, and it's almost spot on at the 12th for all strings. Why fit a compensated saddle if it's not going to do what a compensated saddle should?
I also carefully cleaned off the weird black paint the fingerboard had on it, revealing a lovely brown grained wood beneath it, which I then re-oiled with a beeswax/neatsfoot oil mix.
How does it sound? Like caramelised gold running down a sheet of mahogany... like angels singing inside a small wooden box... like I should practice more.
When I'm brave enough, I'll post up sound samples and maybe do a comparison review with the flat Bruko (almost exactly the same dimensions yet totally different sounds), and I think I may fit strap buttons (it's very easy to smother it!). But at the minute I am very pleased... anyway, thought some folks might be interested!
