Makin' UKe #1 just for the hell of it.

I like to do some things without too much experience my latest was a ventriloquist dummy.

It has crossed my mind that knocking up a solid uke with pick-up might not be too hard.

I know there must be a spectrum of of intricacies and methods and jigs and putting ones heart and soul into producing the as near to perfect instrument as possible. But that is not what I am on about.

That said I appreciate a few tips.

This is what I had in mind.

A) Buy a cheap acoustic uke (a donor uke)
or
B) See if my mate has still got his broken guitar (use as donor)

I look after the workshop of what we call a "Men's Shed" and we have both woodworking and metal working machinery.

Our workshop scene is
We are not into piddling about with hand tools when we can do it with machines and we do not make things to sell. We do personal projects and make aids that the Special School cannot buy and some other things as requested by local community organisations. Too many to list.

So if I could make a budget priced solid uke as a personal project then I might start a fad and then our men might get down to the nitty gritty. Or they may not be interested.

We have donated timber and most of it is exotic we even have slabs and lots of shorts. We have some silky oak and some red cedar and some Australian hardwoods (gums). We even have a lot of hardware donated.

We have powered saws - bench saw 3 band saws, scroll saw and hand held power saws and a jig saw. We have a planer/thicknesser a planer and spindle moulder and routers and a router bench belt and disc sanders. We have a metal lathe/milling machine combo and tig mig and stick welders. We have a bit of electronics gear and retired pros who understand electronics. And of course some musicians.

Men's sheds are like bees we each may not know enough about anything but we have a collective intelligence when we work together.

All we need is something to catch the imagination of our members who do not use our workshop and our collective intelligence expands.

Solid sounds easy for us and biscuit tin or cigar box is a chance too.

Suggestions please.

Most of your questions will be answered by a this thread
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?94036-Solid-Body-Electric-Uke-plans
In short Dan Hulbert has solid body plans and cigar box nation is the place to go for box use building. For ukes I started out just using an online fret calculator and glueing split bamboo toothpicks to the neck without a separate fretboard.
Others with more skill and style than me will encourage you to try for more traditional methods.
If you have decent bandsaws you have no problem with resawing wood to approximately the right thickness. A $2 shop plastic vernier calliper will be accurate enough to set out your frets, fret2find AKA fretfind2d and a printer will print out paper templates. A manual dovetail saw is usually the closest to a fret cutting saw as you need.
Lots of people round brissie and northern NSW like big Stan at Billinudgel woodworks do handmade musical instruments, fretboards &etc.

Thanks Titch we have all those tools inc dial calipers and vernier calipers and a planer thicknesser. We also have engineering slotting saws and stacks of perspex of all thicknesses that we are always looking to use. If you are around our area maybe you could drop in. I will check out the link.

Thanks for the offer Artwombat but as I live in Canberra it is a bit of a pedal for me on the bike