Ukulele third project

Hello

I want to present photorelation from my third ukulele project and I hope, that you will help me to finish it on a higher level than I could do this just alone

Unfortunatelly, I have no a shed and therefore most of works I do manually at home, in my kitchen, so I am not able to do it fast and effectively as I wish, and this is my goal to improve my techniques with your help.

This project concerns an ukulele soprano. Neck is made of bubinga wood with two stripes of ash in its head. The head is not glued to the rest - is solid with a neck. A foot of the neck has got glued block. I decided to adopted fixing solution from classical guitar - the sides will be glued in notchs.

Yesterday I got a beautifull present from my friend - old and mega dry spruce for a top I want to use it The back I will make from bubinga and ebony - three stripes glued together.

The binding is a higher art to me, I will read everything what you posted here about the problem

So I attach few Images to show the progress of my work.

best regards
Piotr

Nice headstock shape. Should look nice with friction pegs in it

Ksquine,

Thank you!

Very nice wood! Good photography too! Looking forward to end result, well done so far!

HLLMJ - Thank you for your comment!

Actually, I had something like mental block in my work. I was sad, that I have no shed, no band saw as well as other useful tools and so on. But two days ago my friend from polish luthier's forum sent me some pieces of 30 years old spruce - ideal for ukuleles, and by this surprise he rose me up again Now (few minutes ago) I have already glued a top (soundboard) of the uke. It was bubinga project, I wanted to build it from bubinga wood only, but the assumption has been corrected Anyway, the work goes on forward!
I know, that it does not look professionally, but I prepared the edges correctly and glued them by hot glue made from gelatin. Tomorrow I will see whether the joint is good or not.

cheers!

Carving a neck from bubinga must have been tough! Good job. I've made a couple from wenge and that was bad.

Sven - thanks!

Now I know that I like bubinga, with sharp knives there is no problem at all.
I have already been working a bit with my spruce soundboard. The joint is strange. It is obvious where it is after first look The grains of the left side are darker then the right ones, but when light reflects from another angle - there is an opposite effect. I think that the effect is because I cut the both halfs from different places of the wood piece.... it should be rather like pages of a book. But now I like the effect and do not to complain anymore

PiterCh said:

Sven - thanks!

Now I know that I like bubinga, with sharp knives there is no problem at all.
I have already been working a bit with my spruce soundboard. The joint is strange. It is obvious where it is after first look The grains of the left side are darker then the right ones, but when light reflects from another angle - there is an opposite effect. I think that the effect is because I cut the both halfs from different places of the wood piece.... it should be rather like pages of a book. But now I like the effect and do not to complain anymore


View attachment 67048

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The effect you are talking about is called "run out". Although the wood may be nicely quarter sawn when you look at the end grain. you have to also consider how the wood is cut or split along the length of the wood when looking at it from the side. If the wood is split or cut nicely, you won't see the the color variation when you look at the wood from different angles. If the wood is not split or cut along the long grain line (harder to see), then the difference will show. The more it shows the shorter the grain line is, which is not a good thing.

This is one way to choose good wood when you are buying from a dealer, always check for run out, along with everything else.

BlackBearUkes - thank you for your reply and for the luthier tips. Next time I will more carefully chose the next spruce pieces to join them together.
Piotr

Hello!
I successively continue my project, so I upload some pictures from carving of my uke's back. It is glued from two bubinga pieces with an ebony in the middle.
cheers!

Hi,

I've done some works. I have also bent sides and made carved thin back and an ebony bridge.
cheers!

Hello,
I have finished the ukulele (several weeks ago). I had lot of problems (broken soundboard) but it is finished I decided to finish it in such way to obtain an aged effect. I used violin varnish. First of all, the ukulele sounds great to me, however the visual effect is... as is - I like it Already I make new soprano. This time I use power tools, therefore I hope that I will achieve better quality
cheers!

Pretty cool finish, I like it! What did you do to achieve this aged effect?

Matt Clara said:

Pretty cool finish, I like it! What did you do to achieve this aged effect?

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thanks!

This is an effect of staining and sanding before lacquering. Then multiple layers of violin varnish and each layer had got a bit different color. After every third layer - sanding with oil to obtain various color stains. And finally three layers of shellac (without any color) and polishing. I did not carry about the micro wholes in the lacquer shell - to make it more realistic - effect of time