Bruko Fixed! New Bone Nut and Saddle

Last week I posted that I'd busted a piece out of my Bruko's rosewood nut. Carefully following everyone's advice I was able to remove the old nut (which was glued across its entire length) without damaging the surrounding headstock.

This evening I shaped a new bone nut and saddle for it - I used mid-19th Century ox bone from some old teaspoon handles I've been saving. I made the nut slightly lower than the original Bruko one, as the strings were seated very deep in their slots, and I wanted these ones a bit nearer the top surface. I also made the saddle a tiny bit lower too.
Both the nut and saddle are a tight friction fit (I got them evenly to size by rubbing them on sandpaper mounted on a glass block - a trick I picked up from making bone bookbinding tools years ago), but I did put a central dab of superglue on the front face of the nut.

Tomorrow I'll be fitting new strings, and adjusting the slots/saddle height. Thanks to everyone who chipped in on the original thread, it all was a great help. I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself tonight, although I do now know more about adjusting intonation/action/nuts/saddles than I do about actually playing my ukulele!
Bone doesn't photograph too well, but here are some pics anyway:

Oh, my goodness, that's well done. Huge improvement over the stock Bruko, plus you lowered the action. You could run a side business, Vagrant, just enhancing the tens of thousands of stock Brukos out there.

coolkayaker1 said:

Oh, my goodness, that's well done. Huge improvement over the stock Bruko, plus you lowered the action. You could run a side business, Vagrant, just enhancing the tens of thousands of stock Brukos out there.

Click to expand...

Now there's an idea! Although I would need some sort of extractor, the dust from the bone was evil evil evil. And tools, proper tools, rather than a sheet of cheap sandpaper, half a hacksaw blade and a nail file. The only reason I haven't fitted the strings yet is because I'm waiting on some welding iron tip cleaning files for doing the slots, my one concession to doing it properly!

So my files arrived and last night I fitted the strings and adjusted the action - I can now get back to learning!

I took the action down from 4mm (well, nearly 4.5mm) at the 12th fret to 3mm, and the height at the 1st fret is about the thickness of a credit card - I did it so that when I fretted at the third there was just a teensy gap at the 1st between the fret and the string (I'm only mentioning this in case I've made some howling error - feel free to point it out if I have!).

It definitely sounds different with the bone nut and saddle - less plonky, more ringy... and the notes sustain for longer. Their used to be a bit of 'fuzz' when I played the open C string, but now it rings clear as a bell (I think that fuzziness is called a wolf note, if resonant echoes and such are the same for ukuleles as they are for speaker cabinets... maybe?).

Although it was a... erm... ******* to get the broken nut off without damaging the uke, I'd do this again, as I feel I've now somehow made the uke mine!

For a first attempt I'm pretty pleased. Now I've got to learn to play it.