I just wanted to show off the uke I just finished. This was my first solid body build and it posed a lot of challenges and I made a lot of mistakes, but in the end I'm very proud of the sound and the look.
The body and neck are some sort of mahogany relative I found as a board in a resale shop. I treated the body and the top of the headstock with iron acetate to age them (a weathered, grey) and then stained with a red mahogany stain. Finished overall with zinsser canned amber shellac thinned to a #1 cut in many coats and topped off with Johnsons paste wax. The fret markers are branded with a hot tool (and not very straight either!) Surface mount mini humbucker with just a volume pot that has a solid aluminum chicken head knob that my wife cast for me when she was taking a sand mold casting class. The strings mount from the back. Still without strap buttons until the new owner comes to pick it up tomorrow and I'll fit them for him. It's months late but I'm not going to charge him for all the extra work I had to put into it as it snowballed into a way bigger project than I imagined. But as I told him, she's a real sexy broad and I'm sure she'll knock his socks off.
The body and neck are some sort of mahogany relative I found as a board in a resale shop. I treated the body and the top of the headstock with iron acetate to age them (a weathered, grey) and then stained with a red mahogany stain. Finished overall with zinsser canned amber shellac thinned to a #1 cut in many coats and topped off with Johnsons paste wax. The fret markers are branded with a hot tool (and not very straight either!) Surface mount mini humbucker with just a volume pot that has a solid aluminum chicken head knob that my wife cast for me when she was taking a sand mold casting class. The strings mount from the back. Still without strap buttons until the new owner comes to pick it up tomorrow and I'll fit them for him. It's months late but I'm not going to charge him for all the extra work I had to put into it as it snowballed into a way bigger project than I imagined. But as I told him, she's a real sexy broad and I'm sure she'll knock his socks off.