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I think I may be in the lead - can anyone beat 85?

A friend of mine (lucky blighter!) has a 5K replica built by Dave Means (Glyph ukuleles). This is it:

---or you are what age makes you?

You've made a terrific job of working with that timber, Ken. The uke looks amazing. I'm sure its owner will be delighted.

I know you are working with the wood that was supplied, Ken (I'm in awe of what you have achieved) but judging from the photos, the direction of the grain on the front looks as though it flows across the width rather than being orientated in line with the strings.

This is what can happen when timber is chosen for its appearance. To give such an amazing pattern, the direction of the grain must be all over the place. The photo of the piece that broke when being bent clearly showed the discontinuity of the grain direction.

In my experience, cheap ukes usually have reasonably accurate fret boards - as regards the fret spacings - but the string height (over the frets) is usually way too much. This means the player has to press down with too much force, stretching the strings out of tune. Also the placement of the...

Oh, yes - those look very tasty. (y)

It grows on trees.

Many years ago I had a part-time job working at Wolverhampton Civic Hall. I saw numerous rock bands who required truck loads of amps and speakers and other contranklements to ply their raucous, posturing trade. In contrast, Roger Whittaker performed a concert which involved just himself, a...

Here's a photo of one of my builds. As mentioned above, I positioned and drilled everything the best way I could, by hand and eye, then made the fit of the dowels loose enough to allow the neck to be clamped up in the position I wanted. The dowels were there for strength only - not to determine...

That looks exactly like the ones I bought - they're very good.

Near as dammit...

I bought some planetary geared tuners from Eagle Music Shop in the UK. They cost £63 for two sets - i.e. 8 tuning pegs. I don't know where they were made but these are probably the ones you mean. I fitted one set to a soprano and they are easy to fit (a straight 10mm hole). They work smoothly...

I like that a lot. It has put me in a very reflective mood.

I like your method a lot. I'll copy that!

I have used dowels to strengthen the neck/body joint on many of my builds. There are two considerations: one is using of the dowel to give strength to the joint: the other is using the dowel to fix the position of the joint. I decided that I only wanted the first - the second was not achievable...

She said, impassively.

I only play sopranos and have never used a strap. I do remember it was like wrestling with a wet fish at first but I persevered until I had no problem either standing up or sitting down.

The bridge position looks good. FWIW, as shown, the lattice does look over braced to me.