I'm sick

In my Stew Mac build thread, I mentioned I'd glued on the neck today. I used Stew Mac's recommended method of holding the neck in place. I made sure to check alignment and joints carefully before walking away.

When I went back 3 hours later, to my horror I discovered the neck had shifted slightly. Glue is now pretty well set, and there is a gap of slightly less than 1/32" on the right shoulder of the neck. I confirmed with a straight edge and my bridge marker that there is a tiny variance. I don't know what went wrong in my clamping method.

It is hard for me to see the variance by sighting down the uke, and I can realign the bridge slightly before gluing it, but will a slight off-center alignment destroy its playability?

The craftsman in me wants to attack the thing with a heat gun and a thin putty knife, but knowing my luck, I'd really mess things up. The hairline crack looks like the Grand Canyon to me, and it bothers me knowing I wasn't careful enough to prevent that from happening. I can fill the crack with glue and Mahogany dust, but what say those of you who actually know what you're doing in this lutherie thing? Is my uke ruined?

Ervin Somogyi, the famous American guitar maker whose guitars are $30k, sets his neck/fingerboard pointing slightly to one side of the centerline on purpose (no gap at the heel of course!).
Your uke will still work just as good as it would have.
It will always annoy you, but id leave it an move on- unless you want to practice on this before starting a new one.

Thanks Beau. Live and learn, I guess.

tonyturley said:

Thanks Beau. Live and learn, I guess.

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Not such a bad mistake- dont worry bout it- best to move on and build an amazing one next time!- the next one is alawys the better one

Most of us have made every possible mistake atleast once. In the case of us more dense two or more times. Take the hit and move on. Or when playing at an open mic with an appropriate song set it on fire and bash it jto bits.

Thanks guys. My wife said basically the same thing - it's not so bad, learn from it and move on.

Is the fingerboard fitted yet ?

Timbuck said:

Is the fingerboard fitted yet ?

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Yes. In fact, the uke has been fully assembled, sanded, wiped down with alcohol, cleaned with tack cloth, and the first two coats of pure Tung Oil applied. It looks great. I was so angry at myself for the neck mistake, but I think I overplayed how bad it was. Before beginning the finish, I used a tiny amount of Mahogany dust and finishing resin to smooth out the neck joint, then used a clean cloth dipped in denatured alcohol to wipe down all around the joint. I asked my wife to look it over carefully and find any cracks or other errors. She said she could see nothing. I have a piece of painter's tape cut to the shape of the bridge on the top to keep finish out of the bridge location. The fretboard is masked off, also. Don't know how many coats of Tung Oil I'll need, but I'm hand rubbing very thin coats into the surfaces.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

Ervin Somogyi, the famous American guitar maker whose guitars are $30k, sets his neck/fingerboard pointing slightly to one side of the centerline on purpose...

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Excellent! You moved the neck slightly off-center because (insert technical language).

Jerryc41 said:

Excellent! You moved the neck slightly off-center because (insert technical language).

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haha- he does it because a luthier usually moves the treble strings slightly more away from the FB edge then the bass side- so you don't fall off when playing. DOing this means his bridge is still in the center.

Jerryc41 said:

Excellent! You moved the neck slightly off-center because (insert technical language).

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Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

haha- he does it because a luthier usually moves the treble strings slightly more away from the FB edge then the bass side- so you don't fall off when playing. DOing this means his bridge is still in the center.

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I knew there was a reason I like you guys.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

haha- he does it because a luthier usually moves the treble strings slightly more away from the FB edge then the bass side- so you don't fall off when playing. DOing this means his bridge is still in the center.

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Technically though you do have to make it clear that unlike inferior factory, production line made ukuleles, this ukulele is therefore optimised specifically for the right handed player and is therefore unsuited for left hand conversion.

Titchtheclown said:

Technically though you do have to make it clear that unlike inferior factory, production line made ukuleles, this ukulele is therefore optimised specifically for the right handed player and is therefore unsuited for left hand conversion.

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In the past I have built ukes with the neck slightly offset to allow for a bit more room for playing on the A string so that you don;t push the string off the edge.."Gutterball effect Chuck calls it" but now I do them on centre... co's occasionally a buyer asks me to convert to lefty. ...Thats my story and I'm sticking to it

Titchtheclown said:

Technically though you do have to make it clear that unlike inferior factory, production line made ukuleles, this ukulele is therefore optimised specifically for the right handed player and is therefore unsuited for left hand conversion.

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I would disagree- most ukes are totally symmetrical - 3 fan braces, straight saddle, bridge in center. so they can be change to a lefty- you may need a new nut thats about it.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

I would disagree- most ukes are totally symmetrical - 3 fan braces, straight saddle, bridge in center. so they can be change to a lefty- you may need a new nut thats about it.

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I don't know if my joke has gone over people's heads or if the joke has gone Metta and it has gone over my head and at this stage I'm afraid to ask.

It gave me a wry smile, Titch.

John Colter

Tony T, this small misalignment will not ruin the playability or the sound of the uke. It is less than perfect, but that's the way things are, sometimes. My first uke build turned out to be no more than OK. I looked at it and thought, "I know how I can improve on this, in several areas". My second was much better, and my third. If someone had told me, back then, that I would end up building more than thirty ukes, I would have thought them crazy.

I guess I'm the crazy one - still chasing perfection, and sometimes getting pretty darned close.

John Colter.

ukantor said:

Tony T, this small misalignment will not ruin the playability or the sound of the uke. It is less than perfect, but that's the way things are, sometimes. My first uke build turned out to be no more than OK. I looked at it and thought, "I know how I can improve on this, in several areas". My second was much better, and my third. If someone had told me, back then, that I would end up building more than thirty ukes, I would have thought them crazy.

I guess I'm the crazy one - still chasing perfection, and sometimes getting pretty darned close.

John Colter.

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Thanks for the encouragement, John. I'm already getting stuff together for #2, with the lessons learned from #1 firmly in hand.

You've already learned three really important ukulele builder lessons.

1. You may be the only person to see a mistake.

2. You learn to keep mistakes from mattering and that often isn't very hard to do.

3. Don't try to fix things that might create a bigger mess if you can accomplish #2.

Enjoy you uke!

For what it is worth, here is my method for attaching the radiused neck to the body. I find this part of the build to be the most challenging. There are different ways to do this cleanly, but I'm self taught so my method might seem awkward and time consuming, but it does work. Sorry for the long post.

There are three things that have to match and line up: 1) the neck heel and the neck deck have to be perfectly 90 degrees to the body. 2) There should be no gaps where the neck heel volute meets the body. 3) The neck should be in perfect alignment with the centerline of the body.

1) The side of the body where the neck attaches needs to be perfectly 90 degrees to the top which in this case is a flat top. It should initially be close. I use a simple 90 degree sanding fixture to knock back any high spots. Use chalk to show high spots. When there is no chalk and my square shows it is perfect, done.

2) I made a simple sighting board out of melamine. It is 3'x2' with a black line down the middle. Lay the body top down on the board and line up the butt seem and the top seam on the line. Lightly clamp the body down so it is fixed. I then take the neck minus the fretboard (neck heel previously radiused to match the radius of the body) and make a small mark on the top of the peghead on the back. Slide the neck up against the body matching the centerline of the back of the neck to the center line of the back of the body. The mark at the top of the peghead should exactly line up with the black center line of the sighting board. It rarely is perfect but will off to the right or left a bit. 1/4 inch or less seems the norm. Remove wood on the inside of the radiused neck heel until your peghead mark lines up +/- 1/16" or better to center line.

3) There should be no gaps showing along the side of the neck heel to body connection if everything was perfectly plumb. Sometimes it isn't. Remove wood on the inside of the neck heel carefully not touching the edges but only the inside until the neck mates with no gap. A tiny gap of say 1/32 or less can be filled with a sawdust/glue fill.

When everything is in perfect alignment, I attach the fretboard to the neck and then attach the neck to the body. Hope this helps.