Not your Grandpa's Cigar Box Uke

This uke is not for the faint of heart.

ukantor said:

Vertical head stocks work very well, but seem a bit weird the first time you use one. If you don't fancy carving the whole neck in one piece, I can recommend a two piece solution. Just a slot in each piece, and the resulting joint is very strong and stable.

This is the first one I made, back in 2009. I decided to use a zero fret and to do without a nut. The construction is self explanatory.

John ColterView attachment 125380

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Do you have dowel, piece of rod or something in the vertical piece and inserted into the neck or is the vertical piece flush against the neck? Just wondering if it needed more support than the small extensions on the neck the vertical piece is slotted into?

I don't wish to hi-jack the thread. Sending a PM.

John C.

Hi David. How did this uke turn out? I did see a single B&W image of the completed uke in your gallery. I also saw a gorgeous cigar box style instrument with a similar vertical head. You have a lot of drool-worthy instruments in your gallery. I've been giving a lot of thought to a homemade cigar box style uke using wood I have on hand, but the box joints have me a bit hesitant. I've never done those.

Tony Turley said, "box joints have me a bit hesitant"

You don't have to make box corners with interlocking castellations. It is a very elegant and strong method, but there are other solutions. When working with thin plates, a simple butt joint with internal support works very well.

This box I made from 1/16" mahogany. The two shorter sides overlap the longer ones and the joints have internal "posts" of quarter round molding strip bought from the hardware store. The uke is now nine years old and remains all square and solid.

John Colter

ps. Mine is soprano scale

Thanks for the information and image, John.

In the B&W photo you are referring to, will notice there is no bridge. It is ready for finish, but I am running low on TruOil and need to save it for a couple of custom ukes that I am working on. I don't want to go to Wal-Mart for more Oil until this covid-19 settles down.
There are a couple of tricks to making a finger joint.
First, you don't want the sides to be too thin. They need to be at least an 1/8" thick.
Second, Keep in mind that on the top edge of each side piece there is a notch on the left, and a finger on the right. If you screw this up...there is no saving that side piece!
Third, put all 4 sides in a vise and carefully lay out the fingers. 3/16" to 1/4" work pretty well. Shade the notches with a pencil. It is easy to get confused and make a cut on the wrong side of the lay-out line.
Fourth, you MUSTmake your cuts on the waste side of the layout lines (the shaded notches). The fingers have to be preserved and uniform in width.
Fifth, use a back stop behind your bandsaw blade because you need all the slots to be an even depth. Make the depth a little deeper than the thickness of the sides. Clean out the notches by making thin cuts between the lines with your bandsaw. Once the sides are glued together, you simply round off the overlapping fingers.
Lastly, it is pretty easy to adjust the fingers to the notches with a utility knife, making ultra fine slices to get a good fit.
The joints are pretty forgiving. You may have to wedge in a filler slice here or there, but they sand out and become invisible.

Thanks for the quick response and detailed explanation with pics, David.

Tony

Give it a go Tony. Practice on a small piece and you will be surprised with the result.
One last piece of advice: round the back lengthwise....It greatly enhances the projection. I call it a shovel back. If it doesn't work as a uke, you can always use it to shovel snow.
Let me know how it goes. David

greenscoe said:

I see from your website that you are a pro and produce some beautiful instruments!

This is an interesting looking 'cigar box ' uke. I'm thinking you must have a router jig to make those corner joints rather than simple butt joints?


It's good to see something different.

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When I asked you the above question, I was thinking about making drawers and cutting the necessary dovetail joints by hand as a teenager 50 yrs ago. It was so easy to make a mess and have to start again. I don't think I would have the patience to do either dovetails or finger joints now. So I applaud this effort.

Like John Colter (Ukantor) my recent box instruments have mainly used butt joints with internal corner supports.

I have been waiting to see the finished instrument. It looks great.

David, I tried the finger joints on some 1/8" Red Oak. I decided to fabricate a throw-away jig for my table saw based on some YouTube videos I watched. I have never done this before, and I never underestimate my ability to mess up things. Because the blade kerf is not very wide, I did end up with a lot of very small fingers, but it all fits together. I think I am still going to put small reinforcements in each corner, in the same manner as when I used to build model airplanes. This is going to be a cigar box type uke, and the back has a 15 foot radius tapered from the tail to heel. I do like the looks of your build better, though.

Bravo Tony,
That turned out really well. I personally think the finger joint is what gives the cigar box its classic look. I usually brace the corners. The old cigar boxes were poorly glued and need the extra support...not so much when you make the box yourself. In my most recent cigar box I used thick epoxy to brace the corners. I put tape on the outside so that the epoxy wouldn't run thru. This method fills any gaps in the joint.
Another suggestion is to create a trapezoid shape by pulling the sides together taper to the heel.

That one looks really nice, David. I like the trim scheme. Were those graphics from a box you repurposed, or did you create those yourself? Very sharp.

Tony

Hi Tony,
I got half way thru a response when UU went down.
The uke in the above pic is a Sam'l David redwood cigar box. I have used it on a bout a half a dozen cigar box ukes. I have about a dozen in my "Stratigic Reserve". I bought most of them on Ebay...usually about $20. They are usually listed as "cedar" but they are actually old growth tight grain redwood. Vet desireable.

Those look nice, David. You and greenscoe (sp?) are making some really sharp offbeat ukes.

Hi David, just revisiting your thread with a question. I went back through all of your pics, and was wondering if you have any tips for ensuring absolute center-line straightness when gluing necks and fretboards? I'm on my 5th and 6th uke builds, and I still haven't solidified a good method for that. I haven't tried the Spanish Heel method yet, just dowels or spline joints so far. I always seem to struggle with getting things perfectly aligned.

Here is how I do it (caveat: lots of ways to skin cats): Take a long rectangular piece of melamine board (or plywood or whatever) and draw a line down the middle. This is your ledger line. Take the body of the uke and lay in on the board top side down on a couple of shims that are the thickness of the fretboard so the body is off the board and you can slip the fretboard under the body. Line up the center of the uke body on the board perfectly matching your ledger line butt end to neck end. Clamp lightly with cam clamps to hold body firmly in place. Mark the center line on the back where the neck heel will line up which also has its center line mark. Take a luthiers square and line it up at the end of the board on the ledger mark. Take your neck and connect it to the body lining up the neck heel centerline mark with the centerline mark on the back. Then check where the centerline mark on your peghaed lines up with the square. IF the neck heel is lined up with the the centerline on the body and lined up on the ledger line on the peghead as shown by your square, you are straight on good to go. Usually it is not and the amount and direction tells you where to take off wood on your neck volute to line things up. Hope that helps.

Thanks sequoia. that does. I've never gotten it completely straight on the 1st try. I've gotten close, but have always had to do some flossing to get it right. Is it just me, or is that normal?

I find that it all has to do with how well the neck block is lined up with the center line in the beginning. Keep in mind that if you are off by only a couple millimeters or so, there is compensation on how you situate your bridge to match the variance by making it absolutely perpendicular to the nut. No one will notice if it is ever so slightly skewed. But only ever so slightly.

I use pretty much the same method as sequoia but I do all the lining up before the fretboard is glued to the neck. That way I don't need to use shims, the body lies flat on the melamine board and I can clamp it firmly at the neck and tail blocks.
More than one way to spey a cat.
Miguel