Next on the cards- Selmer/Maccaferri style uke

Back is bound. Fig maple with bwbw's purfling the mitres of which look great.
Glue wasn't dry enough to get full shot.

Back is bound and looking good

Fingerboard is bound, for glory?

You missed a bit in the middle of the back.

F@ !!!!!

I love to see well executed mitres - great stuff though I wouldn't want the hassles you are going to get with dark dust contamination of the maple... maybe you have a clever solution for this you would like to share?

Thanks for the miter compliments. These .0010" bwbw's look bad if they dont line up.
I scraped then used a festool then scraped again, then shellaced it all with no dust contamination, as yet!

When I hand sanded with a block I did get dust staining.

Rubners are the bomb.

Still waiting to hear from Jeffrey at Rubners about that centre hole. But you are correct Beau - they certainly are better than anything else out there.

I just got the 33mm spacing this time as 2mm makes no difference and I couldn't face the 5 week wait for custom 35mm. I bet they switch to 35mm as standard now we are all on to them as we'll as that centre hole.

Headstock design. The dimensions are a gift to you all, just dance at my wedding.

edit- i since slightly altered the dimensions of the headstock from these pics to correspond to the angle of the original sides, which turns out to be 3 degrees..Ill do another drawing of the final dimensions. Also, the side walls are now 8mm, not 7mm.

I don't dance but I'll tell you your strings will never clear your ramps.

Excellent point which the French dealt with very elegantly and I didn't include in my drawing. They slope/ bevel the inner ledges. It looks great with a black white veneer under the main head plate.

edit- i since slightly altered the dimensions of the headstock from my previous pic. Ill do another drawing i the final dimentions.

Was thinking that too Chuck - but Beau, as usual, had the answer. I wouldn't use that solution; I'd rout the slot to that rhomboidal shape created by the ramping. The revealed veneer lamination will make it look like a mint humbug IMHO Nevertheless it's your uke and it looks great

FYI: Watching a Django documentary on YT the other day and he was playing a Grande Bouche with a glued on classical tie bridge and not the Selmer tailpiece type floating bridge thingy. What is your solution to this problem?

Using making tape to double check the layout.

Veneer detail and tuners layout

Proving Rick wrong showing that a bottle of titebond in the workshop is useful!!!

Shaping in the headstock/neck transition.

Life is easy at my time at Gilet Guitars (till october) with this sweet milling machine. What a Beaver.

Side walls are 8mm.
This is dictated by the position of the string hole in the sleeve as i wanted it to be in a the center of the slot. I think 8mm walls looks clunky on ukes but I had to make them so due to the Rubner tuners. 8mm is what is used for steel string guitars too).

Slots are 3" long and 1/2" wide (I had to travel about 63.50mm on the digital readout. Note 63.50mm isn't 3", as you have to take into account the digital reading is from the center of the 1/2" bit, not the outer cutting edge)

I milled the slots to within 1mm of punching through then drilled/exacto knifed the rest out (headstock is about 19.50mm thick with the tuners being 16.5 ish mm from memory)

Cleaning up the slots at the back

I forgot to drill the holes first (doesn't really matter), so a quick insert stopped any break out when drilling the tuner holes.

Milling the holes to 33mm spacing. 33mm is an uncommon spacing (normal is 35mm) so I had to keep reminding myself of this. I like this pic.

Pete Howlett said:

Was thinking that too Chuck - but Beau, as usual, had the answer. I wouldn't use that solution; I'd rout the slot to that rhomboidal shape created by the ramping. The revealed veneer lamination will make it look like a mint humbug IMHO Nevertheless it's your uke and it looks great

FYI: Watching a Django documentary on YT the other day and he was playing a Grande Bouche with a glued on classical tie bridge and not the Selmer tailpiece type floating bridge thingy. What is your solution to this problem?

Click to expand...

I had to google "rhomboidal" and "Mint humbug" to understand the first paragraph! hahahha
I will post pics of the complete headstock tomorrow and how i did it but i only took about 15mins to shape the ramps. As for teh humbug pattern, i actually liked the look so much i elongated the ramps to bring this out. I guess im a hum bugger.

Grande Douche? Oh, Bouche. Yes, well. I have thought long and hard for well over 5 mins about the bridge. But really, i actually had to think about this first and its relation to what kind of top (authentic [kinked] or modern copy [typical 28' dome]) I was going to do. Also tail piece or not of course. I love the Selmer tail pieces:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges...uitar_tailpieces/Selmer_Guitar_Tailpiece.html

but i just dont think a uke has enough in it to drive it all in relation to authenticity built top (stiff, as it is kinked 3 freaken ways!) so no tail piece I WAS going to opt for a modern domed top but kink the back of the top behind the bridge at 6 degrees as were the original Selmer guitars to add some of the original top built parameters to it all but came to my senses just in time. Perhaps next selmer build, which wont be until i get back to the US, unless a get another order for one.

So i'm doing, in essence, a normal tie bridge with tear drop wings to resemble the selmer bridge pencil moustache shape. I was going to ask Chuck Moore for a tracing or charcoal rubbing of his moustache but realised it would not be in proportion

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

Excellent point which the French dealt with very elegantly and I didn't include in my drawing. They slope/ bevel the inner ledges. It looks great with a black white veneer under the main head plate.

edit- i since slightly altered the dimensions of the headstock from my previous pic. Ill do another drawing i the final dimentions.

View attachment 55976

Click to expand...

I still think you're going to have problems with the strings hitting the bottom and inner walls of the ramps especially given the angle of the tuner posts, giving the strings a tendency to wind toward the center. Still, I enjoy seeing your progress. Clean work.

Headstock off cut. I really like this pic. Sometimes little throw away off cuts yield little treasures.