Ukulele

While I was working on the pine bookshelf at home, I took a class at the Crucible in Oakland with Rick Turner to make my own ukulele. A great class. Rick had prepared a lot of the pieces beforehand, but there was still a lot of assembly and shaping to do. April - May 2012.

Attaching the neck and bracing elements to the sound board. The sound board is cedar, and the neck is mahogany. Both came to me pretty much as you see them now.

Attaching bracing elements to the back (mahogany). This class was basically an exercise in clamps.

Binder clips as clamps for kerf. You can see the cross-braces on the sound board have been shaped (my first experience with a chisel). Also being clamped in this picture: the "ears" that will provide a larger base for the headstock. 

Rick had pre-cut the fret layout in the neck face thingy (can't remember what it's called... fretboard?), but we drilled the holes for the fret markers and added the mother-of-pearl inlays. I chose purpleheart for my fretboard.

Clampapalooza!

aaand, more clamps, to glue the fret wire on. You can see the veneer for my headstock. The headstock design was the one place we had free reign. I copied another classmate, who had conceived an art deco design. He was gracious about it. :-)
 

I think the piece between the fretboard and the headstock is the "saddle" and the one at the other end of the strings is the "nut" (or is it the other way around?). Both of them had to be shaped with a rotary sander, and both were made of cow bone. It smelled like a dentist's office in there. 

Gluing the headstock on. I shaped the bottom of the fret board to match the headstock.

The headstock base has been sawed (band saw) to match the veneer. The veneer didn't get glued on properly the first time, so it's getting more glue and clamp treatment. Also, the I-don't-remember-at-all-what-it's-called is being glued to the sound board to receive the other end of the strings.

Drilling the holes for the pegs. I liked the way this hole placement looked with the headstock design, and I liked that the strings didn't have to bend after passing through the saddle (or nut, or whichever it is at this end...) but it was actually not a terrific idea (to be fair, Rick warned me against it). The top pegs are very close together, and it's hard to get good leverage on them to tune. 

Initial piece of bone for the nut/saddle/whatever it is on that end. Now I'm thinking it's the saddle at the bottom and nut at the top.

Strings! There's a bead knotted to the end of the strings at the bottom, and then they're threaded through the pegs at the top.

Finished product! It sounds pretty nice. :-) Actually, this isn't quite finished -- after the class was over, I did more shaping on the neck, and then applied tung oil as a finish.