December: The ‘death’ ukulele

Seeing as I don’t use this for my writing (as it was intended) I’ll be documenting my ukulele stuff here.

I’ve decided to make an uke a month, and will be uploading relevant stuff. Namely photos and whatnot to better inspire you, the reader, to go build your own.

So without further ado, I present the ukulele for december.

As you can see, on the back I did a little wood burn of the triforce from LoZ. Besides from that though, I decided to give a namesake to all the ukes I’m building. My brother ended up naming this one, when we received bad news, and like a cold hearted robot I brushed it aside and finished off this uke.

The ‘death’ ukulele has cattle bone as its nut, bridge, and inlays of the saddle. If you’re ever sanded cattle bone, you probably know what face I’m making now. It stinks.

Anyway, here’s the build process. It starts off with wood. The dimensions don’t particularly matter, I based all measures after I bought the wood.

I basically wanted a box. Having spend some time with boxes, I assumed I knew what one would look like. There needed to be a space for the neck of the uke to slide in though.

I glued in some supports so the ‘box’ could be better supported. I ended up without G-clamps wide enough, so I had to hold this together myself.

Prior to gluing, I checked the dimensions of everything. The front panel was done, with the sound hold drilled and dremel-ed.

I drew in the art I wanted to wood burn. I used a shady soldering iron from the Electronics dept. Please use the proper equipment… It’s strange because I came to Bilborough for an Electronics Job. Since then, Ive ended up in Physics, then Maths, and now with BTEC Physics. I think I’ll try D&T next year (jokes aside, it has been weird.)

Again, I checked everything before gluing. A word to the wise, gorilla glue will stick to your fingers for days. For three days if you continuously scrub your fingers until they bleed.

Gluing the neck to the body.

Decided to sign them all.

More gluing.

This is the fretboard and back panel being glued.

I also lost skin to the power sander. This was it essentially done. I added the nut and saddle afterwards.

 

This was completed Christmas day. Everything was so messed up, I actually decided to spend Xmas day alone to finish this off. I think the theme of death rung a bit too close to home, so I’ll be keeping this uke. I am intending to sell or give away the other months, so look forward to them.