Nicco

Thanks both Biz and Mr Natural, some good info in both your posts. I'll find an opportunity to respond in detail soon, so for now just wanted to say thanks. 

I did dampen the cupped side of the back plate and or flattened out pretty easily, but unfortunately it rapidly reverted back to banana shape after it dried out. ☹

Thanks Biz. Yeah, putting some moisture on it was definitely along the lines I was thinking. Steam or an iron are good ideas too. I might start at least intrusive (moisture) then work my way up from there. 

I like the idea with the slats too, thanks. I'll do that as well. 

Worst comes to worst, I have a backup plan for the back of the instrument. Soundboard not so much, but I'll work that out as I go. Ha ha

I really must clean my bench too... very unphotogenic! Ha ha

Hey brains trust, after a slight shed time deviation, its time to get stuck back into dad's uke. Unfortunately, that means I have to face the problem I'd been putting off... the back panel is really badly warped. 

Interested to hear any suggestions on how to save it, if it can at all. 

A bit of a recap of what we're looking at, it's a 3 ply laminate, 0.6mm qld walnut on the face, 0.5mm qld walnut cross grain in the middle, 0.6mm tasmanian blackwood on the inside. I glued it up on a flat panel, using white pva glue under vacuum. 

First thoughts are obviously that the middle ply shouldn't have been the thinnest, I didn't actually think to measure until after it was all done; silly me. 

Everything was dry when I glued it up, so wondering if the moisture in the pva has contributed too? 

Lastly, it's bloody hot and bloody dry here at the moment, when I glued them up, there was a lot more humidity in the air. Probably a big factor. 

Similarly, the top had warped too, it's actually popped the glue joint on the last 10mm or so of the two ribs. 

Worried that both will be scrap at this point. 

Back panel:

Soundboard: 

Congratulations, mate! Absolutely gorgeous guitar!

Thanks Biz!

I feel pretty chuffed that the group thought my little uke was worthy of being compared with @mattharris75 gorgeous guitar! 

Bloody nice looking scraps of wood!

Congratulations on taking out guitar of the year, mate. 

Okay, I'll give Matt something to beat for this month.

This is Mum's uke. 

I decided a long while back that I would like to make my parents ukuleles as they have both got into their playing in recent years. 

It's also become a bit of a thank you and welcome present after my folks decided to sell up their house in the north east if Australia and move to the southwest to be closer to me, my wife and their now 3 year old grandson. 

The specs:

Soprano size

All Australian timbers throughout; 

Tiger myrtle back, myrtle sides, both laminated onto bunya pine cores. Bunya pine soundboard. Qld maple neck with tasmanian blackwood accent strip, and qld maple and dyed black maple binding. Mulga fretboard, rosette and bridge. Qld maple blocks and braces. 

Passive, peizo pickup (the discs on the underside of the soundboard type) 

This has been my first acoustic instrument build and I've learned heaps. Dad's one should follow later in the year. 

Unfortunately I don't have any particularly brilliant photos of it just yet, I finished it 12 hours before handing it over. 

The note to mum is on the inside of the back, so is visible through the sound hole. 

Mum absolutely loves it. It plays easily and had a lovely, mellow sound. 

Well, the soprano is all done! Mum's birthday was yesterday, so I got to give it to her for that, which was really nice. 

She absolutely loved it and was blown away. Good result! 

It plays nicely (for a uke, anyway )

The biggest hurdle I had was to fit the bridge; I tried clamps through the sound hole which didn't work, putting chocks in there so I could clamp around the outside. In the end I gave up and went full backyard and just pulled it tight with as much blue tape as I could! Ha ha. Seems to have worked.

In the end, I've learned a lot; there's some finishing stuff I'd do differently next time, it was very hard to get the surface as flat as I wanted with wipe on poly. The sound board is probably a bit rigid too; it could definitely be louder, although it does have a lovely mellow sound. 

I'll take proper photos later, but for now, I'm very pleased with how it came out, plus relieved it's done. I'll slowly get the tenor done from here, but need to get a few other things done around the house first. 

Finished product looks gorgeous matey

Hi everyone, merry Christmas and happy new year to all. 

It's been a busy few months, I ended up taking a new job which I started this week, finished up my last one just before Christmas. Everything was hectic doing hand overs and trying to get projects done before I left. 

Needless to say, I missed my Christmas deadline. It's mum's birthday next week, so thrashing now to get her's finished; dad's can wait, he's not playing as much at the moment anyway, he's preferring to play his cajon instead. 

I'll just let the pictures show where I'm at; tuner holes drilled, face plate trimmed, fretboard fitted and the frets all done, neck finished shading and sanding, clear filler put on the sides and back to fill the open grain (and my shitty work. Ha ha), first coats of finish are on sides and back as well. 

Last tricky step is to fit the bridge. Having only done electrics before where the bridge has adjustment, I'm concerned about getting this one just right. 

You'll have to excuse the messy bench. Cleaning is low on the priority list at the moment.

I love the neck joint, really interesting way to do it with the much larger footprint on the back. Looks like it would ge very stable. 

Do you typically do your bolt on neck joints like that? Or is it just this one? 

I've been pretty quiet lately on this one, busy with family stuff and work then hit a bit of a snag with bringing the soprano fretboard down to thickness; one corner got away from me and ended up too thin to be able to salvage. Very frustrating. 

So with that in mind I decided to take a few days off work this week so I could, A) get some momentum back up,  and  just generally not go to work, which is always nice. 

I did also decide to buy a thicknesser. It's always frustrated me not having one, and I'm too time constrained to frig around without the right tools. With my new sidekick I got stuck back in. 

Soprano now is neck glued in; fretboard cut, thicknessed, and mostly fretted; neck heel shaped; body sanded to 400 grit and first coat of finish on. I have a little bit of clear filler to go in the open pores of the myrtle, plus a couple of little binding gaps to fill, but otherwise making good progress. 

The soundboard for the tenor has a rosette now and has been thicknessed (pre-machine and I almost had to bin it too! Grr) plus the first couple of braces are on. 

I think, if I really knuckle down, I should be able to hand them over for Christmas... hopefully... maybe

Wow, that's absolutely gorgeous, I love it. Just such a nicely balanced aesthetic where no one bit over powers but it all looks so classy together. Bravo!!

Last section of binding is on. Very, very glad that I went back and re did it, the pop from the black purfling strip looks great. 

Also went back and did the tail graft again. It's just got to be sanded flush now.

Because I'm me and I like over complicating things () I wanted the qld maple side strips to meet the binding without any black pin stripe but also for the mulga to be enclosed with black strips. Far out! 

I ended up doing binding first,  then trimming the black bit off where it clashed, then fitting the tail graft. Awkward trying to work around the output jack, but got it all together. 

Yeah, thanks Scott. It was good to get that stuff done, we'd been taking about it for ages. 

In exiting news, my side bending iron turned up the other day all the way from the UK. I'm actually amazed how quickly it got here; it takes longer to get things posted from 2 hours up the road.

Anyway, I needed to try it out. I grabbed a piece of scrap qld maple that was 3.5mm thick and 8mm tall (so roughly 1/8th inch thick) and bent it into an s shape! Whoa! This thing is game changing! 

I got all four binding pieces bent up and 3 of them fitted last night

Or glue back on the bit you didn't mean to cut off. A well done, visually unobtrusive glue joint is going to be way easier on the eye than an off centre, centreline

Gorgeous piece of wood there, looks fantastic.

What I would say though is even though you've made a mistake on the sawing and now your original body template doesn't quite fit aligned to the centre line, I wouldn't compensate by going slightly off centre on the body; a really visually obvious centre of the timber like you've got being just slightly off square is going to attract your eye all the time. 

If it were me, being a custom guitar and all, I would tweak the body shape to fit the wood.

Just a thought.

Had a bit of a detour weekend this weekend. The wife and the boy headed up to the nearest capital city (2hrs drive away) so she could go to a work meeting, get her car serviced and spend time with her folks. 

My dad jumped on the opportunity and got me to help him build a cajon of sorts (sit it on your lap and slap the top of it) plus we've been wanting to do some vege gardens for ages but the ground where we want them isn't level, so we need a small retaining wall. 

The ukuleles, templates and every other identifying feature had to get packed away and hidden in the house for the weekend so dad wouldn't find them. 

The poor little Subie got loaded up with the box trailer, 23 sleepers and 300kg of concrete and we were away.

Well, the cajon is all done (no finished pictures, but I do have this pic of it before we flush trimmed the sides and the qld walnut plywood top dad wanted... little does he know it'll match his new ukulele soon. Ha ha. 

Bottom level of the retaining wall is all done and concreted in. The second level will go up quick smart when I next get a chance to work on it, probably in a few weeks. 

So much for my quiet, kidless and wifeless weekend relaxing at home. Back at work now and I'm buggered. Ha ha 

That looks gorgeous. Simple, clean and elegant. Nicely done! 

On 9/8/2022 at 8:43 PM, komodo said:

Only semi-related but while we're at it... a couple days ago I tried to twist the spray nozzle on my pressure washer while I was using it to orient the spray pattern. Of course I know  how much pressure is there, but still don't really equate it with a table saw blade or anything. Sort of like how a weed eater/string trimmer can bounce off your shoe so you don't have that fear of death, but still wonder if it could cut your arm off.

Turns out that a pressure washer can quite efficiently (and quickly) leave a large jagged wound, like a drunken squirrel may have done.

Ooft! Ouch! I remember doing similar when I was about 14 or 15 years old. I snuck up on it by putting my finger in front of the jet like you would trying to pressure up a garden hose. 

Didn't get my finger far enough in to go full angry squirrel, but it was one hell of a blister!!

So in response to my last post... good and bad news with the trial of the blow torch and the 1" aluminium pipe...

On the good side: 
  - The flame is definitely hot enough
  - The bindings bent like an absolute treat, it was about 1000 times easier than doing it on a soldering iron. So much more progressive in the bend. Lurvely

On the down side:
  - I only got about 40 seconds of heat on the darn pipe before it failed under it's own weight, broke where the flame was impinging on the pipe and the long end fell to the ground shattering the into little 5 cent coin (maybe penny size for you overseas lot) burning hot shards all over the floor.
  - I decided at this point to take another approach...

The other good side:
  - Good reminder about correct PPE when using equipment like that. The shorts and thongs I was wearing probably wouldn't have done much to keep my feet and legs safe.
  - I got lucky and didn't get burned.

I've ordered a proper bending iron (I know I can make one, but at this point, just do it properly - it's going to get used enough to make it worth while in the end). It'll take a few weeks to get here, so I'll just focus on the other parts of the project between now and then.

16 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

At first I thought about soldering instead of casting which made me think of a pocket size torch with a needle tip blue flame! But if your torch has a flame that's thick as a finger and about four inches long you should do fine. Use a sewer pipe that is about 2" in diameter with thick walls for both rigidity and heat spreading. That's what Jerry Rosa used for bending mandolin sides until he built his bending iron.

Sorry mate, I missed this response before. Yeah, it's bigger than a pocket lighter thingy, but no oxy-acetylene torch either. Hardest bit is finding the pipe. I don't have anything that size lying around. I could grab some from the steel shop but then I'm making a... shall we say... significant... investment into it. I've got some 1" pipe that I'll try out. If that doesn't work I think I'd be best to just put the money spent on pipe towards an electric bender. Electric strikes me as safer and less temperamental for this kind of thing.  

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