Julies's Ukulele

Julie's Tenor Ukulele Build blog:

August 27th 2020

I finally got back in the shop and started a ukulele for a repeat client. She let me chose the wood so I dug through my stacks and paired a cool curly redwood top with a Hawaiian Koa back set and a seperate set of orphaned sides. I ended up swapping out the neck blank for one with an ebony strip in it.

I started on the neck blank. I am sorry I did not take a lot of pictures. I started with scarfed jointed blank I had in my stash and using a plane thicknessed the head stock from the top and then tapered and thicknesses the fretboard face of the blank. These two complementary actions kept the scarf joint end right under the nut location. I had a small block of mahogany that I am using for a built up heel.

The ukulele plates are a bit small to work well in my LMI jointer jig, so I used a tensioned tape jointing method.

I used a plane and a shooting board to clean up the edges for gluing and then with the plates tilted relative to each other taped, glued and flattened them. Then tension from stretching the tape holds the plates together until the glue cures.

I started to lay out the neck but had to stop there.

August 27th 2020

I am making a lot of progress on the ukulele, less progress on the blog so I thought I would take a bit of time to bring the blog up to date.

First off I want to complete the assembly of the neck and the sides. I am building this uke on a work board that includes a mold much like my traditional flamenco or classical guitars. Unlike the way I build flamenco, I will first attach the sides to the neck instead of attaching the neck to the top first. When making flamenco guitars I use tentallones to attach the sides to the top and neck combination. With this build I will use kerfed linings which I typically install with the sides attached to the neck. (although ultimately I could have attached the top to the neck as I ended up attaching the top using kerfed linings but with the top on the work board with the sides and neck in the mold)

After determining the 12th fret location I used my table saw sled to cut the slots in the neck for the sides.

As mentioned above I am using a work board and mold for a traditional Spanish style of build

I have a good side template for the martin tenor ukulele with a tapered and radiused (25') back, so I cut the sides very close to the profile, thicknessed them to .075" and bent them in my small Fox side bender I bought from Blues Creek Guitars . I just fritz with water and wrap the sides in a paper towel. I use stainless spring steel for the slats. I have found that soft steel and aluminium foil will turn koa green. (a sandable green, but who needs the stress.)

While one of the sides was cooling in the side bender, I fretted and radiused the fret board. The fret board was radiused to 20".

I went ahead and tapered both the fret board.

I also pre-install the end graph on the tail block. I hate cutting out the recess for the tail graph, this method allows me get a great joint on both sides of the graph.

I first use a combination of my band saw and a disk sander to fit the sides perfectly into the mold.

I adjust the sides for the end graph and the neck slot. I just use the disk sander. As long as I remember to have the straight top side down I get a square edge.

I fuss with the joint until it is centered and clean. I do the same to fit the sides to the neck and when happy I glue the sides one at a time to the end block. To get the side square I only need to make sure that the side is tight against the end graph.

I need to wait on the top before gluing the sides into the neck slots. The sides sit on the top and the top needs to be set on a shelf routed on internal neck block. I will pick this up in the next post.