Baritone Ukulele Completed

As I’ve been applying Tru-Oil ( one coat a day) to Dave’s e-mando, I thought it a good time to finally complete the baritone uke that I started about 6 years ago! As I’ve said before, my baritone ukes are just not economically viable to build any more. It’s very much built as a small classical guitar; fan-braced, dovetail neck joint, double hole bridge etc. and takes almost as much time to build as a guitar. So, as this instrument isn’t a commission, I’ll probably hang on to it for a while unless someone makes me an offer I can’t refuse!

The soundboard is Engelmann spruce with a cocobolo rosette, fretboard and head overlay. I’ve used the sapwood for decorative effect.

The bridge is ebony with a bone saddle (bone nut too) and has a classical guitar style double hole tie-block.

The tuners are Gotoh guitar tuners and I’ve replaced the chrome buttons with ebony ones, which saves an appreciable amount of weight.

The body is fully bound and the whole instrument finished in light satin shellac and wax finish. I’ve used a clear pick-guard to offer some protection.

The back and sides are made from some figured sycamore and the neck, Spanish cedar. There is also a carbon fibre reinforcement strip in the neck.

The back is inlaid with a decorative marquetry stripe.
The uke is incredibly light and reminds me somewhat of an early romantic guitar. Job done (and very pleasing it feels too!)

E-Mando now complete and ready for sale

If you’ve been following the blog you would have seen my new electric mandolin being built. It’s now complete and currently available at a price of £800; this includes an Ashbury gig-bag but shipping is extra.

The full spec and contact details can be found on my web-site.

Here’s the obligatory video, followed by some rather smashing photos!

You can’t have enough clamps!

Here you can see the fretboard being glued on to Phil’s twin-point. You need a variety of clamps in this game and it’s not all about enormous amounts of pressure, rather spreading the load over a large area.

Once the fretboard has been prepared and fretted, I then carve the neck.

And here’s a nice shot of the tailpiece- although I’ve made a fair few of these tailpieces they still take me quite a long time to make. But of course, the joy is in the making.

If you like handmade stuff, you might enjoy this website that I stumbled across for the Handbuilt Motorcycles Show;

As a craftsman, I particularly like this bit of  their introduction-

“As our collective existence slips further into digital abstraction, we at the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show believe something has been lost and it is time to revive the culture of physical craftsmanship. Although in today’s modern mass-produced world few young people are taught how to do physical work or are encouraged to embrace a trade, there remains a universal attraction to the beauty that can only be formed by human hands.”

A wet Bank Holiday Monday

With today being an even wetter than usual Bank Holiday Monday, I thought my time might be better spent in the workshop. So, I cleaned up the body of Phil’s twin-point; it’s now ready to have the rebates cut around the edges to take the purflings and bindings. 

And I thought that it would also be a good opportunity to start cutting the abalone for Ewart’s rosette, which I started on last week.

Zouk in progress: Part 2

Here’s the next instalment of Adrian’s 'zouk build. We’ve just bought ourselves a new video camera and we’re really pleased with the results!

Alan's Mandolin

This week saw the completion of Alan’s mandolin. It’s the seventh of my “Standard” series, but with a couple of custom upgrades- the head inlay and my design of tailpiece (as seen in the previous post). Here are a few more choice photos of the finished instrument.

A brief spec:

• Red spruce soundboard (Adirondack)
• Bubinga back and sides with maple bindings
• Sapele neck with carbon-fibre stiffeners, rosewood compound radius fingerboard with side markers and gold evo frets
• 30mm nut, 352mm (13 7/8”) scale length
• Schaller tuners
• Rosewood bridge with removable bone saddle
• “Nava” handmade tailpiece
• Open-pour shellac satin finish

The mandolin is being shipped on Monday.......watch this space for a video treat!

Longevity…..

What a great weekend we had visiting Luke, Louise and Jacob; and Amanda and I celebrated our 34^th wedding anniversary.

Glad to report that Jacob has taken to the guitar although at the moment his style can best be described as percussive (watch-out Andy McKee!).

There’s something quite wonderful about playing a guitar that you made (in 1979) before you were married and before your son was born, to your grandson! As I said longevity!

You can read some more about this guitar in my archive.

 Meanwhile, back on the bench...

Once the fingerboard has been glued on, the playing surface needs to be generated. Firstly, it’s sanded flat and then chambered across the width; these days I do this entirely by sanding. You can plane the ebony but sanding completely eliminates the possibility of the grain tearing out. Keeping the spruce soundboard clean whilst sanding ebony can be a dirty business, so it’s wise to protect the top.
Ian is having slotted abalone diamonds as position markers. Before I glued the fingerboard on, I drilled pilot holes for the centre of the diamond. 

The shape is carefully marked out and then I used a dremel to remove the bulk of the recess; in order to get the sharp corners, the final fitting has to be done with a chisel. 

The diamonds are then epoxied in.......

 and after 24 hours cleaned-up to reveal.....

Next we carve the neck!

And here again is the progress on Alan’s bubinga mandolin. The next stage will be the bindings

What’s next?

With the construction of Adrian’s double commission nearly completed, it’s time to start preparing for the next instrument. This one will be a rather striking guitar for Ian, based on my Model 2 shape. If you’re not aware of my Model 2 you can see it here on my website.

The Indian rosewood back has been glued together; I like to use sash clamps for this task.

Once the back has been joined and taken down to 2.5mm thickness (did you spot the deliberate mistake?) a groove is routed, to take a decorative stripe.

This stripe is going to made up from ultra-thin black/red/black lines and abalone; the whole stripe (6 lines and the abalone) is just over 2.5mm wide. When you are doing fancy stuff, it really is a case of less is more!

The groove is routed with a dremel tool and then all the component parts are glued in with epoxy resin…………

……………..24 hours later and after a clean-up, here’s the result.

And although the stripe is very fine you can see below how it stands out against the rosewood back. Like I said, more is less.