I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth using the existing soundboard – it just doesn’t ring nicely. So I tapped all my lumps of wood to find one with a decent sound. The best was some mahongany.
Glued the veneer to the headstock and drilled the tuner holes.
Got the fret slots cut. This is always a scary job since one slip wrecks the piece.
This is my process – I’m sure there are better ones. But this works for me for now.
Lots of progress on this project recently. The sides have been glued into the slots into the neck.
I made the kerfing from some straight grained quarter sawn spruce (construction lumber). They were about 6mm (1/4″) square, cut through to leave around 1mm thickness.
Continue readingTLDR: It is playing and sounds good.
Now for the details…
This went on easily enough. I didn’t bother with cauls – there didn’t seem to be a need. I did this in the house as the workshop was too cold for the glue to set properly. Note the masking for the bridge – more on this later…
Continue readingWith the fretboard on it was time to final fit the neck. This required gluing in a couple of shims into the neck mortice. The shim veneer is supplied.
Something a bit different – an engineer’s view of conciousness.
Every so often I see articles on the Internet explaining conciousness in terms of vibrations or quantum theory. However, I think these are over complicating the issue. We can approach the problem from an engineering viewpoint and I think the reason for conciousness emerges.
This isn’t an idea I’m claiming for my own – I came across it when researching robotics in the 1990s. However, I haven’t seen it explained anywhere recently so it is probably worth writing down. If you can spot holes in the idea then please comment below.
TLDR: conciousness is a necessary part of creatures that learn how to interact with the world.
Imagine a simple mobile robot. It has:
We put this robot into a maze and see what happens.
If we’ve got it right (and there are no dead ends – discussed later) then the robot learns to turn left when the right touch sensor hits something, and turn right when the left sensors hits something.
We had to enlarge the holes in the peghead to take the machine heads. This is properly done with a tapered reamer. I bought a StewMac reamer for the pegs that hold the strings to the bridge and started enlarging the holes with that, but it wasn’t big enough to finish the job.
The reason for using a reamer is that it is less likely to split the wood than a drill. Eventually I realised that a tapered hole drill would do the job, so we set to work.
Once the outside of the hole was the right size it was simple to use a normal drill to enlarge the hole to the right depth without splitting anything.
Continue readingHmm. Just like buses – projects all come along at once. I was looking for a new guitar for my daughter. StewMac have a kit where the body is already built – the remaining work is pretty straightforward. Plus it is fairly cheap, even including postage and import taxes. Plus the reviews say it sounds excellent. So a good summer project for me and my daughter – she’ll get to say that she made her own guitar!
We haven’t got very far yet – just the first couple of steps. These are to do with fitting the truss rod into the neck.
Oh no – not another uke!
I’ve sold the Mostics 3018 CNC – it was just far too unreliable. It broke my heart everytime it went wrong and chewed up hours of work. So I’m not working on the Archtop Pineapple Uke at the moment.
Instead I’m making a conventional ukulele – flat top with braces – from reclaimed wood from an old desk. The draw sides and bottoms are make of some of the finest cedar that I’ve ever seen – lovely stuff. This will be used for the soundboard. The rest of the uke is made from mahogany – some from the desk, some from a chest of drawers and some from some wood my dad gave me.
As you can see from the last photo, the back and sides are fitted inside the sides of the uke rather than being glued on top of the sides. This is basically because I think it will look nice and it means I won’t have to bind the edges. However, it isn’t easy to do – the bending of the sides is far more visible and getting the back and front to fit exactly is tricky. Going ok so far – the photo above shows the back.
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