Preparing Uke Kits for the Cairns Ukulele Festival 2011

[Allen]

Here's some footage that Micheal and I shot on my iPhone while I was at his place, where we were preparing the kits for the Build a Uke in a week course we are instructing the week leading up to the Cairns Ukulele Festival 2011. The video is about 7 1/2 minutes long, but I think that it's well worth seeing the processes and equipment we used.


youtu.be/

[Nick]

Thanks for posting Allen, your 'students' are very lucky to have a couple of guys that do much of the prep work for them (although I guess it would be a longer course if you didn't!). What timber are you guys using for your B&S ? Whatever it is, looks like Micheal has planty of it in his 'loft' Love the neck/side sloting sled too, brillant idea for mass production! How many students will you have this year?

[seeaxe]

Love the soundtrack!!!
Love the video.
Love the idea of the workshop, it's on my to do list. One day, if the Aussie dollar ever comes back to earth.

Michael, you had better hope Martin doesnt watch this - he is going to have some serious stash envy. (unless of course he has more wood than that in his shed, which is entirely possible.)

If life is good when you are amongst the wood, that must have felt pretty good.

Cant wait until the next instalment - its better then the telly!

Cheers

Richard

PS, Allen, also now undertand how you glued all those scarf joints without planing - now thats what I call a bandsaw.

[liam_fnq]

Very enjoyable indeed. You've given me some serious tool envy though.

I am though, a little concerned about micheal's beer fridge. A measily bar fridge

Clearly a shed like that requires a full size beer fridge................


Nick, I reckon that's New Guinea Rosewood. The timber suppliers up here have it stacked up and flowing out the door. Let me know if you want some and I'll post it over.

[Allen]

Cheers guys.

It's a hell of a lot of work to put something like that together and trying to keep most of the relevant parts in there, but also limiting the length of the movie. It all took a full 5 days to get those parts together and we could have used another day easily. So condensing it all into 7 1/2 minutes took a fair bit of editing.

The instrument bodies are New Guinea Rosewood. Neck the same. Fret board will be Cooktown Iron Wood as will be the bridge. Tops they get a choice of Engelman Spruce, or Western Red Cedar. We are each doing a sample instrument with each top for our own stock, so students can see and hear each instrument prior to picking the top that they'd like to build with. During the class Micheal and I will build another instrument with a New Guinea Rosewood top as our demo instruments and it will give us a good example of the different tone that you can expect form varying the tops on identically built instruments made from the same piece of wood. Rarely do you get the opportunity to do something like that and keep the reference instruments.

[Kim]

You guys have been very busy indeed, great vid and great work. Must say that I just love Honey and Bosco's backing track, it sounds bloody awesome...Hey Michael, have you managed to find any 5" baboon's arse NGRW side material for me yet?

Cheers

Kim