Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Here's something a little different for me. I've had this Huon Pine on the shelf since 2007 and finally got around to using it. What a fantastic smell it has, and that buttery color....I just love it.

Scale length at 22" to get some more tension on the strings for the deeper tuning on this instrument.

Body - Australian Blackwood
Soundboard - Huon Pine
Neck - Brazilian Mahogany
Rosette - Blackwood
All other trim - Indian Rosewood
Tuners - Grover
Finish - Semi Gloss Lacquer
Strings - Worth Brown Baritone DGbe

Stunning

Great to see what can be done with standard grade sets, who needs fiddleback with fine details like yours!

Did you add a truss rod/reinforcement of some kind with the longer neck?

Something to aspire too!

Steve.

Thanks Steve.

There is some fine fiddleback in these sets, but you really do need to roll it around in the light to see it. But it was chosen because of the color that I thought would compliment that buttery Huon Pine soundboard.

No truss rod.

Really liking the headstock inlay Allen! It looks like you've sat there with a pin and hand engraved it, then filled that with pearl. Real neat.

Stu

Hi Allen,
This is a lovely looking Baritone. The Huon looks great - buttery as you describe it. I love Huon as a timber but have wondered how it sounds. I have never played an instrument with a Huon soundboard but have thought its "oily-ness" might dampen the soundboard acoustically. Obviously not as I don't think you would use it if that was the case.
I would love to take a flying visit to Cairns (if for no other reason than to escape Canberra - it's freezing here at the moment) to try this Baritone as I would love to actually hear how the low D sounds with the extra scale length. As we have discussed before, I am looking for a fuller low D in a Baritone. Since our last communication I have replaced my el-cheapo Tanglewood with a solid spruce top Cordoda Baritone which is better in the higher registers but still has a dull D. I am thinking I will put a re-entrant D on the Cordoba and learn to enjoy a more Uke sound while I plod away at making a Baritone myself which may or may not happen before I fall off the perch like the Monty Python parrot.
Anyway, congratulations on another great looking Ukulele.
Alan

Looks great as always!

I showed a friend of mine the other day how you blend the heel cap into the body, he agreed it's a great look.

Lovely, once again.

Peter

Ran out of superlatives to say about your Ukes Allen, so I'll just say I LOVE your slotted headstocks, just give the Uke that extra touch of class.

needsmorecowbell wrote: Really liking the headstock inlay Allen! It looks like you've sat there with a pin and hand engraved it, then filled that with pearl. Real neat.

Pssst, I'll let you in on a little secret Stu, Allen has a hareem of exotic nimble fingered Phillipino girls who live in a shed at the end of his garden that do this work for him . Just don't inform the tax department.

Looking great Al.

So what is your impression of the Huon Pine now? I notice you bought some of Tim's whitebait tops so you must have found some positives in it as a top wood.

Regards

Nick wrote:Ran out of superlatives to say about your Ukes Allen, so I'll just say I LOVE your slotted headstocks, just give the Uke that extra touch of class.

needsmorecowbell wrote: Really liking the headstock inlay Allen! It looks like you've sat there with a pin and hand engraved it, then filled that with pearl. Real neat.

Pssst, I'll let you in on a little secret Stu, Allen has a hareem of exotic nimble fingered Phillipino girls who live in a shed at the end of his garden that do this work for him . Just don't inform the tax department.

Or his wife.

I had a couple of tops on the shelf since 2008. Don't know why I never picked it up to use it until now. Maybe I wanted to get to know the craft a bit better with traditional tone woods first. Anyway, I love the look and feel of the Huon Pine. Seems very stiff and had a good tap tone. And the color is fantastic.

Volume , clarity and sustain is developing very nicely over the past week under string tension, and there is fantastic bottom end with these strings. That's usually the problem with this tuning on a uke. So whether it's the string set or the Huon Pine soundboard, I'm not entirely sure as they are both new to me.

I have added a set of South Coast Uke linear set in the case so the client can try them out in GCea. They are really nice on 20" and I hoping that 22" won't be too much for them.

Another classy instrument. Another lucky owner. I like the way the broken line in the back mirrors the idea of the broken lines in the rosette.
Miguel

Nice work as usual Allen.

If it's not a huge ask would it be possible to see a brief tutorial on how you do your partial rosettes. You obviously use a manual cutter (Michael OConnors tool?).

Cheers and TIA Martin

I'll see what I can do. I only have a couple of photo's but nothing that documents the entire thing.

what sealer do you use [epoxy type] onyour wood and where can i buy it,,,,,,,ken

This one and another that I just sent off to England, plus the 4 others on the bench right now are done following Robbie O'Brien's tutorial of using shellac and sanding dust. You can see it here.

Previously I had been using Bote Cote epoxy. If you are in Australia you can buy it online from them, or most reasonably sized towns are sure to have a coatings store that would carry it. I get mine locally from Cairns Coatings.

Allen wrote:This one and another that I just sent off to England, plus the 4 others on the bench right now are done following Robbie O'Brien's tutorial of using shellac and sanding dust.

Interesting how we seem to have gone full circle from the old pore filling methods to more modern methods using epoxy...and then back to the old methods.