Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Hi forum members.

Some time around the middle of last year, I came onto the forum and asked a number of questions regarding the construction of tenor ukuleles. A number of you were very kind, and freely gave me all the information I needed. Because I'm just a hobbyist, and often get lazy, it took me until the end of last year to complete the five ukuleles I'd set as my target. (Mind you, I'm also building around 6 guitars, interspersed between the ukuleles!)

Further, I completed two ukuleles earlier in the year, but never posted any photographs!

It time to make reparations.

I'll start with the instrument I completed first.

This is a 5-string tenor ukulele. I made two identical instruments; one for a Russian relative who is a professional musician, and the other as a sentimental keepsake for myself, because they embodied a few quirky, personal elements;

The soundboard is 40,000 year old ancient kauri;
The back of the headstock has a thin slice of Pear, from a tree growing in the ancestral hamlet of Zarutsky, in Ukraine, where our mutual ancestors lived, about 180 years ago;
The Blackwood comes from a farm in Colac here in Victoria, where an elderly farmer - who also makes breathtakingly beautiful furniture - lives;
The nut and saddle are made of giraffe bone that I picked up in the Okavango delta in Botswana, a few years ago;
It has tap-plates on the upper bout, because my Russian relative says he plays the instrument like a charango, and bashes it quite a bit;
The braces are made of Adirondack Spruce from a plantation of trees owned by an American relative, yet a third descendant of the family who lived in Ukraine;
The neck is made or Queensland Rose Mahogany.

Yep; I tried to squeeze a lot of provenance into these instruments!

I'll upload photographs the next five ukuleles over the next few days.

Frank.

Nice work and thanks for sharing . 6 ukes and 6 guitars in 6 months, that is phenomenal!

Hi Trent. Thanks for your comment.

Above everything else, I'm retired, have no kids left at home, and no daily commitments. That helps greatly.

I find the ukuleles to be relatively straightforward to make. I've heard people say that the work is almost the same as making a guitar - just smaller - but I find it all a lot less stressful and time-consuming. The margins for error, in terms of things like setup, seems much greater, and because the instrument is smaller, there's less material to prepare, less cutting and gluing, simpler bracing, less surface area to sand and polish, etc.

I dunno. They just seem a lot more doable in batches than guitars, where each one becomes a project in itself.

Note that I haven't said that I've finished any of the guitars yet! - although some of them are advancing nicely.

Regards,

Frank.