Not a joke

[charangohabsburg]

Well, almost not - except maybe the string length...

After having decided to no quit luthierie (for future reference: see here ) I'd like to present my second completed instrument (I'll hang the first one later on the ANZLF's gallery walls, I have finished it at some point during last year but it only made it to a tweak-build-repair thread about it).

As I said before, string length of this ukulele is almost a joke: 247.5 mm (245 + 2.5 mm of compensation).
Everything with exeption of the frets, glue and shellac is firewood and scraps. The strings are not even proper fishing lines, just nylon threads for "decoration purpose".

I had started to build this thing without the serious intention to build a proper instrument. It started when I was given a piece of wood for soprano ukulele sides which did no bend well in the manufacurer's bending process which is soaking the wood fore an hour or so (I don't remember the exact time) and then bend it very hot and quick in about 30 seconds. He said his employee told him that the wood "shooted" during bending, but then exited the bending mould without any fracture. But when sanding smooth the sides of the assembled ukuleles fractures appeared! I asked him to let me have a piece of wood to make some experiments and figure out how it could be bent. As I supposed water got trapped, and closed wood cells then "exploded" when steam developed. Indeed, bending on the pipe the only slightly moistened wood behaved rather well, although it was pretty tough to bend (high temperature and frequent re-moistening needed). This was in 2009 if I recall correctly. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across an article which describes what exactly happens with some woods (not too many though as it seems), and - miracle! - this wood which commonly gets called Robinia here around (Robinia pseudoacacia) is amongst those woods. What happens is the following: when the wood dries the pits between the cells close hermetically... the rest is history!

Well, long story short, I decided to try to bend a "real guitar shape" with the leftovers, but only after having thinned down the sides to 0.8mm for easier bending of the very tight curves of the small waists (radius somewhat less than 10mm) - the size of the shape was dictated by the length of the leftover of the soprano ukulele side...

To my surprise this worked better than expected, although the almost perfectly flatsawn side rippled all over the place. But I thought it would be a pity to send it to the bin and committed the "mistake" to pull a piece of nice cherry scrap wood out of my stash which I converted in a three piece back for the small ukulele. A cutoff from my silver fir (Abies alba) resawing endeavour got converted in a bookmatched top. No neckwood? No problem, I simply laminated some cherry and silver fir, et voilá! The fretboard is from the same cherry firewood (it was from a branch of the tree). I laminated the binding from leftovers of maple veneer and walnut veneer.

The half finished ukulele lay around for quite some time (about 2 years?) when I stumbled across some plum - also firewood, which yielded a nice bookmatched headplate, carved tuning pegs, and the bridge. The bridge plate is cherry. The back is about 1mm "thick", the top 1.5 in its centre and ca. 0.8 at its borders of the lower bout.

To my ears it sounds a bit louder and brighter than a soprano ukulele with a capo at around the 7th fret and same pitch. I'll practice a bit and hope to record something in the next few weeks.

So, here the photos:











Thanks for looking.

[martintaylor]

very cute. Can't wait to hear a sample Markus. (so glad you are staying with this lutherie fun)

[DarwinStrings]

Geez, one minute you are quitting and the next minute you are making your own friction pegs talk about fickle. Reminds me of my first guitar, I made my own bridge pins for the first and last time. Nice one Markus, I have always wondered about the other Firs as Douglas Fir (Oregon) is such a nice bit of wood.

Jim

[P Bill]

All kidding aside, It's has charm.

[lauburu]

There's too much good work here to put crappy strings on. Do yourself a favour and get some proper ones - even if they're cheap.
Unusual way of stringing onto the tuning pegs. I always have the LHS wound anticlockwise and the RHS clockwise.
Miguel

[Allen]

Unusual way of stinging for sure, and I don't know if I could send one out the door like that, but there is no denying that the string path is much straighter that way than the norm.

Nice bit of fire wood recovery too. I've built a couple from just such a rescue and I look forward to hearing this little uke.

[auscab]

Very Nice, it is a wonderfully down to earth looking cutie , [ Just like the best girls ] and it is your second !
I was thinking about that yesterday when you had me sucked in with every one else, about you having completed one. I was thinking it may have been BS as well till now

[charangohabsburg]

Thank you everybody for your nice comments!

Indeed Martin, I can't imagine quitting "this luthierie fun".
And yes Rob, most people say "ahw! how cute!"

[...] and the next minute you are making your own friction pegs talk about fickle. [...]

No fickle at all with these Jim, but there are two or three things that really help making tuning easier than it is with less than perfect geared tuners. I have to confess that these are not the first tuning pegs I fitted, only the carving part of the "button" was new to me.

[...] I have always wondered about the other Firs as Douglas Fir (Oregon) is such a nice bit of wood.

I believe that Silver Fir is quite different than Douglas Fir. Silver Fir has almost no scent at all, compared to other conifers, and it is almost resin free. For this reason, and also for its increased rot-resistance compared to spruce it is here around a highly appreciated construction wood where woods of low density are asked. I have not measured density or stiffness, but I assume that both are in the same range as we find it with spruce, stiffness depending a lot on the absence of excessive runout. When tapping my silver fir top halves I have resawn they ring like a bell - I'd say at least as much as just about any spruce top I have tapped so far, which means that internal damping seems to be very low (high Q-factor) with silver fir, respectively with the part of the tree I have resawn so far.

On the down side there is one important thing though: workability on luthierie-sized pieces of silver fir is less than ideal, I am talking of planing, chiselling, carving and using the jewellers saw (jig saw). One thing is that the earlywood of this species (this tree only?) is very light in weight and incredibly soft, while the latewood is not only dense but really hard. The other thing is that the slightest runout (talking of 1:30 and worse) is causing chipout in the earywood (not in the latewood) when planing against the grain with a cutting angle less than 50° - 60°. Here, my scraper plane saved me quite a bit of time and grief although, of course thickness sanding could be an option. (I don't like sanding very much, neither on my first charango nor on this ukulele I used sandpaper for something else but surface preparation after the first washcoat with shellac (ukulele only), respectively varnish levelling after the second round of shellac on the charango top and ukulele top&back).

@ Miguel: What makes a good (or bad) string? I have seen many ukulele strings (and even more charango strings) which are absolute crap because of inconsistent string thickness. I can't complain so far with this "decoration thread" nylon strings, and if one length should turn out to be bad I simply cut off another length from the roll.
The cost of the strings is not an issue here, but normal ukulele strings are out of question for this ukulele, they are too stiff (bending stiffness) for the string length. Also, I am not yet done with figuring out the exact string thicknesses for all strings (I go by "feel & listen" rather than by calculating which also would work, of course).

Regarding the tuning direction of the 1st and 4th pegs: When more than a decade ago I first have seen a charango or two wit tuning pegs of "changing direction" I also was quite a bit surprised and disliked it when tuning, and I changed the winding direction to "normal", which had perfectly no influence to functionality (or should I say "disfunctionality"?). Some years later, a Spanish luthier friend showed me how he handled the issue - at request of some of his flamenco playing customers - which was to wind the 1st and 6th string "the other way round"! At that time I already had fitted a couple of dozens of tuning pegs, and I gave it a go to see how I would like it this time. The only thing I can say now is that, with well working tuning pegs the 1st and 6th pegs of a guitar behave even better when working "the other way round", and this is the way all my instruments with wooden friction tuning pegs will leave my shed. If customers decide to wind up the strings "the normal way round" this will be their problem, and I will have told them, of course. And yes, I will make at least one more of these. I could have sold this one, but I don't want to sell my "first of a kind" instruments, so I have to get my feet wet by wading through a "commission build" - not really what I was dreaming of because it puts some pressure on my luthierie activity - oh well, maybe a bit of pressure is also not so bad at all...

Actually, recycling materials was never my goal when I made this ukulele, it simply happened like that. Looking back I regret it partially to only have picked up some remains which sometimes were not even of sufficient dimensions (see the added heel cap, respectively the odd binding / center trips of the back... ). In the beginning I was more thinking of doing some exercise on wood scraps and end up with a children's toy as a nice give-away. I changed this attitude only at an advanced building stage when it was already too late to correct some oddities. I truly hope to commit the next time other mistakes!

Cheers,