Making a Ukulele – Part 2

Now that we have the neck glued on to our ukulele, it’s time to get serious. Next up, glue the position dots in the fingerboard and glue the fingerboard to the neck. As we started this, we realized that the pre-drilled holes were way to small for the position dots to fit in, so we would have to borrow Ed’s cordless drill and enlarge the holes. This also required us to also borrow Ed’s micrometer, which he agreed to lend us after we assured him we wouldn’t break it like some of the other stuff we’ve borrowed from him.

After we enlarged the pre-drilled holes, and glued in the position dots, we dilegently sanded down the position dots to be flush to the fingerboard as the instructions said. However, this also sanded off the finish that was on the fingerboard, so I guess we’ll have to evenly sand the finish off of all the frets.

Here’s a photo of Jimy posing like Vanna White next to the finished fingerboard!

The next step was to apply the wood glue and secure the fingerboard to the ukulele’s neck. The instructions showed using pieces of wood and rubberbands to do this, but we decided to use c-clamps. After it was clamped, we just needed to wait for it to dry overnight. Jimy was so excited that I knew he would have a hard time getting to sleep.

Well…its the next morning, and Jimy and I removed the clamps and tape to check out how the glueing went. It looks pretty good, just a little off center! Hope that doesn’t mess it up to much. We can always sand the top of the finger board even before we glue the nut on though.

The next thing to do is sand the neck even with the fingerboard and mark out where the bridge will be glued, then its off to Grandma’s to get the “custom” paint job!

Oh…and Ed, the micrometer lock wheel was already broken before we used it.

Making a Ukulele – Part 1

Zelda came down with a sore throat, so we haven’t been able to lay down the vocal tracks to our rendition of Afternoon Delight yet, so we decided to take advantage of the time and do something we’ve always wanted to do — build our own ukulele!!!

We broke open our piggy bank and sent $22.95 to Grizzly.com for an awesome build-it-yourself ukulele kit.

After a trip to the store for some glue and stuff, we got started right away on building it. So far we’ve got it sanded and the neck glued on. It already looks great!

Grandma doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to have her paint a cool hula dancer and palm tree on it before we put the finish on.

We’ll update here as we continue building our dream uke!