The Cigar Box Ukulele Distraction

Adult ADD is a terrible thing. I started this ukulele last summer after looking at Kathy Matsushita's web site and finding I had extra mahogany and some cigar boxes on hand. Kathy has a nice cigar box build described. Above is the neck blank according to her process. I am making this a concert scale uke (14" scale). The box is a Romeo Y Julieta box, 8" long. It sat till last weekend when I made the catalpa top. I had bought a piece of 1/8" rosewood and a rosewood "pen set" at Woodcraft. The latter is perfect for two bridges the former for two fretboards. I took the bottom off the box and added a mahogany heel block, mahogany reinforcements the the corners and maple strips for gluing surfaces. I scraped away the paper on all gluing surfaces.



Here's the neck with the "insert" in place and rough carved. The Safe-T-Planer is great for thinning the peghead.




More distractions as they happen.

Practice, practice

I decided that trying my first bookmatched top with 40" long seam was heroic at best, so I thought I'd start out smaller. I had bought a large piece of "rescue" catalpa from my friends at Community Forklift when the bandsaw was new and tried my hand at resawing. I got some clean, narrow pieces, but the saw wasn't tuned up enough to cut 10" wide tops and bottoms from it. I put the booked matches 1/4" sheets aside as the had lots of pin knots as well.

I got them out yesterday and found a clean section long enough to be the top for a cigar box instrument. I had cut a couple of ukulele necks from mahogany left over from the mooncake mandoline project. I purchased a section of thick counter top of Communtiy Forklift to be the auxiliary table for use my Safe-T-planer on the drill press.


Its dead flat and real rigid. I jointed the 1/4" plates using a simple shooting board and plane, then 150 grit sandpaper sitting on top of my (you guessed it) Community Forklift granite counter top. They were then "tented" over a paintstick and the edges trapped between some finishing nails driven into a piece of flat scrap plywood. Tightbond II for the center seam, and a couple of dead lead acid batteries to hold the seam down while drying. I then thicknessed the top on the Safe-T-planar to 0.100".


The picture above is after light sanding with 150 grit to remove most of the mill marks (I was getting late for work) and then some mineral spirits to look at the figuring. The wood is a beautiful butterscotch color. a mahogany grain structure, and a lovely tap tone. I'm getting there!!

Heads and ........

So onto the tail block. Never wanting do do anything simple the first time, I used concepts from Alex Willis' "Step By Step Guitar Making" to fabricate a 3 piece tail block. The idea is not to have any gluing surface be end grain, as its a sponge for the glue and makes a weak joint. So I took more of the mahogany and created the "H" with the grain running vertically up the vertical leg and the two "T"s with the grain running along the thickest dimension.



The mortises on the "H"s were cut on the band saw and then chiseled out to fit. The tenons on the "T"s were done on the band saw and some cleanup with chisels. The pieces are glued together


and when dry, I trimmed to size on the band saw and then switched from the 3/4" blade to the 1/4" blade to cut out the "waste" and the "ogee" reduce the weight, finishing with a 1" diameter Forstner bit to create a flat for the eventual installation of a pickup.



So what next? Build a kerf-lining jig? Buy the wood to build the thing? Get distracted by another side project? Who knows?

A new year and progress

So, I've returned from a hiatus from instrument making. I found this gorgeous piece of mahogony at the local Woodcraft. I decided to get onto the headstock. As you can see, I am using a slotted headstock. The tuners will be added upside down to allow for easy access.

I took the dimensions from the SketchUp "Virtual build" and laid it out. Much easier than I had thought. Nice to have a Stanley #100 plane and sharp chisels. Next........The end block.