Making progress

Father’s Day was mostly rainy so it was a good day to stay home and do stuff I enjoy… aside from the trip to Michael’s and the two to Home Depot, of course. Altogether a lot of project progress this past weekend. Between Friday and Sunday:

• Uke Onna Stick: Initial design, more careful design, started building prototype
• Patriot model rocket: Sanded and glued fins, glued launch lug, sanded nose cone
• Grizzly uke: Cleaned up fingerboard, applied sound hole decal, glued on bridge
• Charging station: Drilled holes in craft store box, stained, applied first coat of finish, shortened extension cord

And I helped Kenny get going on painting one of his model rockets and putting together another one.

Uke Onna Stick

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of making an electric travel uke. Something a little like the Risa Solid, or the clones some people have made. Or then again, why not something even simpler? The Risa looks great, I think, but how about basically a neck extended beyond the bridge, with strings wrapping around the ends? I sketched up an idea, and then I discovered someone else has already built a couple of ukes along very similar lines (near the bottom of this page). He even wrote up a how-to.

The big problem with a single stick is, where and how do you mount the tuners? Risa and its imitators generally carve out a hole and mount tuners in one or both sides of the hole, sticking out the sides. (In the above sticks the knobs point backward, but he seems to think outward would be better. Either way, they break the smooth edge of the stick.) With either geared or friction tuners I can’t see anything better to do, but what if you use zither pins? No really… someone in our local uke group has a more or less conventional uke with zither pins in the headstock for tuning, and the Captain Ukeleles “backpacker” uses them or something like them at the tail. They’re also dirt cheap…

(There are headless guitar tuners on the market, and homebrewed versions thereof, but they generally seem to me not quite right for something like this… even aside from the cost.)

Tail mounting might or might not work well with my stick concept, but they could go into the back of the stick. Then they’re pointing backward and poking the player in the chest… unless you put a cover over them. And then I don’t see a problem. You can also build a headphone amp in under the cover.

So, a chunk of wood for the neck/body, a few other pieces of something for the cover, nut, bridge, saddle, and turnaround, a fingerboard (if I do this anytime soon I’d probably buy one premade), four strings, and some electronics. Doesn’t look hard at all. My sketch is pretty crude but there’s not much subtlety here. An even less subtle prototype (1×2 pine, fretless or toothpicks, screws or something for nut and bridge… pretty much your truly basic cigar box uke without the cigar box) would be hilariously simple to throw together. Okay, going to go order some zither pins.

Oh yay expensive hobbies

I still have to finish finishing, so to speak, the Grizzly ukulele, and then glue on the bridge, and string it, and see if I can deal with any setup problems… but already I’m thinking, hm, what kind of uke do I build next?

Oh lord.

Granted, the Grizzly soprano kit sells for a mere $27. (And the concert uke kit is $60.) To which I added some money for sandpaper, and steel wool, and finish, and the inlay stickers I think I’ll use, and… okay, anyway, not much outlay there. It’s also not much of a uke. With some skill and care you probably could build a much better instrument from their koa soprano kit: better wood, better body design, and so on. And that goes for $200.

StewMac has a soprano kit ($112) looking to be roughly similar but in mahogany, and a tenor kit ($132).

Waldron has a bunch of kits at about $190 to $250.

And Music Makers has kits for a really interesting looking concert and baritone, distinctive designs in spruce and mahogany at $250 each. (They sell assembled ones, too, for $500 and $550 respectively. If it takes you the estimated 40 hours to build one, you’re working for $6.25 to $7.50 an hour.)

Of course, for a cheap uke build, you can always go the cigar box route. Music Makers has a cigar box uke kit for $40, a bit too rustic for my taste though. (You could probably source the separate parts cheaper, if you have the tools to make the simple neck.) A more upscale approach would be to use a more standard neck and fretboard such as the ones C. B. Gitty sells ($38) (lots of other sources around too) with your own cigar box. End up with something like the Earnest Instruments Hoochulele, anyone? Those assembled instruments sell for $475… I’m guessing you’d be working for more than minimum wage! If you have Joel’s skills, that is. More likely something closer to Gitty’s assembled instruments ($99) which they acknowledge “may have some rough edges, some nicks and scuffs, some “interesting” intonations, high actions, a bit of twang or sitar-buzz on certain strings, etc. That is part of what the CBG is all about. There are builders out there who turn out high-end professional-grade cigar box instruments, and charge hundreds of dollars for them, and that is fine. You just need to know that these instruments are built with a different purpose in mind.” Or hopefully somewhere in between.

And then there’s eschewing kits and starting from the wood. Hana Lima will sell you a sapele package for $115. Add your own table saw, bandsaw, plane…

Or this approach. No, seriously, a Risa solid clone with builtin headphone amp as a travel uke? I could see it. It’d even incorporate a different expensive hobby, electronics. But it’d be (fairly) cheap! (Here’s lots of information about building a similar instrument.)