New Wave Electric Ukulele?

I started some serious spring cleaning yesterday and found myself making one of three decisions. Keep, burn or sell. while sorting thru a stack of stuff I found two electric body blanks from years ago. I had forgotten about them, they were weights on some spruce stock, keeping it from warping in the changing weather. They are 1.75 thick Basswood with flame maple tops. After a short look, I decided to throw them into the burn pile… about a half hour later I had an idea picked the bodies out of the scrapp pile and asked myself

“I wonder if I could lay out a concert body in there somewhere?”

I laid the concert template on the blank and sure enough we have electric ukulele body blanks. not wanting to completely abandon my first decision, traced my profile, cut out the body shape and threw what was left over back in the burn pile.

so now what to do… I’ve had plenty of experience with electric guitars, but there really is not an Electric Ukulele version of electric guitar hardware… like bridges and pickups. And no! you can not, nor should you use an electric guitar pickup on a uke, it just does not look right.

so I made a phone call to the Grosh Guitar company in Colorado. Last century Don and I worked together at Valley Arts USA. A small electric guitar company. he makes awesome sounding pickups for his guitars, and I figured he was my best shot at having something specific made. I ended up having a conversation with the guy that would eventually take my place at Valley Arts after leaving to go to work at the factory in San Diego.

for 20 minutes, we talked about tone, size and the feasibility of this project. it’s embryonic, but growing… and it will be… Tonally Awesome.

 

a little more milling and we have fingerboards.

I decided to give my band saw an hour off and she fired right back up again. overall today I processed a number of bridges and fingerboards...they were cut from the heart of the cant of Honduran Rosewood that I've had laying around for a while. the material smells wonderful and gets into every crevasse of your body due tothe fact that i do not have a dust collector.

Since the middle part of the block was larger than a finger board, but not long enough to get two, I decided to leave it at a 21" length, slice it up and take the best. all in all it netted 13 finger boards and 26 bridges so far. I have some cut offs from the fingerboard portion that I can make a few more bridges with. Now it's time to  seal the ends and get them ready for drying.

Making Bridge Blanks

After going and cataloging my instrument stock, I found out that I am very scant on bridges and fingerboards.
so I have this chunk of Honduran Rosewood that I am turning into these parts.
The first thing you need to do is understand what quarter sawn and flat sawn wood looks like. This material is most stable when its quarter sawn or vertical grain. that means the grain lines run from face to face for the most part. at the most the lean should be 45 degrees. anything after that is flat sawn.

here's the large chunk of Honduran Rosewood. its about
36” x 6” x 6”








Here's what the grain looks like when I cut off the end to make bridges. you can see the curved grain it looks like a shallow bowl outlined on the end of this piece









Splitting the piece down the middle is a good place to start.

When the piece is opened up, you see the book matched lines that are indicative of quarter sawn wood.

The face on the right is the face where I am going to start pealing off bridge blanks

Below are pieces that came off the band saw. a little roughing out on the table saw to get them to an oversized dimension giving plenty of room to dry, shrink and expand with the seasons.

A little more work on the band saw to get these blanks uniform for stacking and drying. the end of that piece od wood netted 26 bridge blanks… a little over 2 years worth.

a

10,000 hits....

nice

New Wave Ukulele Tenor taking Shape

So I’ve been in and out of the shop today taking of my soon to be well sick son. I have managed to keep the wheels turning by getting the long overdue top glued to the sides of the tenor that will change the world of Ukulele as we all know it… Hey, I may as well think positive here. anyhow, below are some shots of the body. tomorrow the back should be fit and I will start the neck.

They Look Dry, But Are They?

 

20 tops, 6 rubber bands, a handful of stickers and an oven set at 225 degrees.

Even though these tops have been air dried for over two years now, there is still some bound water stuck on the inside. the only way to get it out is to force it out.

Back at the factory we used to prep all softwood tops this way. 225 degrees for two-and-a –half hours.

Here's the experiment:

--Weigh all the tops. I did it in grams since my scale does not give me  whole number in ounces.

--Measure each top before going into the oven. a great idea, but I neglected to do it, so I have no beginning reference.

--After baking, let the tops sit stickered with a fan on them until they stop taking on weight.

Baking in the oven will force all of the water out of the wood as well as set the pitch. after baking. the tops need to stay stickered so they can come back to an equilibrium state. They will take on water from the atmosphere around them. it should take 10 to 14 days. measuring the bundle and in some cases individual tops will tell me when that process has finished.

When the whole thing is over, I will have stable tops that are ready for building

 

 

 

The Music Library

 

Some people have an extensive library of music. CD’s, Mp3’s… I seem to remember something called vinyl? on every piece of media etched into its surface, well with the exception of the Mp3 is a musical tone. that tone had to start somewhere, and for me, that somewhere is here, in my music library. granted, it’s not as extensive as others, but it’s all mine. bought and paid for.

In it are tones from such woods as Mahogany, Ebony, Maple, Koa and others. All from different parts of the world, all with their own unique tone quality. some people may not know that music comes from trees, but if you ever go to the woods and just listen… past the noise of the interstate below or the jumbo jut over head, you will hear the whisper of music. the wind thru the leaves. Even in its natural state, wood is singing out. it’s the music of nature. it’s God’s creation making natural music.

so where do I come in.. well ,shortly after they slash the forest down for farmland and sell off the timber to finance the whole thing…a little attempt at humor, For all you tree huggers out there, The music industry uses just a small fraction of wood harvested then… well lets just take toilet paper and sanitary products industry, and you know what that’s used for.

back to my library of tone. I have been collecting small pieces of wood from around the country when I can the nice thing about making ukes is that they are small, and I can get cutoffs and failings from shops around the county. it also helps having worked for the biggest guitar factory west of the Mississippi. They throw me scraps all the time… Thanks guys.

Making Braces and a Few Other Things

 

I spent the morning on the band saw ripping and resawing various things. I have  had some spruce air drying for the last several months and it now time to get it into a more usable state.

I also resawed some old school mahogany that I reclaimed from my father late last year, I prepped it and started air drying it back in November. today I split it and made it into sets. Tenor Mahogany top back and side sets. I gave this material to my dad back in the early 90’s it’s probably well seasoned by now.

Beautiful Tone Should look… Well… Beautiful

After a few hours of work, I think I have created another top that will sing for a lifetime. This is a little project that I’ve been wanting to work on for a while now. I braced this top for a friend of mine that is a uke maker in just to see what the sound differences between his bracing and mine on the same instrument.

If you look closely at the top, you can see the laser etched lines for his  bracing pattern, and where mine differs. in recent months I’ve   started to realize that different isn’t necessarily better or worse, but just different. the way I make ukes is not ordinary, or easy, and that is what makes them different.

so next week, I’m going to send this back to Hawaii and in October when we vacation, I hope to play 2 identical instruments that are uniquely different. it should be a fun and worthwhile experiment. 

Rememeber to follow New Wave Ukulele on:

Twitter and Facebook

It doesn’t look like much, but it works great.

 

After shaping braces from blanks, all the while sanding the tips of my fingers off I decided to jig up and rough the braces out and get them almost down to size. for this I had to put into use my wood working skills. Building instruments is a specialty woodworking discipline, you need to have a basic understanding of how to work the media, as well as the specific luthier skills that one develops along the way. One of the skills I have picked up over the years is jig making, mostly fixtures for the table saw, band saw and shaper.

What I am trying to accomplish is taking a small piece of wood, the brace block, and cut it down into smaller pieces, the individual braces. from there I want to take the smaller pieces and make them even smaller on the tablesaw. the last part is to bevel each brace with at 15 degree bevel on both sides while keeping the work flat on the table and up against the fence when there is no flat reference to keep as such. a little technical, but after many hours of research and development, I present the New Wave Ukulele Brace Bevel-o-Matic. a table saw fixture that holds small pieces and keeps them from flying back at the operator assuring an 85% chance that he/she will survive the process… pretty good odds I’d say.

 

Each piece is 1/4 X 5/16 and roughed out close enough that I can tune the braces and not waste time hogging off material on the belt sander. it’s time consuming, messy and not all that fun. This cuts my brace shaping time in half. it took about a minute to final shape this brace.

Safety Note: now I know a guy that took a larger piece of wood to the gut many years ago when working the tablesaw… trust me I still have a mark shaped like a heel block. Now when you're dealing with small…thin, and in some cases sliver sized wood, when they fly back from the saw blade, they can go right through you. so that is something to avoid…

Doing some clean up!

I've spent the last few hours nicing up this instrument for the "Design in Wood" competition at the Del Mar Fair this season. I have to have the instrument submitted by the end  of April for the show at the end of June. Last year My uke was seen by more than a million people, or at least I'd like to think that since there were 1.1m that came through the doors.

That being said, I went to the fair 3 times so there may be some skewed numbers. The Design in Wood competition is one of the foremost contests that spans a variety of woodworking decisions from Marquetry to segmented turnings, as well as... you guessed it, Luthery. There are usually a dozen instruments on display guitars, banjos, carved flutes, and ukuleles. 

So if you're in the area from late June to Early July, stop off and see this beauty up close and personal.