IT IS FINISHED!!!

Sunday, October 13th, 2013:

Well, I've finished the cigar box ukulele (the one that I will show the woodshop students this coming Tuesday). Just in time!

I've got no photos to show this time --- you'll see the finished product in the soon-to-come video to the right.

Here's basically what I did since the last time I posted. (I worked part of Thursday, all day Friday, part of Saturday, and today after church for about six hours.)

(1) Thursday, I leveled and dressed the frets.

(2) Then I proceeded to make and glue on the bridge. To determine the height of the bridge, I laid a straightedge on top of the bolted-on, fretted neck. The amount of space between the straightedge and the soundboard (at the saddle location) would tell me the approximate height of the bridge. I then made the bridge about 1/32" lower than that space, so that the straightedge just "kissed" the top of the bridge. So...I made and slotted the bridge (3/4" wide and 3" long). I drilled four holes in the bridge, behind the saddle slot for the strings to pass through.

(3) Now it was time to locate the exact position of the bridge. HERE'S WHERE I MESSED UP! The way you are to figure out the exact location of the bridge is to measure from the 12th fret, 1/2 of the scale length, plus about .080" for compensation. That measurement will be the location for the peak of the saddle. So...since my scale length was 13.75", I needed to measure 6-7/8" from the 12th fret and add the .080" compensation. I did this, checking it several times, just to make sure my bridge would be in the right spot. Once that was figured out, I held the bridge in its proper spot and then drilled through those four string holes; that way I could, when it came time to glue the bridge, just insert two 1/16" drill bits through the 1st and the 4th holes, so they would serve as locating pins, so the bridge wouldn't move around while being glued up.

(4) I then opened the back lid of the soundbox, to see where the four string holes had landed in the bridge patch. BIG PROBLEM...the holes had missed the bridge patch entirely, landing right below the bottom of the bridge patch! HOW COULD THAT BE??? I was sure I had measured correctly, and I knew I had placed the bridge patch in the right position. Finally it dawned on me --- instead of measuring from the 12th fret, I had been careless and had measured from the 13th fret!!! STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!!! (First time I've made this mistake, in all my years of building!)

(5) SO....what to do, what to do? If I used my original bridge, I would need to somehow fill those four tiny holes in the soundboard, because they landed outside of the outline of the bridge. But there was no way I could do that and not have it look bad. So, I decided I needed to make a new bridge, one which would, unfortunately, be wider by 1/4" at the bottom end, so it would cover the four little holes. I ended up with a chunkier looking bridge than I would have preferred, but in the end, it all worked out okay.

(6) The rest of the build was relatively uneventful, compared to my stupid mistake above. Friday and Saturday I applied six coats of tung oil to the soundboard and neck. Today I made the nut and saddle, installed the tuners, strung up the uke, and did the final set-up (filing the nut slots and adjusting the saddle height, so that the action was right).

 

I'm going to stop and make a video now, to show you my finished cigar box uke. Stay tuned....