ASSEMBLING THE KITS, Part Four

Monday, January 13th, 2014:

The first thing I did today was to bandsaw out the peghead shape and fingerboard outline on the top of the neck blank, a little outside the drawn lines.

 

The heels are left at their present length (overly long), so that they can be fitted later to the particular cigar box depth. (All the cigar boxes are different sizes.)

The final thing to do on the neck is to mark and drill the tuner post holes.

Then I will need to write up an instruction sheet for the students.

 

 

 

  

 

Next, I was going to use a handsaw to cut out the heel taper, but then thought, the neck blank was so narrow that it would be easy enough to just use the belt sander to sand down to the tapered heel line --- much easier than having to saw out all those tapers by hand!

Here's the result:
     

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014:

Didn't spend much time on the uke kits today, as I had to deal with a little plumbing problem (low flow in my kitchen faucet due to a defective diverter tee). Ordered a new (free) diverter tee from the faucet company.

At any rate, all I needed to do to finish up the necks was to drill the tuner post holes for the Ping tuners I'll be using. To do this, I just set up a little fence on my drill press table so I could easily drill the 1/4" holes 1/2" in from the edges of the peghead.

Here they are:

 

NEW: January 28. 2014

Here is an update video of the cigar box ukulele project --- the kits are assembled, an instruction booklet written, and another cigar box uke built!!!

Here's another update of how the latest cigar box uke is sounding.

 

 

 

 

  

Saturday, January 18th, 2014:

Well, THE KITS ARE COMPLETED!! I just finished boxing them up. Each box contains (1) a Western red cedar top (thinned to 1/16", with soundhole cut and brace positions marked), sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard for protection, (2) 28" of mandolin-sized fretwire, (3) a cigar box (of course), and (4) a ZipLoc bag containing all the little parts (strings, 4 wooden beads for the string ends against the bridge plate, Ping tuners, neck block, kerfing, bridge patch, cross brace, bridge, bone nut & saddle blanks, slotted fingerboard with 5 position dots, neck blank with threaded insert & tuner holes drilled, 1/4"-20 hex bolt and washer).

Now all that needs to be done is a little instruction manual!