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4 and 8-string ukes - upcycling an old acoustic guitar!

Evening all!

I've not posted a build here before, so bear with me if I get it wrong, ok?

This is the second uke that that I've constructed out of an old acoustic guitar, that used to belong to my brother. (It was awful - the neck was twisted and bowed - completely beyond redemption).

It seemed to me that the curved sides of the body could be cut down, and used to make the sides of a smaller tenor uke.

The first 4-stringer used the back of the body, but I made a new soundboard out of 1/16" modelling-grade plywood, braced internally.

The neck was formed form a mahogany blank - shaped with a scroll saw and belt sander, before finishing by hand. The neck is dowelled and glued to the body.

All the hardware came from Ebay, and the completed uke is fitted with Aquila strings.

I'm delighted with the result - the tone is more lute-like than a conventional uke, but has ample volume to make itself heard at the local uke club (Cool and Uke).

Tim

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Permalink Reply by Diglydog on August 8, 2017 at 12:32am

That's a supurb result. Nice work !

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Permalink Reply by tad adams on August 8, 2017 at 5:17am

what glue do you use to hold it all together and how long does it take to go off ?????????

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Permalink Reply by Tim Hooper on August 8, 2017 at 5:41am

Thanks everybody for your kind comments - it's really great to receive such encouragement!

I use the yellow aliphatic wood glue throughout. It grabs in a few minutes, but takes several hours to reach full strength. I deliberately use a fairly slow glue as it makes me adopt a leisurely pace (with plenty of time to plan my next move; a bit like forcing yourself to use a tripod when taking pictures....)

Tim

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Permalink Reply by Robert V Lopez on August 8, 2017 at 5:59pm

It is a good build, they both look like beauties,and must sound good when played.

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Permalink Reply by Tucker James CBG's on August 8, 2017 at 11:00pm

Some very cool ideas here or should I say hear?!

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Permalink Reply by Tim Hooper on August 11, 2017 at 8:18am

Here's my self-made family so far......

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Permalink Reply by Matthew E. Walworth on August 12, 2017 at 11:43am

Would love to hear how they all sound!

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Permalink Reply by jeff burgoyne on August 13, 2017 at 11:05pm

oh my those are sweet looking and i bet they sound sweet to

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Permalink Reply by Estone Villan on August 19, 2017 at 8:43pm

When measuring, did you just take a rough guess at size for the body? 12 inch body, 9 inch wide and 3 inch deep or were you more precise and have a better idea of what you wanted to do?

I also wondered if there was any flexibility in the width of the body at the neck or whether it had to be that wide because of the angles at the corners?

I'm worried I may stuff it up.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Hooper on August 20, 2017 at 7:09am

It was all a rough guess!

Given that the guitar was around 110mm deep, I figured that If I was careful that I could get two 50mm deep uke bodies from it.

For the overall shape, I drew around the guitar body on a large sheet of paper, then cut the paper into smaller pieces which I could use to make a sort of jigsaw, moving the pieces around until I was happy with the overall shape produced. This became the template I used on both ukes.

Simply put, the body could have any proportions that you want, I think. I did ponder having a very slender body, but I thought it would look a little out of proportion to my eyes.

Tim