![]() ![]() I chose to stick to the classic cherry-red color of the es-335 that many guitarists, including Chuck Berry, were fond of. It'll keep your work a lot neater and will help you avoid mistakes like mine.Īfter the stress of making and gluing the neck, painting the ukulele was a relief! So when making your electric ukulele, learn from my mistake and don't skimp out on the clamps. They say that average people learn from their own mistakes, and smart people learn from other people's mistakes. I decided to just continue and use this as a learning experience. A crooked neck negatively affects not only the appearance of the finished product, but also the comfort/playability for the player. Gluing the neck on straight is probably the most important part of building a string instrument, and I had screwed it up. It was for this reason that I made the fatal accident of gluing the neck on at an angle.Īfter all the work of making the body, making such a big mistake was so discouraging that I nearly felt like giving up then and there. Instead, I ended up using any heavy item in my garage as a weight, which turned out to be a pretty terrible idea. While I did have a general list of materials and tools, I was severely limited on clamps. Once the basic headstock shape was finished, I cut out a portion at the bottom of the neck, trying to cut as precisely as possible, since this was the part where the neck would be glued to the body. I just kind of eyeballed an angle that looked right, but if you end up making your own electric Ukulele, I'd be interested to see if it makes much of a difference what the angle is. I then cut along the marked lines using a jigsaw.Īlthough I didn't know this at the time, the angle of the headstock on a Gibson es-335 is exactly 17 degrees. Next, I formed the headstock by gluing a block of wood at the end of the neck, and then marked the angle at which I wanted the headstock to be. I started by cutting out a piece of wood in the rough shape of a neck, using my acoustic ukulele as a guide. For this reason, many luthiers prefer to buy a pre-made neck. Making the neck was probably my least favorite part of this whole process, just because it's so easy to mess up. Once the basic shape of the body was finished, I started working on the neck. I used wood glue and sanded all the edges once glued together. Next, I glued the front layer from the previous step on top. For a more in-depth look at the difference between hollow vs semi-hollow bodies, has a great article explaining the difference. It really just depends on what tone you want to get. This step is optional though you can choose to have your ukulele be entirely hollow, or you could make it semi-hollow, like I did. Once I was done with the outside layer, I cut out a large block of wood and glued it into the middle. I also cut out little "handles" coming off from each piece (which I eventually cut off) to make the clamping process easier. I used the front layer that I cut in the previous step as a guide. I decided that rather than bend the wood, it would be easier just to cut out several chunks of wood and glue them into the desired shape. On a regular guitar, this layer would be bent out of wood, but unfortunately, I didn't have the right tools for that, so I had to get a little bit creative. Once I had both pieces cut out, I smoothed the edges using my orbital sander.Īlthough the front and back layers form the basic shape of the body, it's really the middle layer that gives the body dimension. I found this tip especially helpful when cutting out the f-holes. The reason this helps is because tearout only happens on one side of the wood (the side facing you as you're cutting), so by flipping the board before cutting it, the tearout will be on the less noticeable side. If you don't feel like taking an entire online course though, one way to prevent tearout is to flip the plywood upside down before cutting it. Luckily, Instructables has a wonderful woodworking class, which, among other things, shows you different ways to prevent tearout. One problem that kept happening to me was "tearout," which is when you get a ragged edge after making a cut. For lack of a better tool, I used a jigsaw, which made it hard to get a nice, clean cut. I actually found cutting these two parts surprisingly difficult. (As you can see, my template got cut off while printing, so I had to draw some of it free hand.) ![]() ![]() Next, I cut out my template and used it as a guide to cut both the front and back layer. ![]()
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