Hana lima ia ukulele construction manual

But do yourself a favor and practice once or twice before bringing your good wood into the game. This piece cracked for a number of reasons. First, it's too thick. Our manual doesn't say anything about side thickness. We later learned that proper thickness depends on a host of factors, but roughly speaking, about. Finally, it comes down to timing based largely upon experience.

As it happens, we had other uke-sized thin pieces of wood in the shop and didn't lose much time. Here's the bending jig we borrowed for our build. You will get as many different answers with as many different people you ask about what bending method is best.

If someone can demonstrate for you, all the better. If not, look it up and go for it. Keep in mind that sooner or later you have to shoot the engineer and build the darn thing. We broke one of our bubinga sides that came with the Hana Lima ukulele build kit. We replaced it with walnut.

We had enough to make a one-piece back and two sides. Here we're holding our sides in a jig to convince them to stay where we want them. The Hana Lima instructions tell how to make tantalone clamps. They work well and only took us a few minutes to make enough to do the job. Tantalones are glued at the joint of the top and sides to give the body strength.

They also go along the bottom, but clothes pins can reach for that operation. After getting the bottom tantalones in place, the bottom gets glued in place. This must have been a traumatic experience because we don't have any photos of it. Really it wasn't that hard. And we made a jig for the next time. We added some birdseye maple as headstock veneer. It's contrasty, looks good, and hides the neck repair. OK, there are a few steps omitted here. We had to cut, place, and shape the frets onto the fretboard.

This was nervous time as alignment is critical to the instrument's function. Locator pins were used according to the manual.

Multiple clamps with firm not drastic pressure were employed. The rest is really a mater of finish sanding, shaping, and drilling for the tuners.

Another mistake we made was in the order of sanding. Our spruce top was done first, then the darker walnut sides. This allowed the fine walnut dust to contaminate the spruce top and our new instrument looks used. Next time Multiple coats over several days is best. This is no time to get impatient.

We did a reasonable job on the satin finish, but are thinking that the dark walnut calls for a glossy finish. Show original message. Either email addresses are anonymous for this group or you need the view member email addresses permission to view the original message.

Hi everybody, I would like to start building ukuleles. Ray Shakeshaft. I would not even attempt building a uke myself but from what I have read of other people's first attempts they have started with a kit and graduated to a complete 'start from scratch' uke. Robert "rpon". I used to feel the same way Ray, but I bought Denis Gilbert's book and have built 3 of them now. I built my first tenor uke right out of the Gilbert book. The next uke I built was a soprano with blueprints from Elderly music and the techniques from Gilbert's book.

My third is another tenor that I'm just wrapping up. Hi Don, Did you find plans for your pineapple tenor or are you just winging it? Michael Shelley. Kevin Hall. Home - Pete Howlett Ukulele. Ukeuncle's Channel. Dimensions of Ukulele Sizes and Scaling Dimensions. Building a Ukulele. The scale length is the distance of the ringing string — from the nut to the saddle.