Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Cigar Box Uke

I signed up for a beginner Ukelele class at work.
But with all the cigar boxes I have laying around do you think I'm going to go buy a Uke?
Heck NO! I built one.

So I got home early on a Friday and whipped up a scarf joint neck and a set of tuning pegs in a couple of hours. I made this from old Oak flooring I found on the curb in my neighborhood. You can see the nail holes in the back of the neck if you look real close. While the glue was drying I fretted a piece of maple (using the Tenor uke 17" scale) and glued it on as the fingerboard. While all this was drying I cut a bridge, bone nut and saddle from scrap. Glued the bridge to the cigar box and reinforced the box to hold up to the string tension using scrap dowels.

On Sunday I sanded the profile and neck stack, assembled and strung her up.

The finish project is a Tenor Uke on a Vegas Cigar box.
Total time to build and tune up, 5 hours.
Built and completed in one weekend, just in time for the Wednesday night class.

And she was the best sounding Uke in the class... except for the instructors Banjo Uke...
That was cool.... Maybe for the next project...

1 comment:

Steve said...

Yeah! Do you think the Freestyle Musical Instrument Company will want to license your design? :)