Sunil Hall

Here’s the latest cigar box creation. It’s a Ukulele I made for my sister in law Veronica:

I finished it a few weeks ago, but held back on this post as it was a Christmas present.

The top is Engleman Spruce. The tone is pretty good, but it isnt as loud as I would have liked. I need to plane the top to the proper thickness next time.

The original box top had a nice illustration on it, but it wasn’t really strong enough to support the bridge, so I glued the picture under the sound hole.

The neck is plain old red oak from the hardware store. I roughly shaped it on the band saw, then carved the radius with my spokeshave. This is the first time I shaped a neck the right way, (my previous cbg’s used a simpler neck style), and it came out quite nice. I’m currently building a full size guitar neck using the same technique. I’ll post a step by step as it progresses.

The Fingerboard is rosewood with poplar dots. No radius as its a Uke.  The frets are mostly even (10 looks bent in the pic but I think its lens distortion). The headplate is walnut.

The tuning machines are open geared guitar tuners I purchased from a discount online retailer. They are pretty much crap, but they look pretty good and are strong enough for a nylon string ukulele. This set is chrome with brass gears.

The bridge is my own design. It’s based on some old acoustic guitar bridges I have seen. I made it by laminating some leftover fingerboard material together and then shaping with a dremel and a belt sander. The saddle is unbleached bone. Behind it is a length of fret-wire to prevent the strings from cutting in to the wood.

This is the first time I have done a traditional bridge attached to the guitar top. the top is reinforced underneath with a bridge-plate and fan bracing. poplar pins run through the bridge to the plate for extra strength. Next time I’ll take a few pictures while I’m building the thing so you can see what I’m talking about.

This was a fun project! I’ll definitely be making some more. I’d like to make some to sell. If anyone is interested drop me a line.

Tags: cigar box guitar, Guitars, Sunil Hall, uke, ukuklele

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Cigar Box Guitars, Guitars, Ukuleles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.