Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

What made you think that? Just the location?

Yeah, fair enough, thanks Allen. My suspicion was that it probably wasn't going to be a great option, but figured it was worth checking anyway.

Yeah, thanks Allen, appreciate the clarification. Like Martin, I had a look around on google and could see things talking about different positions being used. And thanks for the tip about the pickup positioning. BTW: Cairns is a lovely part of the world, I grew up there. :) Okay, I've got one more ...

Thanks Martin.

It was one run by Perry Ormsby. I believe he is/was a member on here back in the day?

I did a uke using myrtle a few years back. The stuff bent without any special treatment. A bit of a spritz with water from a squirt bottle before and during the bending session. You can use Super Soft or a fabric softener to help with bending. If youre using a blanket and form hand bend the waist f...

Hi all, This is a bass guitar I made for myself that I finished up back in March. I took a 1 week electric guitar building course in Perth back in 2015 and well and truly got the bug. I decided to buy some timber and all the hardware and have a go at building myself a bass. I think there's an old bu...

Oh and one other silly question, coming from guitars I'm quite comfortable with where the fret markers usually live on them, but where are they on a uke typically? Looks like 5, 7 and 10 usually get a marker. Does 12 usually get a special one if that's where the neck and body join? I assume side dot...

Hey everyone, I've got another question for you. I'm just about finished making the forms for the tenor uke, then I can get to bending up the sides from qld walnut. I only have enough timber to have one crack at it, so I'm definitely going to be pre-bending it before it goes in the form for final gl...

A bit of an update on these. - The soprano rims are now joined and self supporting. Neck and heel blocks are left over Qld Maple from the neck of the electric guitar I've done. - The soprano back plate is now made; laminated two inner bunya pine layers and an outer Tiger Myrtle face. The middle laye...

Beautiful, thanks again Martin. I'll head that way too.

Hey everyone, I've got a quick question about pickups for these ukes. I'm trying to work out what the best option is given the use case: mum basically never uses hers amplified, dad used to use his amped a bit more regularly but that use opportunity is drying up now; he'll probably use it once in a ...

Awesome, thanks Martin re: the sound board. I think for this go I'll just use the other, safe end of the same piece anyway. And for the pictures, I'm on android and the pictures are all jpeg's. Dunno. See how we go from here. 🤣 Thanks again. Also neck and heel blocks are now made for the soprano, ju...

Trying to post pictures on my desktop. Seems to work once I've rescaled them - maybe they were too big straight off my phone. Anyway, here are the pictures: First two are the soprano sides straight out of the forms. They've got two bunya pine inner plies. 20220521_200049.jpg 20220521_200037.jpg Side...

I was hoping to get a couple more photos up, but it doesn't want to play ball just yet. I'll try again later

Hi everyone, It's been a while since I've posted on here, but I've just embarked on a build that I'm hoping will be of interest to the community. My parents started playing ukulele a few years ago now and have got right into it. I decided ages ago I wanted to make them ukes as a gift. I have finishe...

Hey guys, hope you don't mind me jumping into the same thread. I'm also looking for a bandsaw of the same size as Snail, between the H&F BP355, the Sherwood 14" Plus and the Carbatec equivalent. I've not found many reviews on the different saws, does anyone have experience with three Sherwood compar...

I took a couple of days off work last week to make more progress on the guitar (and, you know, just not be at work too, which was nice. Ha ha) I ended up deciding that my little timber inlay dots were going to look a little boring, so I went and found some inspiration for something more interesting ...

Hi Richard, Thanks for that. You're right, I was eventually able to google most of what I needed. So essentially the string is approx 0.5mm above the fret crown at the first fret, and about 2.5mm above the 12th fret. That sets the angle between the strings and the fret board. That was the bit I was ...

Okay, I think I get it now, I was a bit off with my understanding of action. The string should be parallel to the fret board, the action being the same height over the whole length. That makes sense, and makes it a whole lot easier to calculate. It also makes new think my old guitars I've got might ...

Making more progress on the neck, got three rough cuts all done, ready to stick the fretboard on them start shaping the neck. Going to play around with a little bit of inlay stuff first though... if I'm going to make it hard for myself, I might as well make it properly hard. 🤣 Anyway, I did have a q...

No worries, Steve. Managed to steal a couple of hours over the weekend for working on the neck. I've now cut and planed (poorly) the front and back of the headstock angle and about 50% through the back of neck cut. Next step is to stop that once before it's right the way through then rough cut the s...

Hi Steve, If you really look at it you can just see a dark ring on the dot, but I hadn't noticed it until you asked. I don't think it's going to be massively obvious under normal circumstances. Light wood on light wood would (how much wood would a wood chuck chuck, lol) probably show it a bit worse,...

Yeah, thanks Steve, very happy with how that turned out. Next step was to thin it the fret board; the blank was a bit over 10mm thick when i started. I realise it would have been more logical to thin it out first, but cutting fret slots had me bluffed, so I figured I might as well cross that bridge ...

Here are pictures of the mitre box. It worked a treat. Much better than I'd managed to do with any other method I could think of!

The orange rings were spacers to put under the far ends of the board while it was being cut to stop the whole lot over balancing

So in the intervening years, one of the things I had done is started up a laser cut thingy side project. More just decorative stuff, so only thin material with a solid state laser, not a co2 laser that could chew through really serious material. Anyway, i started off trying to make a template that I...