DIY Ukulele
DIY Ukulele Rosette Jig
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For a cheap and simple DIY Ukulele Rosette Jig, you can use double-sided tape to stick a 60mm Ø disk of plastic (at least 2mm thick) to any small slab of flat wood which has a layer of parcel tape applied to the surface, ideally thick ply or MDF.
Then you just bend strips of ukulele purfling around the edge of the plastic disk and glue each layer to the previous one. You can use map pins to hold each end of the purfling in place as you add the next layer. Another neat idea is to sandwich small (1.5mm thick) rectangles of shell between two layers of the ukulele purfling strips, to simply and swiftly put together a really fancy ukulele rosette. See example in image above.
Be careful but not shy with the glue, you need to make sure everything is well stuck and the parcel tape on the base will prevent your ukulele rosette from sticking too badly to the surface. Once the rosette is inlaid you will have to scrape back and sand down the finished soundboard surface, removing any excess glue in the process.
Again be careful when removing the pins and releasing the rosette from your DIY Ukulele Rosette Jig, no matter how well it has been made the ukulele rosette will be a delicate item, until inlaid into the ukulele soundboard.
Here’s the almost finished article, set in to a solid Mahogany soundboard, using my DIY Dremel Inlay Jig (which I will be blogging about in the near future). A very handy jig that allows for incredibly accurate and fast rosette channel cutting for any size ukulele rosette… when used in the right hands 😉
All thanks go to the fantastic luthier, tutor and mentor Peter Barton for this gem.
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Wooden Ukulele Purfling Strips – Best Buy
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Here is a great deal if you are looking for a bundle of Black-White-Black wooden purfling strips to decorate your ukulele builds with. This is a quick way to build up rosettes and purfling decoration around the sound-hole or outer rim of your ukulele, with more than enough to decorate one side of a tenor ukulele in each strip, it will take a fair while to use this lot up.
Click image to buy for home delivery
For a cheap and simple DIY Ukulele Rosette Jig, click the image below:
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Online Ukulele Purfling & Rosette builder
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This is a really handy tool that I stumbled on from Gurian Instruments for planning out ukulele rosette or purfling colour combinations and patterns. It looks a little complicated at first, although when you get used to the interface it’s quite simple and very versatile.
The video tutorials are really useful and will help you understand the Purfling Builder and it’s capabilities. There are a good few choices of colour and material; using a variety of pattern overlays and thickness of purfling, you have an almost limitless array of potential ukulele purfling and ukulele rosette designs.
The only addition I’d like to see is a way to save the progress of a design so you can come back to it at a later date, or perhaps some templates to start from. What would you like to see added or altered?
http://www.gurianinstruments.com/pb
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UK Ukee is 2 years old!
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I can’t believe it’s been two years already! The time has gone by so quickly. Thank you all for your interest in the blog.
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Bore yourself silly…
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You can now access the entire UK Ukee blog archive from one page… the BLOG page. This gives a month by month list for you to view the complete back catalogue of DIY ukulele posts from February 2014 to the present day… should you so want to.
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Back with the stats… Top 25 Ukulele Blog!
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I’ve been checking out where the UK Ukee website stands on the Top 100 sites list again (now called Top Ukulele Sites) and it is in the Top 25 Ukulele Blogs! This is in a specific blog category, listing in excess of 150 Ukulele Blog sites from around the world. Still moving up within the Top 100 websites overall for page views, this really is amazing to think that the blog only started in 2014.
More statistics about blog visitors in 2015 (the first complete year for UK Ukee) are – almost 12,000 individual visitors in total, viewing pages 27,851 times, generating a mind-boggling number of clicks. Thank you again for all your support and interest – Keep it Ukee!
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Graduating Thickness Callipers Best Buy
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Graduating Callipers are used to check the thickness of the soundboard, back and other ukulele components, they can be both difficult to find and expensive when you do find them, with a long enough reach (deep enough throat) for the needs of the luthier.
These Budget Graduating/Thicknessing Callipers are particularly good for ukulele building as they are not the full 300mm throat reach needed for larger instrument building, as are most of the luthier’s thickness callipers I have found. Possibly not suitable for Baritone ukulele building, depending on the size of your wood stock, but should be fine for all other ukulele sizes (certainly soprano and concert)… and it comes in a handy wooden case, keeping it nicely protected from other tools.
This particular variation is larger giving you a longer reach for checking the thickness of Tenor and Baritone ukulele soundboards and backs. Top Tip – Accurate measuring may not be possible with the lower end dial indicators used on cheaper Graduating Callipers, however you can ensure a regular thickness throughout your ukulele soundboard and back using the same tool to check thickness.
The link below is the best price I could find for the aforementioned 300mm deep throat thickness callipers, that are used for making larger instruments such as Baritone Ukulele, Guitar, Cello, etc. These are of better quality and you will also notice that the contact points are domed, giving you the ability to be more precise with the measurements of these Graduating Callipers, as the measuring tips are smaller.
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Budget Honing Guides and tuning them…
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Honing Guides are a very useful accessory if you are not used to sharpening your plane blades and chisels by hand. They can also be an expensive device to add to your toolbox. If you favour either diamond or glass sharpening stones, Japanese Waterstones or even the aptly named “Scary Sharp” technique (using sandpaper and honing film), a honing guide can be a worthwhile investment. But it doesn’t have to be all that expensive…
Top Tip – Using a honing guide gives you a guaranteed set angle as you sharpen your plane blade or chisel, moving from the coarser grits through to your finishing grit. If you add some marks on your blade with a permanent marker, while it is clamped in the honing guide, this will give you a reference point to line your blade back up to next time you come to sharpen it.
The cheapest way to get your hands on a reliable honing guide, is to purchase one of the standard types you see in most hardware or tool shops and then follow this useful video guide to tuning it to be reliable and true.
The next option up on the cost scale, would be a better built honing guide with a wide roller. These are helpful for two reasons, they make the whole honing guide and sharpening experience a more stable one and they reduce the wear to softer sharpening stones, that can be caused by the small wheel of the very cheap honing guides. Here is a link to the best priced honing guide I have found in this “better” category…
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UK Ukee in the Top 100 Ukulele Sites!
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Spotted something fairly satisfying the other day, if you sort the list by Page Views (the actual number of site visits recorded), UK Ukee currently features within the top 100 out of over 350 different ukulele related websites. As this listing website was originally known as Top 100 Ukulele Sites it feels like quite an achievement to be up there in that “Top 100”.
Thanks to all the followers and site visitors that made this possible. I hope to continue providing content that interests and inspires you.
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Get rid of string vibration buzz on your ukulele…
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String buzz is a real pain that most if not all budget ukulele players will experience and even some higher end instrument players. Most of the time it is simplest to dress and re-crown the entire fretboard on a new budget ukulele, once this is done you may find certain strings (when fretted) will still buzz… or there may be another cause.
So here is a great guide for diagnosing the cause of the ukulele string buzz or rattle and your best path to fix ukulele buzz and resolving the issue.
https://ukuguides.com/how-to/how-to-fix-ukulele-string-buzzing
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