…the ‘ukulele knowledge you take, is equal to the ‘ukuleles you make.
Day 7:
Lots of sitting around today. I am glad I grabbed a bag of pretzels on the way in and had a long book to read. When I arrived, Mike was almost finished with the first coat of UV filler. It’s wiped on, allowed to dry for about 10 minutes, then the magic UV wand is waved over it. After that, it’s sanded with (I think)1000 grit sandpaper. Rinse and repeat, kinda like shampoo.
Finally, clear coat!!! The clear coat is a UV cured Polyester Resin. It’s freakin’ amazing! 2-3 coats in a day and it’s harder than nails when done. It stinks like hell, but it’s certainly no worse than lacquer and from what I’ve seen a lot less hassle. I’ve never sprayed an instrument, but I have more experience with prepping and spraying laquer than I ever care to admit. The polyester resin is sprayed onto the uke then allowed to flash for 30 minutes or so.
Then the magic UV wand gets waved over it and voilà! it’s time to wet sand. After wet sanding, the uke is wiped clean and resprayed and UV-ed. Once that is done, the uke is gently wetsanded one last time and then buffed out with buffing compound to a nice glossy sheen.
Once buffing is finished, it’s time to glue up the bridge. The bridge is temporarily installed and a razor knife is used to cut thought the resin and liberate the lacquer tape. The bridge is then dry fit and clamped to check for fit and any possible problems.
After that it’s popped off and the bottom is cross-hatched with a razor knife to increase the gluing surface area. White glue is applied and the bridge is then clamped.
While the bridge glue is drying, the fretboard is liberated from the lacquer tape used to mask it off. The edge of the fretboard is lightly filed to feather out the resin/ fretboard surface corner and the frets are redressed where necessary.
Next the tuning pegs are reamed out and the tuners fitted. Following that the outer string positions are marked on the nut and rough cut with a razor saw. Mike uses a spider divider to mark his inner nut slots. I’ll use the Stew-Mac string guide as I happen to have one.
Finally, time to string it up and hear the moment of truth! As it turned out, we needed to tweak a couple frets with a quick fret level, but all in all I think it could have been a lot worse.
(Some) Final thoughts:
Building a uke wasn’t near as difficult as I thought it might be. I can’t wait to build my next one. There were some steps where it was obvious one needs to pay attention, but there is this whole aspect to it that reminded me of cooking. Respect the ingredients and just be zen with it and it will come out to your liking. Thanks to Mike for taking the time to teach me to build and special thanks to our friends with whom I stayed while in the Bay area!
