Lockdown Project - Guitalele

[Tim Hooper]

Those who know me on social media, will know that my other, secret, hobby lies in the building of stringed instruments - using the cigar box ethos by utilising bits of old scrap.

I've several guitars and ukuleles in my arsenal, but here's something different; a cross between a guitar and a uke - hence guitalele!

Here's some of the current collection.....

For the last couple of years I've been more than happy to swop between guitar and ukulele, as they're different enough from each other to prevent confusion. Now, lurking in the nebulous middle ground between the two lies the Kingdom of the Guitalele - essentially a 6-string uke, but tuned higher than a guitar. The chord shapes are pure guitar, but with ukelele names. What could be simpler?
Anyway, some months ago a colleague gave me this terrible IKEA guitar, which seemed ripe for guitalele butchery....

A colleague donated this awful IKEA guitar. It really is beyond redemption, and ripe for recycling

 

That's better! A few swipes with the pull saw gets the neck off.

 

Now we get a bit clever. Having drawn around the body, I cut out templates from paper so I could jiggle the bits together to represent a smaller guitalele body shape...

 

The cut out bits were assembled over the 1/16 ply soundboard blank to give an idea of the overall layout.

 

The guitar body was relieved of the front back, as it's only the curved sides that I'll be using.

 

 

 

Edited By Tim Hooper on 08/04/2020 22:07:00

[Tim Hooper]

That nasty old guitar body finally gets chopped into manageable sized bits.

Surely everybody has a belt sander on the decking? Very handy for squaring up the body's parts....

The body's sides get glued together.

The back is made of two pieces of 1/8 ply, with a central oak strip. The crossbracings get their outer ends tapered, prior to fixing in place.

The back is finally attached to the body sides. The excess will be trimmed off later.

[Rob Fairweather 1]

Excellent work Tim,

my lockdown/retirement project ( apart from a few kit builds) is to learn to put down my bass guitars and learn the double bass. Rockabilly with the band will sound so much better .

[McG 6969]

... it clearly will be 6 channels, Tim.

...but still on 2.4 gHz ??? ...

Cheers

Chris

[Tim Hooper]

The front (soundboard) is made from 1/16 ply. Now this needs bracing inside to stop it collapsing when the strings are attached and tuned up. I used tapered pieces of hard spruce.

The body shell gets treated to a side port and cut outs for the pre-amp and jack socket.

The timber for the neck has been sawn down, and planed smooth. Marking out the fret positions before the neck is tapered mean that they're cut square to the neck's centre line. There are several fret calculators available free online. The scale length on this tenor is 430mm.

To actually cut the slots for the fret wire, I use this fine-toothed pullsaw. A spare hacksaw blade is clamped to the saw to act as a depth limiter. Accuracy is paramount here; if the frets aren't exactly correct, then the instrument will not play in tune.

The finished fret slots. The thicker portion is the nut location.

I've marked out the neck blank with the side profile. Now, I've cut these out by hand before, but it seems silly not to pass it on to a mate who possesses a bandsaw, doesn't it?

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Excellent, will there be a solo on said Guitalele on completion ?

[Tim Hooper]

Posted by john stones 1 on 08/04/2020 22:30:26:

Excellent, will there be a solo on said Guitalele on completion ?

Hopefully, yes. I'm not a virtuoso player - more of a club level strummer, if truth be known! It's only in the last couple of weeks that I've been brave enough to start posting a few videos on YouTube with my existing instruments. I even get to sing a bit too!

Spooky

Tim

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Voice of an angel, cheers Tim.

[Stephen Jones]

Nice one Tim,

Well i never springs to mind.

Steve.

[Lindsay Todd]

Excellent Tim, I have a couple of Guitalele myself but not ventured into a complete build as yet. Look forward to strumming strings with you again sometime. Linds

[Alex Ferguson 2]

An interesting thread, ukuleles. We usually go out on Thursday nights to a group where we all play ukuleles and sing but last night went to the other bigger group. We went virtually using Zoom. The leader had his mic ON and all others OFF. If anything needed to be said, commented on, between songs, you switched your mic ON (bottom left corner of your screen), talked and switched OFF again. The only problem is the limit of 40 minutes a session with Zoom and reconnecting every 40 minutes. There is talk of the group going to a paid version during the lock-down period to give unlimited time per session.

So, computer use and no viruses encountered. We used a desktop (on the floor) connected to the TV for a big screen, USB camera, boom mounted mic. They have three books of songs and we haven't got the third new one so had a laptop handy to see the latest songs on the web.

My partner has done a few ukulele instrumental rehearsals with three others over the past weeks, mics ON for all three.

Now back to RC, flew a couple yesterday and today, reasonably calm and the park is two doors away and across the road - safe because of no cars to run me down...

[Tim Hooper]

Thanks for the feedback Gents!

Alex, we usually meet and play weekly too. The Shrewsbury Ukulele Massive has been experimenting with ZOOM too, but I've not yet had a bash myself.

Well, my plan to get the neck bandsawn came to nothing, so I did it today by hand.....

The first bit were easy, using a small handsaw. Which just left that big chunk in the middle.

A root in my late father-in-law's tool roll unearthed this rather remarkable item, I don't even know what it's called, but it carved it's way through the remaining excess in a matter of minutes.

Check the date stamp on the blade!

The sides of the neck were tapered with a plane..

.....and then the rounding off process begun on the belt sander. Handy tool, this.

Using an existing instrument as a guide, I did a quick drawing of the headstock to-be

Adding 'ears' to the sides of the neck re-inforces it where the head stock angles backwards

Hopefully, I'll get the neck fully sorted tomorrow, and get it aligned correctly to the body.

[Malcolm Fisher]

Hello Tim,

The sharp implement you "found" is known as a draw knife. Bodgers i.e. pole lathe operators used to use them to shave bits from pieces of wood before mounting them on the lathe prior to turning. I have one which has been used for all sorts of shaping of pieces of wood.

Malcolm

[Peter Miller]

I thought that tool was called a spoke shave

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Similar, draw knife is correct though, used them for shaping 7lb hammer handles at pit.

[Denis Watkins]

You are both right, it is a draw knife, Fulton Spokeshave

It does the job either way

[Phil Green]

My Dad made four Mountain Dulcimers, this is the one he made for me:

 

It has a drone string and sounds strange (in the hands of a rank amateur!  )

DadsDulcimer2.mp3

 

Edited By Phil Green on 10/04/2020 22:12:27

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Posted by Phil Green on 10/04/2020 22:11:28:

My Dad made four Mountain Dulcimers, this is the one he made for me:

It has a drone string and sounds strange (in the hands of a rank amateur! )

DadsDulcimer2.mp3

Edited By Phil Green on 10/04/2020 22:12:27

What a sound Phil, love it.

[Alex Ferguson 2]

We've had a lad from our library join the Shed so he can fix his late father's draw knife, make / turn-up handles and fit them. A spoke shave, as I know them, are smaller and all metal with an adjustable blade much like that in a plane (non-aeronautical type plane).

[ken anderson.]

hello tim,i like your collection, I made this last year a 3 string cbg...1st attempt. You've set me away thinking I may build a banjolele now....I got most of the raw materials from Astons music,Stoke.

ken anderson...ne..1..3 string dept.

[Malcolm Fisher]

I have spoke shaves made in wood as well as medal. For Tim's use a round sole spoke shave would have done what he needed, but the draw knife obviously did what was needed.

Malcolm

[Tim Hooper]

Posted by Phil Green on 10/04/2020 22:11:28:

My Dad made four Mountain Dulcimers, this is the one he made for me:

DadsDulcimer2.mp3

Phil, that sounds amazing! Thank you for posting the clip.

All, I also found that the mystery tool was called a drawknife, so we're all agreed there then!

Ken, My own first build was also a 3-string CBG. I learned a lot - except how to actually play the damn thing! I just couldn't get on with the picking and slide work. So I had a rethink, and built another CBG - this time a 'conventional' 6 string guitar. Incidentally, most of my hardware comes from Ebay - although Chickenbone John has a thriving website of his own.

**LINK**

Here's a video of my 6-stringer in operation;

The Snake

Tim

[Tim Hooper]

Right-oh, we left the guitalele build with the neck getting fettled - fret slots cut, and ears added.

The fret markers are cut from the plastic stem of a cotton bud, and CA'd into drilled holes. This is my usual method.

Test-fitting the neck to the body, over a drawn centre line.

A couple of screws hold the neck for now. Dowels and glue to follow!

You can see how chronically askew the body is by the state of the heel block.

I'm pleased with the neck. It's the most daunting part of any build, but also the most satisfying!

[Geoff Copping]

Hi Tim,

I'm also a Ukulele/Banjolele player, Rocking Ukulele's of St Ives ( RUSTI's), that's St Ives Cambs not Cornwall.

We meet every Monday and do lots of gigs locally.

Interesting to see this thread, although I've just ordered a plan of a HP Victor to build my first scale model, I have also toyed with the idea of making my own Uke.

Unfortunately I live in a small first floor flat so machine tools are out of the question and I'd just joined my local Shed when the lockdown occurred.

I'm taking the time now to do an online Uke course to try to progress beyond first position strumming.

We use to take part in Uke workshops at the Acoustic Festival of Britain at Uttoxeter racecourse every June. we'd end up with about 50 people taking lessons throughout the weekend then do 3 or 4 numbers in a set on the main stage on the Sunday. Many of the people had never picked up a Uke, or anyother instrument before and I don't know of any other instrument that could be done with, apart from drums of course.

Look forward to seeing the finished guitalele.

Geoff

[Alex Ferguson 2]

Ukuleles, ukulele festivals, weekly gigs, Men's Shed - it could all be the other side of the world, this side. At the Rolleston Shed we had one member make an electric guitar. There was a session run last year making solid body electric ukuleles (8 of us including one from Nova Scotia) run by someone from the other end of the country. The weekly ukulele sessions are now run on Zoom.

Weekend ukulele "festivals", usually 3 a year in the South Island plus a folk festival at Easter. All except the ukulele one we had at the beginning of February are cancelled this year.

Small world.

We're all locked-down though what I use as a flying field, the local park, is two doors away and still usable. My workshop, one part of our 3 car garage, is still "open for use".