I’m back with another installment in my story about what it takes to build an electric ukulele. Pretty much all the fiddly stuff is done. In my last update I talked about wiring up the electrics. Daniel Hulbert has suggested that I check that it works before I go too much further. Thanks Daniel… I will do that soon… I promise! Not before I’ve painted the body though! Ha ha! Catch me if you can!
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In search of inspiration… |
I wasn’t looking forwards to the wiring, and I haven’t been looking forwards to the painting. I’ve done a bit of this before and the results were poor. Granted some of this was simply down to a lack of patience but I knew this time that I needed help. I hit Google+ hard and before I knew it the advice was flowing in thick and fast. Many thanks specifically to Gavin Scully and Jonathan Martin for your words of wisdom. I couldn’t have done this without you guys! But before we start high-fiving let me reveal that this hasn’t all gone according to plan. Let me explain…
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I knew that I needed to prime the wood and this is the primer that I used. It’s a ‘high build’ primer and should have done the job, but for various reasons that I shall talk about soon, it didn’t… |
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When I painted my guitar I didn’t have the brains to consider hanging it up like this. It just never occurred to me and I obviously didn’t do too much Googling at the time. Interestingly, I think that the first Fender strats were painted resting flat on the points of three nails. This time I hung up the body using a length of wire from an old coat-hanger. It’s definitely the way to go. |
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I filled all the bits of wood that I was unhappy with. Unlike a previous round of filling I did earlier in the project, this time I used white filler. See… I can learn! Then I sanded the body down using the technique taught to me by Eric Vossbrink at New Wave Ukulele. I sanded with ever finer grit emery paper until I had a body that was smooth to the touch… all over. I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. It was AWOL at Uke Army that put it best: “sand till sweet and reprime, paint isn’t how you cover blemishes.” The lesson I learnt here was to try keep the quality up at every stage of the build. |
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Next up was the top coat. Here’s the paint I’ve used for this. I decided a long time ago to go for a bright red. It doesn’t get much brighter than this! |
A lot done and more yet to do. I will sand this down smooth and hopefully, providing I’m not too rough with it, it will then be time to lacquer the body and neck. That’s my next post. Watch this space!
Comments welcome…