It’s been a while since I posted any progress on my Sharkfin Ukulele build. That’s because I haven’t done a great deal with it. I’ve been waiting for parts and busying myself in other ways. Now it’s starting to get cold, I’m going to find it increasingly hard to motivate myself. Will this be a mad rush to beat the snow?

Danger! Electric Uke!

When I last posted, I’d knocked together a Mark 1 of the pattern and speculated that the tuning pegs would be key to getting everything sweet. How right I was!

I really wanted to get some planetary gear tuning pegs because I just love the idea of them, but due to cost I settled for these Grover ones instead. They’re friction tuning pegs. The pack I got was marketed as Champion Banjo pegs (25B Nickel) and they weren’t cheap. I also ordered some far cheaper “plan b” backups at the same time.

Well look here! The Grovers are too big for my pattern! Rather than to make a bigger uke… I reverted to my backup tuning pegs…

This is a picture of a cheap peg I had shipped over from Hong Kong. It’s still going to be an absolute nightmare to fit, but you can see that it fits the pattern a lot better than the Grovers. Check out ebay, and I’m sure you’ll find them on there.

One thing that really frustrated me in picking my tuners was the lack of measurements on the internet. So, in the interests of helping out anyone who might be on the same kick as me… here are the measurements for the cheapo Hong Kong tuning pegs.

Having convinced myself that I had the tuners right, I did some further work on the pattern. I redid the frets and added a sharkfin embellishment at the bottom of the fretboard. Yes, I really can’t help myself ! 🙂 This picture shows the Mark 2

This picture is a bit grainy, but it shows the Mark 2 pattern a bit better. The scale length is 347mm with 12 frets which is exactly the same as my Barnes & Mullins Bowley soprano uke.

And here are the paper templates I’ll use to cut the body and fretboard to size.

I’m not sure of my next steps. Most likely it’ll be to tackle the templates and get stuck into the body shaping. Watch this space!