Welcome to the next part in the story of my adventures in Electric Ukulele Land. I’ve been busy. 

Do not fear the Router!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m currently making an Electric Ukulele. In this post I’m finally talking about shaping the neck. Previously I’ve dreamt, worried, planned, got sidetracked, annoyed, designed and shaped the body. I also took the time to record a Flight of the Conchords song… but that’s something else entirely.

You may recall that this particular part of the build is the bit that was giving me nightmares. And to be honest… it still is! But I am pleased to say that I am making progress and I haven’t made any mistakes so far that have been fatal (that I know of). Let’s begin..

Here’s what I started out with… some dusty old maple blocks.  I had a lot of problems sourcing maple. There was a point where I was going to get some shipped over from the  US, but I persevered and finally came across this bundle. By my reckoning I’ve got enough left over to make about 600 necks!

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I took my mdf template, traced an outline on the block and cut close, but not up to the line with my jig saw. I did this on purpose knowing full well that the jig saw wouldn’t cut perpendicular. The only thing I discovered here was how hard maple is! I had to fight the jig round and was reminded of how out of shape I am… very out of shape…

The block was way too thick for what I needed so I took a rusty old saw to it to take off as much as I dared. That took a while! Then using a rasp I brought it down to the depth I was looking for. All this was done by hand and whilst hard work, I enjoyed myself doing it. I guess I needed time to steel myself for picking up the router again, but don’t worry, I’ll be talking about that soon.

Here’s a picture of the unfinished neck squeezed into the body. Whilst there is science behind my design regarding the dimensions, I’m finding that I’m measuring twice and double-checking that things are going the way I want them. I’m trying to stick as closely to my original plan as I can, but I remain very wary of the King Uke-factor creeping in…

Check out the jig I’ve set up here to allow me to mill the neck flat on the back and the head flat on the front. I did this using my router and a wide flat-bottomed straight plunge bit. The tricks here were to ensure that the base of the jig was as flat as I could get it and that the jig ‘walls’ were straight and close enough together such that the router didn’t fall off it. Yeah, you guessed it, my router fell off. Everything’s fine here… move along… move along…

I shaped the neck using various rasps and files. The profile dimensions are close those of my Arbor Strat but I have allowed myself to tweak this to try and get a good shape for my hand. I like to use my thumb to fret the top string, so I was keen to make sure that the neck would allow me to do this, but to be fair, it mainly boiled down to simply making sure that I didn’t make the neck too deep.

Here’s an fantastic lesson I learnt. See the scratches in the wood above. I’d got the point where I was wondering if I’d ever get rid of them; Everything I did seemed to introduce more. Luckily for me, Eric at New Wave Ukulele was on hand with some expert guidance. His advice was to “take a piece of cloth backed 60 grit and make a 2 inch wide strip. then sand it as if you were polishing a shoe… if you have ever polished a shoe before. work your way thru 60-80-100-120-150 at 120 start sanding with the grain rather than across… then and only then will you remove the marks from your rasp.” I followed Eric’s advice almost to the T and it works! Thank you Eric!

At the same time as working on the neck I was also worrying about the fretboard. My concerns here weren’t just about shaping it, but more whether  I wanted a fretboard as dark as this. I’ve taken the plunge and committed. We shall see! Using similar techniques to the main neck, I cut this to size and milled flat. The difference here was that I flattened one side by hand first before milling the other. This blank is ebony and I really wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to shape. Actually, although a hard wood, this was easy to route. I think the problem I’m going to have with this wood is that it is prone to chipping and I’m pretty ham-fisted.

This is slightly out of chronological order, but here you can see the rough cut fretboard placed on top of the neck. I still haven’t worked the surface but I’m expecting to smooth and round ever so slightly before fitting frets. I’m having nightmares about frets at the moment! A problem for another day!

I finish with a bit of controversy. The question is: do you fit the frets before gluing the fretboard to the neck or afterwards? The jury is hung. I can see the pros and cons to both approaches and on balance for this build I’ve elected to glue the fretboard first. The main reason for this is that I’m not confident that I’m skillful enough to shape them independently and for it to come together seamlessly. Also, since I’ve made the neck head the same depth as the heel I figure that it will be no harder to work on the fretboard glued as it would be unglued. One thing’s for sure – I’m going to find out the hard way!

And that’s it for the moment. I should be able to remove the clamps today and figure out my next steps. I have been working on the body some more, but I’m waiting for the pots to arrive from Hong Kong before I commit to cutting the cavity. Expect another post on the body. And of course there is the horror of fitting the frets to come. I am sooooo not looking forward to this bit. Expect a part 2 neck post to cover that. How fun is this!