Post #332889 by Tahitiki on Sun, Sep 16, 2007 9:14 PM

After going to Tahiti about 5 years ago I always regretted that I didn't buy a Tahitian Ukulele. So I decided to build my own.
It's just a first try, I never made an instrument from scratch before.
So, I purposely choose really cheap material so if I messed up, the cost of trying would be really low.
I found a board out of a construction site by my house, my wife call this knotty pine. It's knotty alright.
Anyway, that will keep the cost really low cause it's free.

I traced my design on the board trying to make it so no knot would be on the neck - pretty hard

I cut the outline with a jigsaw.

and I reduced the size of the neck.

I used my carving chisels to create the sound hole.

I thinned out the head and carved the sides (I don't have much power tool), then I cut a circle out of a thin piece of plywood from the lumberyard

and sand it so it would match the sound hole

I glued the circle board and stained it.
Added the frets and drilled the holes for the tuner (a real mess, the wood is so soft I mess up most of the holes and I had to fill them up with wood putty, a pretty sad experience)

this is where I'm out so far, I will post some more images soon.