The House of Irony / Crafts

I have a custom built electric baritone ukulele. I documented the construction process and am glad I did for sentimental reasons. What surprised me was the amount of interest from others in the creation of the instrument. I am now considering a custom acoustic ukulele, and plan to document the creation so all of you, my international friends may join me on the journey.

Part 1: Materials

Before you sketch a design, determine measurements or anything at all – you have to consider the trees. Classically ukuleles have been made of all Koa or Mahogany, both having similar “mellow” tonal properties. I am a huge fan of Mahogany as a tone wood and used it for the neck and body wood of my electric. It is the same wood as the Gibson sg – and that my friend … is the sound of Sabbath. Without reservation I quickly choose Mahogany as the neck back and side wood for the ukulele, it is time tested and as I mentioned a favorite of mine.

The area of contention for me at this stage is the top wood. Mahogany will sound fine, but a cedar or spruce top wood will have more projection, more treble and a livelier sound. I want to avoid too much treble, but cedar/spruce as a top wood has been used on acoustic instruments for quite some time and with great success. This decision has not yet been made and it is one that I continue to wrestle with.

Other materials will include rosewood for the bridge and fretboard. Rosewood is a strong, warm sounding wood, and is perfect for the lullabies created by the acoustic uke. The nut will be ebony, I prefer ebony to bone because of the “roundness” it gives open string playing – in the saddle we will however place the bone of an immoral vulture.

That is all for today’s installment, stay tuned for Part 2 – Doodling the Design.

I was on a used book shopping spree with Kevin and Steve and stumbled across a gem on the dusty shelves of the craft section called Happy Origami by Tatsuo Miyawaka:

It was published in Japan in 1964, and not only is there a folding diagram showing you how to properly make each origami animal, there’s also a completed animal glued on the next page for you to remove and inspect if you so desire. Here’s an example, kids in animal hats at the disco:

Its charm is unbelievable! Each one of completed origami is actually in a two colour printed scene—It’s like every page is a little work of art!

You can see all the pages, (plus two other Tatsuo Miywaka books) on this Elementary School website.