Calling All luthiers

[Andrew Gibson]

Edit... Luthiers. I mean Luthiers... For some reason spell check changed it.

I have wanted to learn to make Instruments for a while. Violins, Guitars, Mandolins, you name it I would like to learn to make them.

I took Piano lessons as a kid, and guitar lessons as a teenager. I never really was dedicated to it, however I love the Instruments.

First I want to make a Ukulele. I don't know why, I think It would be a relatively easy instrument to learn to play. Its' also small and would be easy to tote along to places like the beach.

So to the point, are there any good books out there that would help me learn to make a Ukulele? I have done a couple quick searches on google but have not found what I am looking for.

The thought crossed my mind to get a cheep ukuleles and reverse engineer it, but I think I would learn a lot more from a good book.

so if anyone knows a good book, I would love to hear of it.

[Wes Grass]

Luthiers Mercantile sells plans for a variety of sizes.

[Bill Houghton]

you can find their website at http://www.lmii.com/ This is one of the two local-to-me stores (Mt. Storm Forest Products, http://www.mountstorm.com/, being the other) that I've been meaning to visit for years but never taken the time.

Of course, if you really want to do it right, you can come to California's finest wine country for a weekend and go home with all the books, wood, and specialty tools you might need, resulting in a fine, inexpensive first project.

Bill, doing my best for the tourism board

[john brenton]

Google "ostberg torres" and you'll find Neil Ostbergs neander guitar build from timber to finish...its an awesome resource.

[Sam Takeuchi]

If you haven't done any musical instrument making, you might have easier and more fun time building an ukulele kit first. Stewart-McDonald offers a reasonably priced one ready to assemble. One of the things about musical instrument making is that there are some tools that are not in every woodworkers' arsenal, most notably bending iron or side bending jig. If you use bending iron to bend sides, it can be very difficult at first, you may even split sides if not careful or done right. It's a skill of its own. Side bending jig can be built with relative ease, but personally I don't think side bending jig will really teach you much skill in side bending. It's a good jig for production environment where cleaner and faster side bending is required, but that's about it. If you want to buy one, LMI sells complete set, or if you want to build one, they also sell plan, heating blanket and timer (really pricey though). Electric bending iron is about $180. If you want to go DYI, you can make one with steel pipe and gas torch, OR get a piece of round or oval iron rod and stick them into fire until it's hot, clamp it upright and you are good to go. Either way, prepare to get burned.

Another VERY handy thing is, get a fret template. Fret slot have to be cut very accurately, otherwise your uke, guitar or any other fretted instruments will play out of pitch when fretted. You can use a ruler, but I don't recommend it. It's tedious and prone to error. Template runs about $35 to $40 depending on where you get it from.

You should get a thickness caliper. They can be pricey, but it's a must tool. 9" throat one is widely available for about $100 to $150.

I don't recommend trying to take cheap uke apart. Most likely they don't come apart cleanly no matter what you do. I suspect cheap ones are probably epoxied or some ungodly glue used for assembly. So forget that. If you want to try, you can use heat and steam to see if they'll come apart. You can use cloth iron if you don't have a dedicated iron or heating blanket for that task.

The rest, I can't really think of any specialized tools. Maybe having a dozen or so spool clamps would come in handy when gluing back, or if you are using a workboard to build uke or guitar, you can use twine or thick rubber band (the kind people use for the back of the truck).

As far as book goes, I don't know. Hence I recommend a kit. Kit comes with most vital part already done for you, like side bending, fret slot cut, so on. At least you won't have to invest hundreds of dollars into specialized tools when you don't know if you want to keep building musical instruments.

Edit: I forgot to mention, you need a circle cutter. You can use one attached to drill press, buy one from one of those suppliers or make one yourself. Also you need a gramil that can score and cut curve. Used for basically everything, from marking to scoring binding channel. You chisel out the rest. If you have a laminate trimmer or router, you can either go with straight bit and guide, or buy bit/beating kit that cut pre determined width. If it wasn't for the noise, I'd use router and bit for this task. Oh, you can use laminate trimmer and router for rosette channel or cutting soundhole as well instead of circle cutter.

[Bill Houghton]

Edit... Luthiers. I mean Luthiers... For some reason spell check changed it.


I will say, I was wondering if this was going to be a thread on religion when I read the title. Most spell check programs don't get out often, and know very very little about the world, especially the interesting byways.

[Doug Shepard]

I just picked up an excellent book by Michael Collins on Building a Selmer Maccaferri Guitar (Django Reinhardt type guitar). Much more detailed than a lot of the other guitar making books I've read. I would think you could use a guitar making book and adapt it to scale things down for a ukelele fairly easily. I'd also spend some time searching out uke threads on the MIMF or luthierforum.com and asking questions there. I've always wanted to build a couple of guitars (and a H5 mandola) and may take the first plunge with one of the Maccaferri types. Good luck.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Bracing is totally different between the two instruments that it can't be just scaled down and expect to work. Uke has much smaller soundboard as well as volume of air it can move in its box, also much lesser string tension, everything has to be designed according to uke specific characteristics in order to produce basic good sound. At this point, when someone is just getting his feet wet in musical instrument making, messing with braces of different musical instrument to work in uke is more than too much I think.

[george wilson]

Personnaly,I don't care for the Django type guitars,though I love Django. The guitars are loud,harsh,and with hardly any sustain. They are good for playing quick notes like Django did,but I prefer less harshness and better sustain. Anyone building that type guitar as a first instrument needs to go find a Selmer copy and try it first.

[Andrae Covington]

If you haven't done any musical instrument making, you might have easier and more fun time building an ukulele kit first...

After New Yankee stopped doing new shows, OPB (PBS) picked up a woodworking program called American Woodshop with Scott Phillips... as I understand it has been on for years, just not here. I'm not crazy about the show, but one time he built a guitar from a kit. I was amazed how much work there was to do despite having a thorough kit of parts to start with! So although I have never built a musical instrument either, I would also recommend this approach for a first time.

My grandfather built a couple dulcimers years ago. The first one I think he made out of whatever scraps he could find. It actually worked, but the second one he built from a kit and it looks and sounds a lot nicer.

[Doug Shepard]

Personnaly,I don't care for the Django type guitars,though I love Django. The guitars are loud,harsh,and with hardly any sustain. They are good for playing quick notes like Django did,but I prefer less harshness and better sustain. Anyone building that type guitar as a first instrument needs to go find a Selmer copy and try it first.

George
I realize that the Selmer types are sort of a one-trick-pony and probably not something I would spend money on to buy. But building one still has some appeal for me. I would get the woodworking challenge of building an instrument and end up with a instrument at the end that I otherwise wouldn't have.


Bracing is totally different between the two instruments that it can't be just scaled down and expect to work. Uke has much smaller soundboard as well as volume of air it can move in its box, also much lesser string tension, everything has to be designed according to uke specific characteristics in order to produce basic good sound. At this point, when someone is just getting his feet wet in musical instrument making, messing with braces of different musical instrument to work in uke is more than too much I think.

Sam
I wasn't suggestying that he simply scale guitar plans down to uke size. He would obviously need some decent uke plans to start with. But any book on guitar making that I've seen has a lot of steps required to build forms, jigs, etc. All that could be scaled down to the uke plan sizes. Plus most of the other construction techniques and methods would directly transfer to a uke build. If there aren't uke specific build books available, one of the guitar making books seems to me like the best way to go.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Construction process is very similar, so in that respect, scaling down workboard and mold/form would certainly work.

LMI, Amazon, Stewart-McDonald carry an ukulele building book called "Ukulele Design and Construction" by D. Henry Wickham. I don't know if it's good, but I don't see much else. It should be enough to get your first ukulele built I assume.

[Andrew Gibson]

Thanks everyone for all the help. I just happened to be in a Barnes & Nobel last night and decided to ask one of the people there if the had anything on guitar making... The girl looked at me like, people make things? They didn't have anything.

Part of the appeal for me I think would be lost with a pre formed kit. I guess it's not so much the end result that is important, but rather the journey and knowing that I started from scratch.

[Karl Wicklund]

If you google Musical Instrument Makers Forum you will find a trove of great info. In many ways, it's the musical equivalent of SawmillCreek.

[george wilson]

You still didn't get it right. Should be "luthiers",not the possessive "luthier's" :)

[Bruce Page]

Yeah, I wondered about that...:o
Fixed it.

[John Coloccia]

My suggestion would be to build a cigar box ukulele. You'll be able to make a neck, learn about making bridges, fretwork, etc etc etc. IMHO, that's enough to worry about on a first build. From there, you can decide if you want to get further into it. Once you get into the body, now you have to worry about all sorts of things like molds, bending irons, binding channels, etc.

You won't need any special tools at all for neck building other than a way to cut frets slots. Other than that, you could practically whittle a neck with a pocket knife if you wanted to, use a cnc mill, or anywhere in between depending on your tastes, abilities and available tools.

[Sam Takeuchi]

As for guitar making books, Roy Courtnall's "Making Master Guitars" has very good section introducing readers to several of world's most renowned luthiers' guitars, plans, excerpts from interviews as well as detailed explanations. And very thorough step by step instruction on how to make a classical guitar. I think as far as guitar making book goes, it is the most interesting one. Even without guitar making section, reading about world's premier luthiers and their guitars are great. Though it has questionable moments, like the book instructs reader to cut fret slots in an rather awkward way.

Another good book which brings different insight into guitar making is William R. Cumpiano's "Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology". It provides detailed step by step instruction on guitar making, but also gives good explanation on historical and traditional method (but it doesn't give instruction on traditional method, like how to make V-joint, it just explained what it is). While majority of guitar making is explained using hand tools, it also gives alternative methods using power tools on some sections. Interestingly, Cumpiano himself says some methods explained in the book he no longer employ, but that doesn't mean methods were wrong. This book covers classical and steel string acoustic guitar making.

There are bunch more books on guitar making, but I think these two books are probably the most comprehensive and complete instructions for beginners. One thing to note is that Courtnall book gives measurements in metric while Cumpiano gives measurement in imperial. Having both do compliment each other pretty well.