Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

The Fretboard Journal has a Bucket List for guitarists which I got a good giggle out of. Surprised at how many of the things I could tick off already, but still plenty left. Some of the stuff is (naturally) a little US-centric, but plenty in there for everybody. http://www.fretboardjournal.com/featu...

Tim, have you discovered a better glue for using with Ancient Kauri? Or a better technique (apart from just being more careful ) ?

Thanks for posting those Mike. I think they look pretty good and I'm happy to hear that the quality is up to scratch. Your headstock looks pretty good too :-) The photos of the Gallatos put me off a little; they look more grubby than pre-aged to me, and it's easy to tarnish metal if you want to anyw...

Brilliant bit of sleuthing there Mike. Very curious to hear what you think of the quality. Have you ever actually had any of the other available brands in your hands e.g. DM, JWC, Gallato ? Would be interested in an informed comparison.

Brilliant information Allen, thanks for that. My next one's going to be so much better :-) Despite the bracing of the current one(s), I have been very pleasantly surprised by the tone out of the top when tapping it - it sounds like a tightly stretched skin on a drum with a well defined pitch and has...

Allen, this is great stuff and exactly why I post on this forum. Please be as critical as you like as this is a fantastic learning resource for me ;-) These will be the first 2 instruments I'll have actually finished so I'm under no illusions as to their quality (especially when I look at things lik...

ProfChris, thanks for your feedback and yes, I would agree that the bracing seems a little too chunky to my untrained eye also. We have basically been roughly following the plans from http://www.wsukes.com/plans.html and although we have deviated in some ways we kept the bracing to the dimensions li...

The top was braced with some cedar blagged from our neighbour who was given it as firewood by another neighbour involved in building Lockwood homes. 8) http://morganpyne.com/img/ukulele_build/bracing_the_top.jpg The bracing was glued on in a vacuum press. Here it is after it's been glued up and the ...

The sides were also bent on the same iron as the purfling/rosette. We were inexperienced and had a few small cracks (including some strange ones along the grain), but nothing some aliphatic gorilla glue and sanding couldn't sort out. We then joined the sides to the butt and heel blocks, fixed them i...

We wanted a simple and elegant rosette, and settled on a simple black-white-black. We achieved this by taking a piece of black-white-black-white purfling, sanding one of the white layers off, and bending it on an iron. Routing the rosette channel: http://morganpyne.com/img/ukulele_build/routing_rose...

Joining the tops: http://morganpyne.com/img/ukulele_build/joining_top.jpg Figuring out how to make kerfing and what shapes to use: http://morganpyne.com/img/ukulele_build/kerfing_shape_experiments.jpg Testing out our first piece of kerfing. As somebody once said - "If it bends, it's funny. If it bre...

Today I'm a little sad as I just put my brother back on a plane to his home in Berlin, after spending a great and all-too-rare few weeks together with him here in NZ. One of the few drawbacks to living in beautiful New Zealand as a foreigner is the distance from your family. Originally I had planned...

The Atlantic and the Big Picture (Boston.com) both have some amazing photos:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011 ... ir/100016/

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/0 ... quake.html

Yaaah! Nice to hear from you Nick. You have a lot of fans here who were worried. Glad to hear you all got out ok. Going to be a lot harder recovery after this one it seems.

The severity of this earthquake is just emerging. There was significantly worse damage than the previous one, despite the lesser magnitude. There have been deaths. There are a lot of serious injuries. Many buildings have collapsed. For those of you unable to see the coverage on TV3, I can tell you i...

6.3 magnitude http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3468575g.html The NZ Herald site is unreachable at the time of writing this, but Stuff has some info: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4688231/Large-quake-strikes-Christchurch It seems there is some serious damage. Some very scary footage on TV3 right n...

You beat me to it. Another great Irish guitarist gone (I miss Rory Gallagher too). Spent many a teenage hour blasting out the 'Boys are Back in Town' harmony solo with a friend. Even managed to convince a local priest that Parisienne walkways was a religious song :lol: and got to play it during the ...

This kid (Keenan Cahill) became internet famous last year. Here he is again singing "Down on Me" by 50 Cent (who shows up for a guest appearance)


youtu.be/

You might be on to something there Puff; the prices quoted on allparts.com for the nickel version are $130.00 USD (and I think that's only for 3). Really big ouch. And still possibly cheaper than some alternatives. Really wish I had some metal-working skills, would love to just make my own - the pla...

Anyone out there building Selmer guitars has probably already found out that getting the original style closed tuners is an expensive and frustrating business, limited to a few options. I just noticed recently that Schaller have gotten into the game too: http://guitar-machine-heads.com/hp305244/Clas...

Thank you Robbie, very informative and beautifully presented as usual. I have a quick question regarding the placement of the transducers - you mention in the video that you have built jigs for easy placement of them into the positions that you had determined to be optimal for your guitar. I was won...

Very cool 7 1/2 minutes video tour of the factory.


youtu.be/

Tasty stuff Nick. Whatever you are charging for these you should double it.

Ah yep, Puff looking at the pics you're probably right (it's me who is confused :oops: ) I read "carbon neck reinforcement" as the caption and didn't think that truss rods were made from carbon fibre so assumed it was just a some reinforcement embedded in the neck, similar to the original designs. H...

Interesting that you chose to get the logo laser cut into the headstock. The original was carved with a pantograph tracing a larger metal template I believe. I was trying to figure out what would be the best alternative since that is not really an option for me. I was thinking of getting my logo mad...