A Bird's-eye Maple tenor ukulele
Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 5:03 pm
These are photographs of the last of six ukuleles that I've recently built.
This ukulele is made of two separate forms of Maple - Bird's-eye for the back and sides, and and figured Maple for the neck. I know that Bird's-eye Maple used to be popular in the 1970's for things like head-boards on beds, or other furniture, and so now has certain associations with kitch - but I've always liked how it looks.
I made the back some time ago, and inlaid it with mother-of-pearl purfling, thinking to do more elsewhere; but I ran out of puff, and decided not to continue with this on the soundboard. So, my homage to MOP resides on the front of the instrument, in the form of bridge-pins with MOP dots!
Other features include:
Some form of spruce soundboard (fairly prominent grain = ?)
Casuarina fingerboard (and in the bridge);
Blackwood bindings, headplate and back-strip, and in the bridge;
Ebony, brass (to match the tuners) and MOP bridge-pins;
I tried a different design of headstock, for the sake of variety;
Finished with Rustins Danish Oil.
That's it! Six instruments posted.
If you have any comments, suggestions and the like, I'll be very happy to hear them.
Frank.
This ukulele is made of two separate forms of Maple - Bird's-eye for the back and sides, and and figured Maple for the neck. I know that Bird's-eye Maple used to be popular in the 1970's for things like head-boards on beds, or other furniture, and so now has certain associations with kitch - but I've always liked how it looks.
I made the back some time ago, and inlaid it with mother-of-pearl purfling, thinking to do more elsewhere; but I ran out of puff, and decided not to continue with this on the soundboard. So, my homage to MOP resides on the front of the instrument, in the form of bridge-pins with MOP dots!
Other features include:
Some form of spruce soundboard (fairly prominent grain = ?)
Casuarina fingerboard (and in the bridge);
Blackwood bindings, headplate and back-strip, and in the bridge;
Ebony, brass (to match the tuners) and MOP bridge-pins;
I tried a different design of headstock, for the sake of variety;
Finished with Rustins Danish Oil.
That's it! Six instruments posted.
If you have any comments, suggestions and the like, I'll be very happy to hear them.
Frank.