Builder

My son’s birthday is next month. As he is rather enamored with music and sound making, we bought him a ukulele for Christmas. It seemed like a good idea to buy one that we had to put together (thus adding some love to it) rather than an already assembled, generic ukulele. When said ukulele arrived we were admittedly a bit stunned to discover the amount of work entailed, which includes staining, sanding, assembling the neck and bridge, mounting tuners, etc. With two days until Christmas, this was seemingly impossible. Of course had he been older, I would have been out in the single digit temperature garage, working into the wee hours of the night. Fortunately, we had the luxury of postponing this gift given that the entirety of Christmas is at this point little more to him than any other day when we sit around the house and play. Perhaps we can always keep it as such.

So with warmer temperatures (low 30’s) out to the garage I go to put the thing together. I figured I’d document the process as I’ve often thought about building guitars and this is, well a first step. Maybe this is unknowingly sending me down a new path. I am somewhat excited about this endeavor.

I know that all of this work will quite possibly end up a pile of smashed rubble on the floor, but that too has validity. Perhaps that is the real exercise. You should see the instructions.

Posted by jeff pitcher at January 19, 2010 02:07 PM

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