Ukestravaganza - Part Two

The weekend before last, while visiting my friend Isabel to practice the music for my sister's wedding (more on that later,) her gracious roommate's mother mentioned that she had for several years hung an heirloom ukulele on the wall. It was missing two pegs, strings, and had some pretty significant cracks, but I agreed to take it back to the shop and see what I could do.

I started by taking the top of the uke off to get a better idea of what all was going on in there.

This is a better photo of the inside of the "genuine conservatory quality ukulele." I don't know if there's someone out there making counterfeit ukuleles, or makers have some chips on their collective shoulders about making something so frivolous as a soprano uke, but but most ukuleles I've seen have all had the word "genuine" printed somewhere on the label. Go figure.

In this photo you can see the back brace (right of the label) only extends about halfway across the instrument. I ended up taking that broken brace off and replacing it with a new one.



These next two pictures mostly illustrate my nearly complete ineptitude at shop photography. You can't really see anything from this shot, but there are some pretty substantial cracks in the top running from the tailpiece through under the brace. As a result, the bracing had come almost completely free from being glued to the top.
I cleaned up the crack, pressed it back to shape, and glued everything that needed gluing on the top.





Again, sorry about the shoddy photography. This was my first time using a go-bar (even though it sounds like something you might buy from an infomercial, I haven't been able to find another name for this technique) to keep pressure on my newly shaped and glued back brace overnight.

Pop goes the Uke

My funky fresh gal pal Jacqui, with whom I happen to work, has talked me into documenting our attempts to become competent, failing perhaps complete virtuosic mastery, with god's instrument - the ukulele. Several months ago, I'd talked her into talking and smiling her way into inexpesive baritone ukulele ownership, based on a promise that I teach her everything I know about playing it. Things were going swimmingly until a few days ago, when her beloved uke "snap popped into dust." She let me know that she had finally found the limits of how cold a ukulele can get before it gives up. The neck blew off, the tension of the strings pitched it forward like a dinghy in an angry sea. Hearts were broken. Lower lips were gnawed. Fingers were crossed and recrossed.
Luckily, though, Jacqui and I work in a string instrument repair shop, so we are in with all the right people for a situation like this.
She figured that while she was regluing the neck, she might as well make some other adjustments as well. A bridge plate was added, the bridge was adjusted, the neck and fretboard reglued, and in a matter of hours, a bariuke was reborn.
Some photos of this magnificent operation are en route. I'll post them soon.