Notes and Observations

Waterlox makes the curly koa binding on this model A3/c rosewood and spruce tenor pop too ! Its hanging next to my bench with two other tenors, ready for grain filling and spraying.

Here is another shot of a custom koa model A3 tenor after sealing and before finishing. Several coats of Waterlox were applied and allowed to dry for a day between coats. Its now ready for grain filling, finish sanding and spraying. This tenor will have a clear lacquer final finish. Check back in a few days for final photos.

1001 little details are finished and the 3 custom tenors I've been building are ready for finishing. The necks are carved, the fingerboards inlayed and fretted, the headstocks are inlayed and the first coats of Waterlox are on and dry. They're ready for grain filling, final sanding and spraying.

Here is a detail of a custom koa model A3 tenor with ebony binding. The ebony tends to frame the koa and accentuate the darker detailed lines running thru the wood. The koa has been sealed with Waterlox, a tung oil based sealant. Waterlox and koa are made for each other. Waterlox really warms up the color of koa and makes the curl jump !

Detail, back of 1st A3/c6 prototype.

For sure. Uvalde, west of San Antonio, hit 98 degrees today. Junction Texas hit 100. Austin hit 94 or 95 degrees. Check it out. Its going to get warm this year ! Speaking of hot, i've got 3 hot tenors coming out soon. Bridges are on, I need to fret 2 necks and carve 3 tomorrow, then its into finishing. Meanwhile, the Nunes trio is happening. There is nothing rushed about my ukuleles. Each one gets the attention it deserves.

Stay tuned !

I have 3 tenors moving thru the build process together, all nearly finished. Two are customs and one is a R&D piece. Here's a detail of the R&D tenor, an all koa model A3 12 fret cutaway 6 string. As usual with my 6 strings, the bridge and nut are set up so that you can string them up doubling any two of the C, E or A strings. This will be finished out with an ebony fingerboard and bridge, PegHeds™ and a tung oil and wax finish.

No, this treasure didn't wash up on the sandy beach in front of my tiki hut, but the ukulele looks like it could have come out of the rope bound chest of an early 20th century sailor on a Pacific schooner. A R&D experiment to see how a cutaway works in a Nunes style body with a regular scale 12 fret neck, this deep body all koa concert ukulele has a radiused ebony fingerboard with ivory markers, an ebony bridge, ebony nut, PegHed™ geared tuning pegs with ebony buttons, bone saddle, Honduras mahogany neck and body bindings and Worth clear strings with a Savarez 504R for the low G 4th. It's finished in a soft and natural looking tung oil and wax finish. It has a luscious, deep and clear singing voice.

Its on its way to its new owner in Hawaii tomorrow.

A cutaway concert gets its fingerboard.

The fingerboard is glued using a caul which applies pressure to both edges of the board while the hot hide glue dries. There is a very short working window when using hot hide glue so the board is first fitted and pinned before gluing. When using hot hide glue the last thing a builder wants to deal with is aligning the fingerboard or dealing with slipping from clamping pressure. After the board is dry and fretted, the neck is carved.

George and Greg's tenors are getting real close and showing great promise. What do i mean by 'great promise' ? Well there is a point in the build cycle where everything is assembled but the fingerboard and bridge and binding need done. I can tell a great deal about how an instrument will ultimately sound from the noises it makes during handling while i finish off the details. The slightest contact with the neck or headstock of the instrument causes the soundboard to come alive. A well made soundboard will have a neutral tap tone. A top that exhibits a pronounced resonance or ringing when tapped will likely have an uneven response when finished.

I also have a 6 string koa A3 tenor cutaway R&D piece almost ready for its back. And I have a very special trio of ukuleles coming together nicely !

Keeping busy ... over worked, under paid but i could be sitting in some windowless office in some company where only the managers get to have a coffee machine in their office wearing out my fingertips writing code instead so i'm ahead of the game !

Here are a few photos of a new 14 fret long scale concert ukulele in Indian rosewood and Swiss spruce. It features gold Waverly openback geared tuners with ebony buttons, a Spanish cedar neck with curly maple inlay, a radiused and bound ebony fingerboard with ivory position markers, curly koa binding, top purfling, a paua rosette and a bone nut and saddle. Its fitted with a Mi-Si Acoustic Trio battery free preamp and LR Baggs UST, Worth fluorocarbon strings and its finished in lacquer.

It has the sweetest tone !

Matching koa sets for a trio of ukuleles in the style of Leo Nunes.

Spring has been in full charge here in central Texas for a month now with an abundance and fecundity i haven't seen in some years. A cardinal has built a nest near the front door in the Jasmine vines growing over my porch and the little 'uns are expected any day now - a propitious sign indeed. The pecan trees and jasmine vines are amongst the late bloomers in this region. The pecan tree flowered a week ago and the first jasmine flower opened today. In a few days, the heady sweet smell of jasmine will be wafting down our street from thousands of little blossoms on our front porch and by the autumn i'll be walking the avenues again picking up pecans.

The resurgence and renewal of life that spring represents is on grand show right now. Life is acting like it knows its going to be blistering hot and dry in a few months and is making the best of the moment. Its sweet in Austin now !

I've been busy building and have some sweet 'uns almost done. Joel's A4v5 14fls concert is ready for spraying and should be finished later this week. George and Greg's tenors are about a week or so away from being ready to spray. I'm working on a trio of Nunes style instruments in koa and I have a 6 string koa/spruce tenor R&D project going too.

Stay tuned !

I've been asked by several people for a few more photos of the Nunes style tenor prototype i have for sale. The tenor is Honduras mahogany with a Honduras mahogany neck and body binding. The mahogany has a subtle pomelle figure. The fingerboard is ebony with ivory position markers and an ebony nut. The nut width is 38mm (1 1/2"). It has a tie style ebony bridge with a boxwood saddle and PegHed™ geared tuning pegs with ebony buttons. It is strung with Worth BM fluorocarbon strings, finished in a soft and natural looking tung oil and wax finish and it has a Mi-Si Acoustic Trio battery free preamp/Baggs UST installed. This is a standard scale 12 fret to the body tenor with a clear and sweet tone.

On and off, here and there, now and then i've been tinkering around with improving the photography in my builder's journal. There is, of course, quite a lot of skill and experience required to do good product photography and i'm a beginner so it's a continuous learning process for me. I recently acquired a Nikon D80 with an inexpensive kit lens, the AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G VR DX. Interestingly, this lens is rated more highly than the more expensive Nikon 18-70 or 18-200 kit lenses by Ken Rockwell.

Below is a shot of a Leo Nunes style tenor prototype in Honduras mahogany that i built a while ago and have kept around to do some top tuning and investigate the dynamics of this body style. Its has peghed™ geared tuning pegs, a Mi-Si acoustic trio battery free preamp/L.R. Baggs UST, an ebony fingerboard with ivory markers, and an ebony tie style bridge. I used some funky dashed purfling on the body and the rosette that i probably won't use again. The instrument is finished in a soft and natural tung oil and wax finish. It sounds very pretty, with a sweet and singing voice. The Worth medium brown strings give it a nice warm and clear sound. Its a nice player.

This shot was taken with the tenor in my improvised foam core lightbox, lit with 2 100W-equivalent 5000K compact fluorescents mounted in Lowes clip-on reflectors. You can see the setup in the last note. As i become more familiar with the D80 and the lighting setup, i'll start linking bigger pictures or galleries to smaller photos placed in-line in the journal notes. I'm also going to try to produce a limited series of small posters of ukuleles by the well known builders of the first half of the last century. Stay tuned !

Below are two more photos of my new 6 string koa M. Nunes style soprano shot with a custom white balance and the same lighting setup as the photos in the two previous journal notes. I think the colors look more realistic on my monitor and are a big improvement. I've also scaled them to 20% so i can fit two side by side in my journal format on a laptop screen. Again, i bracketed by 1/3 fstop around +0 but found +0 to be the best. To the right you can see my improvised home made foam core light box and lighting setup.

Next, I'm going to experiment with a third light mounted low on the box and my white cloth diffusers to see if i can bring out a bit more detail and soften up the shadows some more. For example, the back of the headstock in the photo below on the right is a little dark because its in a shadow. A bottom light should fix that.

I'm also going to look around for a good used digital SLR. The F30 is very handy but it would be nice to have manual focusing, a lens choice and a few other features ... so back to the internet digital SLR camera research. Digital Photography Review is a good resource.

By the way, I made that hand beaten and rolled silver stiletto flower vase back in my old silversmithing days. Some things move forward with us as we go thru life, some things remain behind. This one will probably survive me !

I'm playing around with my new home made light box today trying to find a good lighting/framing/exposure combination that renders colors and detail accurately, with minimal shadow distractions. Here's a shot of my new 6 string koa soprano.

The white balance on the camera has now been set to daylight fluorescent. The scene is shot with two 27watt 5000K bulbs in inexpensive Lowe's clipon reflectors mounted at the top of the box, one each side. The colors on my monitor are more accurate, but there is now a slight red tint to the background. I tried 4 shots, bracketing the exposure by 1/3 fstop each time. The best one IMO was this +0. Next i'm going to try a custom white balance, then my white rag diffusers.