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This is a tenor uke I built for Todd, my friend of ~45 years. Back in the late 60's Todd bought a '64 D-28 for all of $350. Since he didn't play guitar, he "lent" it to me, until I bought it from him a few years ago (he needed some cash to buy his son a 000-28EC). That D-28 was a constant through the twists and turns of my life, and I was always grateful for Todd's generosity. He still doesn't play guitar, but he does play the uke. So I built him this uke as a thank-you and as interest on the loan. I will deliver it to him out in California in the near future, which is a more suitable place for it, since hukilau's seem to be in short supply here in flyover country.

The particulars: Coco back and side set, Sitka top, and neck wood all from the good folks at RC Tonewoods. Ebony and koa appointments from LMI. I cut the tomo kanji (which means "friend") by hand, and was reasonably pleased with how my first foray into cutting shell turned out. The plan was from Hana Lima 'Ia (with some modifications), as were the Gotoh tuners. The finish is EM6000. As best I can tell, it sounds like a ukulele.

Thanks for looking.

John

Extremely nice John. I haven't seen that much traditional guitar woods used on Ukes but the came out really, really nice. I have friends who just picked up a couple of Ukes and they're having a blast and I was thinking about making them a couple. Did you build from plans?

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Thank You and Best To All

Lucky friend - nice one!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Nice work.

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Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com

Beautiful John.
I especially like the fretboard binding.
Great story as well. I'm sure your buddy will be speechless.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Beautiful work ! I hope its not your Last !

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
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The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
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Great looking uke!

Very nice!

Beautiful!

Beautiful job. Your friend will be a happy guy.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Very nice uke, and an even better story.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Beautiful uke. Two questions:

1. Did you go with the Spanish style neck joint per Hana Lima Ia plans or did you change that?
2. Where did you get the case? I'm needing a baritone size soon.
Again, just beautiful, love it!

Thanks for the nice comments.

Larry-- the basic plan I used was from Hana Lima 'Ia, with some modifications. They are a good resource for uke-related things.

Rusty-- a major modification was that I did not use the Spanish neck, but created a flush-fitted bolt on neck joint instead. The small sound hole made the bolt-on step a bit tedious.

Building a uke is really not much less work than building a guitar, but was a lot of fun.

John

Oh, and I bought the case from Elderly Instruments (~$75).