Sunday Sermon

I’ve not been very good about keeping this site up to date of late, so for 2013 I have decided to post religiously, every week. And to keep the religious theme, I’m going to call it the ‘Sunday Sermon‘! The religion,  of course, is the Ukulele!!

The tail end of 2012 got a little busy, not least because, for a while the bugs got into the staff (me) and I didn’t feel up to doing a lot at all. Fortunately, most of the jobs that had to be done got there, and those that didn’t weren’t a disaster. On the bench for the start of 2013 are Ben’s 8 string Tenor (is that a Taropatch?) and Andy’s Soprano while a third instrument, an experimental one, is also under construction, but more about that one in another sermon!

During 2013 we will be attending three Festivals, so we need to make some stock instruments. That will mean a first attempt at batch building. To date, every instrument has been built ‘one at a time’ but we are going to try them 5, yes five, at a time. That is not to say any less care will be taken over them, but all the machining operations will be carried out on all five at the same time rather than setting the machines for each and every operation. We are starting off this month with a batch of Walnut Tenors. If we can finish a batch of five instruments per month, and try not to sell too many of them, by the end of April we should have a reasonable stock of the four sizes of Ukulele.

That makes 8 instruments to complete by the end of January, although that doesn’t include a couple of repairs that need doing and the completion of an unfinished Diddlybow for a customer!

I’m going to be a busy boy!