Local Timber is more appropriate

Trips to the hospital, for three separate tests, at three different hospital on three consecutive days have occupied a fair amount of this week, along with a fair amount of mileage! They have covered QEQM at Margate, William Harvey at Ashford and the K&C at Canterbury, so the way things are going I’ll probably end up seeing a consultant in Maidstone for the results!

For environmentalist, there has been good news coming out of the CITES convention being held in Bangkok regarding such things as sharks and Rhinos, but no news yet on the ‘Instrument Passports’ that are being proposed at the meeting. We have a few bits of ‘exotic’ timber knocking around the workshop, and over the next few weeks we will probably use these up on some ‘exotic build’ instruments so as not to fall foul of either CITES or the new EUTR regulations that came into force last week. These are, as mentioned last week, not retrospective, and any timber already in stock at 3rd March 2013, is not affected. If we build some instruments from it now, along with ‘passports’ that state the timber was in stock as of last week, then there shouldn’t be any future problems.

They include some Zebrano, an amount of Rosewood and a little African Mahogany so if any of you are interested in instruments from these timbers, let us know now!

Some important legislation comes into force this week, namely The EU Timber Regulations aimed at reducing the trade in illegally logged timber, estimated by Interpol as 30% of the World’s timber trade. European suppliers of timber and wood products are now required to keep records of the sources of their timber.

Although this doesn’t directly affect us, as we don’t use imported timber very often, it will probably mean that the price of keeping track of where each plank comes from will be passed on to the consumer. From ukulele builders who get their timber from conventional sources, that will mean their customers, possibly you! Fortunately, if you are one of our lucky customers, it won’t affect you because all of our instruments are built from the timber grown on the Quex Estate.

Meanwhile, some 178 countries are this week convening to discuss the CITES agreement. CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and covers a number of timbers traditionally used in instrument building, as well as a number of the shell products used in their decoration. Again, none of the species we use come under those regulations, but something that is also being discussed, and has a lot of support, is the introduction of ‘Instrument Passports’. This is to ensure that various authorities such as the UK’s Revenue and Customs  departments cannot get carried away in confiscating instruments belonging to travelling musicians that are made with materials covered by CITES.

The details of the requirements are not yet set in stone, but all of our future instruments will be provided with these ‘passports’ so that our customers will be able to travel quite happily with them.

In the meantime, here’s a short clip of a happy customer testing his new instrument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXuiXvDXqBM

The move around, as mentioned last week, has provided something verging on a dance-floor’s worth of space, along with a sensible workflow route around the workshop. A vacuum extractor system has been installed, along with some new power-points to stop the trailing of both pipes and cables across the floor. Fortunately, e-bay provided the extra suction required at a very reasonable price.

Recent repairs have included a re-fret on a near 100 year old Salvador Ibanez Guitaricco that was brought in as a Ukulele! It is easy to make the mistake, as the instrument is Soprano sized, and, with the exception of the  fretboard being flush with an overlaid scratchplate, Cuatro style, plays pretty much the same.

The label inside dates it to between 1915 and 1920 and, once re-strung with modern fluorocarbon strings, it sounded pretty sweet. I took a good set of measurements before it left the workshop, so it could be reproduced in the future.

Long overdue has been a new method of creating the neck to body joint, and the jig for that has taken up a good deal of time, but the results seem worth it as it was tried out today on the joint in that Dulcitar that is being made for Chris. I’ve also tried it on a Soprano neck, so the adjustable part of it, which was the bit that made it tricky, is working well.

This weekend coming we have a family wedding, and guess who has been volunteered for the photography. Therefore PLEASE NOTE, we will be closed for the whole weekend, commencing Friday 22nd and will not be re-opening until Monday 25th. I’d like to think of it as a holiday, but there is an element of the Busman’s about it! Keep strumming…

UFGB Tenor

That short month I mentioned last week  got even shorter over the past week when we decided we needed to re-arrange the workshop. Not just moving a couple of bits, but changing the whole thing around! It took three days out of the week, and will take a couple more to complete the process properly.

The whole exercise has been worthwhile though, with a couple of major benefits already noticed. The first, and the most obvious  is that of increased space, but the nice surprise, as I look out the window to a fresh carpet of snow, is that it has been possible to get the temperature in the workshop into the heady teens in centigrade without having to break the bank in fuel costs!!

Anyone who has visited before will see a major difference, including floor space that, previously, we didn’t have!

Therefore, the amount of actual work completed has been relatively low. A few sides cut and thicknessed, one body started and a couple or repairs and a re-fret is about all that has been achieved. but hopefully things will now become a little easier.

I’ve been asked which Festivals we’ll be doing during the year, and the answer is Cheltenham and Smugglers at least. The Ukulele Festival of Great Britain at Cheltenham will be offering one of that batch of Tenors as a raffle prize, but if you can’t wait that long to get lucky, there are three more on the For Sale page at a very special price.

4 finished Tenor Ukes

retrospect  it has gone pretty quick! It has seen the completion of seven instruments (One of those five tenors got a bit behind due to some extras needed on it) They include 4 tenors, Ben’s 8 string, Andy’s Soprano and that project instrument that those of you following this will have seen glimpses of.

I’ve called it a Cuatrolele, mainly because it has the body shape of a Venezuelan Cuatro with the depth of a Tenor Uke, and a scale length between the two. It’s an 8 string instrument with the tuning of both instruments, making gG, cc, ee, aA . You can find a quick sound sample on the video page. You’ll notice also that it is not made from local timber, but rather from acquired pieces that I have had knocking around. It’s a rosewood back and sides, quilted maple top, mahogany neck and a rosewood fretboard bound with the quilted maple. A real departure from my normal selection, but all donated rather than bought. All the other instruments are local timbers, mainly walnut and European maple.

The Cuatrolele, to my ears, sounds pretty awesome and is surprisingly different to a ‘standard’ 8 string. Any of you wanting to give it a go are welcome to visit the workshop for a tryout. It can, of course, be tuned up to D tuning.

We also completed a repair on a near 100 year old Salvador Ibanez guitarico, an instrument that takes a second look to differentiate from a ukulele.

For the new month we have an eclectic mixture of orders to fulfill, including a dulcitar and a long neck soprano, a standard soprano, a Q-bass and getting that fifth tenor to completion. Let’s hope that the weather doesn’t make a short month even shorter!

On top of that, the far end of the Craft village has been having some major building work carried out, which has had some effect on getting things done.

The water problems of last week have disappeared though, and at least the kettle has been in full commission all week!

As we have the full 31 days in this month though, I think we will just about hit target as far as finished instruments are concerned. And congratulations to those of you that braved the poor weather conditions over the last two weeks to come along and visit the workshop.

Three of the five tenors we have built will be available shortly, so keep an eye on the For Sale page where they will be shown initially. They will make up the eight instruments completed in the month, with Ben’s 8 string tenor and Andy’s soprano both heading for their new homes in the week coming, and that project instrument also due to be strung up. (More on that one soon)

Next week I hope to break some really good news (from our point of view). ‘Till then, keep on strumming.

Mind you, carving seven necks has kept the body warm, it’s just the air temperature that has been a problem!

The instruments seen here all had their necks caved during the course of the last seven days. They are, top to bottom, a soprano, a project instrument and five tenor ukuleles, four of which have standard sound holes and the fifth has a specially shaped sound hole ordered by a customer.

These instruments are now getting face-plates and fretboards fitted, including the project instrument which, unusually, gets a bound fretboard.

In other news, two new instruments, both slightly unusual, have been ordered this week and I’ll let you know more about them as the weeks progress, but one in particular is a wild deviation from a standard ukulele, although the body mould already exists and it will still have 4 strings! More than that and you’ll have to come back and see as it develops!

Today has been the first day of 2013 that there has been nobody in the unit. The snow and the temperature have been so bad that even the half mile journey from home to the unit didn’t really seem  that sensible. Lets hope that there is a little less to contend with tomorrow. Keep yourselves warm out there and I’ll update you again next week

Go-bar Deck

To overcome that drawback, I decided to build a contraption called a go-bar deck. This requires a radius dish to complete a lot of the work on, and a method of producing that I had seen (Thanks to Ken Timms) got put to use. It produced a lot of sander dust but cost a lot less than having one cnc’d! Then there was the sourcing of components like the go-bars themselves. We’ll be tweaking a few more things over the next few weeks too, like the method we use for making necks, bridges and the like.

On top of all that we took four more orders for instruments, only one of which can be included in this run of Tenor Ukes, so the workload has increased as well.

On the positive side, the contraption seen here has halved the length of time required to assemble an instrument body and has warranted the time spent making and clearing up afterwards (So much dust)!

Making Radius Dish

So, on we go, into the second week of 2013, hoping to get a bunch of bodies finished and a bunch of necks underway, while at the same time continuing the polishing of Ben’s 8 string and getting Andy’s soprano ready for that same operation. We’ll see you next week.

Radius Dish

Ben’s 8 string

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.

Andy’s Soprano

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!

Take, for example, my daughter Lorraine, who you have seen before in these pages. She has always struggled with some aspects of playing a full sized guitar, due mainly to never having reached the five foot mark in her growth and having hands to match. By any standards they are tiny and the whole hand has difficulty spanning three frets!

The answer was a custom guitar, and although I don’t build many guitars I decided (as Dad’s do) that she deserved one for Christmas. As size was the main criteria I based it on a baritone ukulele body with a 22″ scale length. It was half built before she knew anything about it, but once the neck was made I thought I’d better check with her that the size of the neck was suitable. At that point she wasn’t shown the body!

I guess you would call it a Parlour or Piccolo Guitar, but the strings are so close together that virtually nobody else could play it sensibly. Many Thanks must go to Gary Zimnicki for his invaluable advice while building it.

She got her guitar for Christmas and earlier today she came along to the workshop to tell me how she could now form chords that were impossible with ‘normal’ instruments. I now have a very happy daughter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nzFK0Cnww

This will be my last post for 2012, so may I take the opportunity to wish you all a Happy and prosperous New Year.