Ukulele Project

Designing and building an electric ukulele from scratch

Using Blender as a tool to visualise, plan, and export drawings to create an electric ukulele.

Modelling>CADWoodworking

Comparison between Blender and real life

In the April 2019 lockdown, I chose to occupy my time by building an electric ukulele. This was my first time doing woodworking, so I experimented a lot with methods, and made many mistakes. I did not use any power tools for this build, because I did not have any.

Full length diagram

I bought some cheap second hand tools on online auctions, including a Stanley no.4 hand plane, and a unbranded 10 inch swing brace.

I modelled the ukulele in Blender to scale. This meant that the absolute dimensions were correct for the real world scale.

I printed out these drawings from Blender in orthographic views to use as plans, and made the wooden components from these.

Starting from solid wooden blanks: maple with a walnut stripe for the neck, ebony for the fretboard, cherry for the body and headstock wings, and spruce for the top. My hand plane can be seen in the background.

Neck glued together with headstock wings and truss rod cavity cut. I drew out the headstock shape using my printed out paper template.

Headstock angled and flattened using the plane

Body blank being glued together, four pieces of cherry - jointed with the plane.

Body cut out to size with a coping saw

Back and sides of neck thicknessed and smoothed, starting with a coping saw then a sanding block

Chiselled out neck joint, cut holes for bolts with the hand brace

Neck carved with a rasp

Cut holes for string ferrules using the brace

Cut tuner holes with the brace. Fretboard and headstock inlays complete, and frets hammered in.

side dots inlayed: walnut circles with glow-in-the-dark center dots.

Testing stain colours on scrap spruce

Hand stained with water based stains, hanging up to dry. I chose spruce with natural sapwood running through middle, and it gives the body a pleasing highlight.