Cigar box Ukulele and a 3 string cigar box guitar. oh and a warwick refinish.

This month has been fairly quiet. The post Christmas duldrum and being off work for a few days after my finger met the bandsaw (I'm very lucky to report was not too serious) Also a nice bout of Flu this last week has made it a reasonably unproductive month. I had two commissions one for a cigar box guitar and another for a 3 string cigar box ukulele to complete which I managed.
I actually had both of these commissions before Christmas unfortunately I didn't really have any cigar boxes suitable so I had to go on a major hunt to find suitable ones. Since I have started it seems cigar boxes have become a bit scarce on EBAY uk and the ones that are there are becoming fairly pricey. where I used to be able to pickup a nice vintage box for 3 or 4 pounds they are now going more to the 8 to 10 pound and even more. plus the postage. In the end I won a joblot of 25 boxes from the USA of which 10 are really good for instrument making. Even with the postage and import duty it was still cheaper than buying 10 separate boxes from the UK.
The box for the Ukulele I found On Ebay USA too.
The 3 string is for a customer in Austria. he saw the last one I had made on facebook. a nice simple plain wooden box with a nice flat neck which can be played with a slide or like a fretless instrument and wanted one similar.
It's only a small box but amazingly loud acoustically. and when it's plugged in Wow!
I soaked of the label from the inside lid to put on the headstock as it was such an attractive one. It also has position markers on the fret board which show on the front as well as the edge.

 

 

 

The Cigar box ukulele is for a customer a bit closer to home In Wiltshire.  She wanted a nice box with attractive labels on.  I found this one on EBAY USA and knew it was perfect for the Uke.

It's actually a new box but has that vintage look to it with the embossed labels and Victorian style artwork.  This one is without a doubt the best cigar box ukulele I have made. It really is not far off a standard Uke in terms of tone and volume and I will be keeping my beady eye out for more of these boxes.  I tried out a different sound hole design with an X brace on the top which may have helped with the sound quality. 

 

I Also managed a refin of a local chaps Warwick Bass which came to me in a plain finish which was looking a little tired. So it was given a transluscent  red brown brown (Looks very red in the picture) coat. The plan was to finish it with a matt clear coat but as it looked pretty awesome with a bit of gloss decided to leave it like that.

 

 





 

 

 

 

Double neck guitar. (6 string + Bass)

In October of last year Gavin Wilson of the Guitarz Blog posted a blog asking where He could get a cheapish double neck guitar with a 6 string and bass configuration with the bass on the lower part.
I bravely stepped up to the mark and offered my services which where gratefully accepted.
Gavin told me that he wanted something a bit jaguar jazzmaster type  with a smallish body. concentric knobs individual switches for each part. He was to supply the necks and pickups and bridges.

The finalised design

 

Mockup which doubled as a template.

 

 

2 piece centre jointed reclaimed Sapele.





 

Body shaped and routed.

 

The doner guitar neck. An old neck with a chopped headstock and rusty old open geared machine heads. I added an extra piece of maple and shaped it to my headstock design. The bass neck doner was a new Peavey neck which I reshsaped the headstock to match.

 

 

A normal strat body on top to show the size. Unlike most double neck guitars which are pretty much two guitar bodies joined together with resulting size and weight issues.

Scratchplate template made from clear Perspex. Just managed to squeeze it onto the blank scratchplate material.

 

 Initial hand rubbed stain. I liked but I wanted to go for a darker tobacco burst so ended up doing a spry finish with a matt top coat.

 

Trying out the scratchplate and bridges.

 

Considering this was uncharted territory for me the whole process went reasonably without hitch.

The wiring to Gavin's request and to my liking of simplicity was volume and tone for each guitar with concentric knobs. selector switches and an on/off switch for each part. both wired to a stereo output rather than two seperat jacks. All is needed is  a stereo splitter lead.

 

Here is the finished product. As you can see I've been making a little extra effort in the photography department.

It's almost identical to the original drawing with the exception of a slightly more rounder bottom which I didn't intend and only really noticed in the later stages. However when I put it on a stand I realised this was probably a favourable outcome as the only readily available stand it's going to fit on is an A type where the body is supported at the rear. too much of a slope would have it at a jaunty angle.

In Hindsight I thnk I would have made the body shorter by an inch or so. but as a design I really like it aesthetically and functionally.