Here are a couple videos of my good friend Abe Galan playing some flamenco tunes on a guitar I made for him last year. The guitars is a very small bodied cannon made from cypress and carpathian spruce.
The Muse tenor ukulele is ready for Thailand
It was a long week of finishing and setup, but the last three tenors are ready to go out into the world!
This first custom uke is a tenor Muse bound for Thailand. I will be attending the Thailand Ukulele Festival with Kimo Hussey, Dan Ryerson and a few other players and builders from Hawaii on February 25-26. This will be the second anual Thailand uke fest and promises to be a great turn out.
This Muse tenor will be made available at the show in Thailand in February after it has been displayed at Kimo’s booth “Ask Kimo” Kimo will also be playing the uke in his concert for the festival. The price has not yet been set for this uke and it will not be sold till the end of the show.
We also recorded a few new videos that will be posted shortly.
muse tenor ukulele back side top
muse tenor ukulele back front
muse tenor ukulele back side
vintage muse tenor uke
muse tenor ukulele back side close
muse tenor ukulele back full
muse tenor ukulele back side half
Here are the other two ukes that were just finished as well. These ukes will be shipping out to Ukulele Puapua today.
kasha uke custom koa front
custom muse koa tenor ukulele
Custom ukuleles : Cuban Mahogany tenor ukulele
It’s finally time to enjoy all of the labor that goes into a custom instrument! After working on this batch of ukuleles for the past couple months, the first one is finished.
This Cuban Mahogany ukulele will be headed for Australia tomorrow morning. This Cuban Mahogany has been a joy to work with. It bends very well, has an incredible tap tone with tons of volume and sustain and is some of the most beautiful material I have ever worked with. The contrast between the Cuban Mahogany and the curly Koa is a great match as well. The nice even color of the Mahogany and the wild curly colors of the Koa make a very nice match. The Cuban Mahogany will turn to a nice dark red color over time making this uke more beautiful over time.
cuban mahogany ukulele front quarter
cuban mahogany ukulele side neck
cuban mahogany ukulele back side
cuban mahogany ukulele head side
cuban mahogany ukulele top side
cuban mahogany ukulele side left crop
cuban mahogany ukulele back right
cuban mahogany ukulele back top
cuban mahogany ukulele vintage
cuban mahogany ukulele side neck
cuban mahogany ukulele side left
cuban mahogany ukulele side tail
cuban mahogany ukulele headstock
cuban mahogany ukulele head
Ukulele build : works in progress : Four custom tenor ukulele go into finishing.
01/03/2012
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Four custom tenor ukulele go into finishing.
Over the last week at DeVine Guitars and Ukuleles we put the finishing touches on the four tenor ukuleles before going into the spray booth. Here is the Cuban mahogany muse tenor sanded and ready for shellac and pore filling.
signature fretboard inlay ready for pore filling
cuban mahogany ready for pore filling
After all the ukes are washed with a coat of pale shellac to protect the wood from staining, the pores are filled with a brown paste. with the pores filled and the excess past sanded away the ukes are sprayed with two more light coats of shellac.
tenor neck mud bath
tenor mud bath
tenor heel
Here is a blonde koa uke that will be headed off to Thailand for the Thailand ukulele Festival.
beautiful curly koa ukulele
curly-cuban-mahogany-neck-and-body
cuban mahogany ukulele neck
cuban mahogany tenor ukulele binding
4 tenor ukuleles
This week at DeVine Guitars and Ukuleles,
We finished up binding work on all of the tenor ukuleles in this batch. After the binding was sanded and scraped down the bodies were cleaned up to get ready for the necks to be attached. Here are a few pictures of the ukes and their binding.
ukulele with necks on
ebony end graft
front view of ukuleles
cuban mahogany top with abalone
cuban mahogany and koa binding
All of the logo were also inlayed for the tenor ukes. Here, I am putting in the last piece of the logo puzzle. After the pieces are in place, some fine super glue is floated into the pockets to hold the pieces in place. when the fine glue has set, some ebony dust is mixed with some thicker glue and used to fill in the remaining gaps.
ukulele logo inlay
After the black glue is dried, I will plane down the excess material. It’s always a good idea to keep your plane blades nice and sharp.
sharp blockplane blade
koa maple devine logo
Ukulele Build : Installing binding on ukuleles
It was a very productive week! All of the ukulele bodies are together and sanded and cleaned up. The tail piece was installed on all of the ukes and the bodies are ready for binding.
ukulele binding tail piece
Here are three of the 4 tenor ukuleles with the binding installed. The left is curly koa, the center is the white koa and the one on the right is ebony.
custom ukuleles with binding
Look at that curly koa! This is going to be one beautiful uke. I’ve wiped a little bit of shellac on the back to show some of the curl and color.
mastergrade koa ukulele back
Here are a few of 50 or 60 necks we are working on right now. With ukulele parts like necks, where you want them to look pretty much the same every time, it helps to do them in large batches. This should keep me busy for at least a year or two.
ukulele necks with headstocks
Here is a close up of that blonde uke with the ebony binding. Notice the white/black/white purfling around the ebony.
mastergrade koa ukulele with ebony binding
A quick shot of the Cuban Mahogany tenor with it’s binding.
cuban mahogany ukulele and koa ukulele
Works in progress : Ukulele necks, neck and more neck! : Fretboard inlay
Lots going on this week at DeVine Guitars and Ukuleles!!!
First off, here are a couple more pictures of one of the finished ukes from the last batch. This is a Tenor Muse modle with the signature DeVine fretboard inlay.
muse custom ukulele finished
devine ukulele end cap
Now that all the ukuleles from the last batch have been shipped out to their waiting owners, it’s time to get back to work on the next batch of custom ukuleles.
Half of the ukulele bodies are together already with 4 more bodies to go. While the uke bodies are coming together, it’s time to do a little more inlay work. A few of the ukuleles from this next batch will be getting the signature fretboard inlay. Here is the first ukulele fretboard routed out and fitting the bamboo inlay. These pieces are so small that every piece needs to be handled with micro tweezers to keep from breaking them while inlaying.
bamboo ukulele inlay
As you can see here, the custom ukulele inlay is very delicate.
laser cut bamboo
After doing a little inlay work. it’s time to head over to the last of the ukulele tops. Here is a concert Kasha uke top almost ready to join the rest of the body.
kasha bracing concert ukulele
This next uke is going to be something very special…
It is a tenor muse model made from some of the most beautiful Cuban Mahogany I’ve ever seen. The curl in this wood is so tight and so deep that it’s almost hard to tell what you are looking at. The top, back and sides, as well as the neck will be Cuban Mahogany. For those of you not familiar with Cuban Mahogany, it is a very rare wood that grows in only a few tropical places. Luckily, Hawaii is one of those.
cuban mahogany ukulele building
Here is my stack of necks for the next year or two. About 60 ukulele necks waiting for their time to shine.
custom ukulele necks
Custom Ukulele : A new batch of custom ukuleles is finished
It has been a little while since my last post. I was just a bit to busy to photograph these ukes as finishing is so time consuming. But, at long last, the ukes are finished!!!
Here is all six of the custom ukuleles I have been working on the last couple of months. Included are 3 tenor muse models, a kasha tenor, a kasha concert and a kasha long neck concert.
custom ukes
Here is one of the darker sets of koa from the batch. I have lots more of this beautiful koa. It has a beautiful clear tap tone and produces a uke that is clear, pronounced and with plenty of volume. This ukulele also has the signature DeVine fretboard inlay.
ukulele fretboard inlay with lights
custom ukulele shadow
The next ukulele is African Blackwood with koa binding. The DeVine lodo on the back is inlayed curly koa and some beautiful european maple that was cut from the first guitar I ever made.
devine ukulele logo inlay african blackwood
curly koa kasha tenor ukulele
All six ukulele headstocks with the DeVine loge inlayed.
devine logo inlay ukulele
tenor muse custom uke
custom tenor ukulele outline
Here is the lake salvaged quilted maple finally with some lacquer on it. This is the natural color of this wood… unbelievable.
concert ukulele lake salvage maple
Here is a close up of the Signature fretboard inlay on a tenor ukulele.
signature ukulele fretboard inlay
tenor ukulele muse with lights
african blackwood ukulele redwood top
kasha tenor uke mastergrade koa
more ukuleles
curly koa, white koa binding
custom tenor ukulele muse shadow
More custom ukuleles!
While the last batch of ukuleles is being sprayed with lacquer, it’s time to get started on the next batch of custom ukuleles. This is going to be a beautiful bunch of ukuleles! There will be 2 mastergrade koa concerts, 2 mastergrade koa super concerts, a mastergrade koa Kasha tenor, 2 mastergrade koa muse tenors and a Cuban mahogany muse tenor.
Here is all of the bracing for all 8 ukes laid out and ready to go.
kasha and muse ukulele braces
Here are a few of the concert sides sanded down to thickness and ready for bending.
3 sets of koa ukulele sides
This is one of the Muse abalone rosettes. You can see a bit of the leftover shellac around the shell. The shellac is wiped around the channel before the shell is installed to prevent the thin super glue from leaving marks on the wood.
muse ukulele rosette
And here is the back strip being glued in place on the Cuban mahogany back. This Cuban mahogany is some of the most beautiful material I have ever worked with!
muse ukulele backstrip
