Electric cigar box ukulele

Ive been watching Jack Reads progress on this for while on my Facebook page. He and his son Gabriel just completed this totally cool cigar box uke. Plus its electric! I asked Jack to compile the history of this build, so here it is in his own words. Thanks Jack. *********

1) The build begins. Gabriel (my son the musician) coping the head piece from a piece of 3/4" oak.

2) We glued two pieces of the same oak for the neck and cut them to a taper 1 1/2" at the top to 1 3/4" at the bottom. 

3) I built a jig from Charles Neils website to make the cut 

4) The neck was too thick so we lopped off 1/2"

5) Then came some sanding.....lots of sanding. He asked bout how much more sanding dad? I replied just a little more. I said that about ten times one day.

6) I got in on the sanding act.

7) The neck and head are nearly complete. They each got a 5 degree bevel on the end grain to produce the set back. They were bored for dowels, glued and clamped. This worked very well on the previous build. 

8) The neck is finished. The cigar box body is in the background.

9) The first fret board glue up. I ended up botching this fret board cutting the frets. I botched up one more, before cutting the frets first then gluing to the neck.

10) I ended up buying a new saw to cut the frets. This produced perfect frets (.023 kerf in 3/16 ply)

11) Gabriel is setting the frets into the fret board.

12) The tuning machines were installed.

13) Nearly complete front of the Uke

14) Nearly complete back.

15) This is the under saddle pickup. It is soldered to the endpin jack. The amp cord is plugged into the endpin and to the amp. Gabriel got a little belt amp that allows him mobility.

16) The Ukulele is finished. It needs to get strung, but the bridge and saddle are freshly glued. He can string it on the cruise ship. He leaves for Alaska tomorrow. Done in the nick of time.

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