Ashton Uke (IW#36)

Been a long time since I have posted.  This does not reflect a lack of work, just a lack of time to write about it.    Let's get back into it, shall we?

Here is a lovely little fretless uke made from an Ashton cigar box.  Funny to use a brand-new cigar box, I get all worried about scratching it on the bench.  The bridge is a piece of moulding that came off of those church pews I got my hands on, it happened to be shaped exactly right, and seems to work well.  Initially I scuffed the finish on the box and epoxied the bridge on there, which worked pretty well for about a month.  The >sproingggg< sound that it made as the epoxy gave up the ghost one day was pretty exciting, which is what drove the brass machine screws.  Didn't seem to affect the sound too much.

This is also my first experiment with a bolt-on neck.  I had been making through necks so this was an exploration for me.  Turns out the major problem is that with a cigar box the tension of the strings makes the side of the box bow out, which releases some tension, so you tighten the strings, which makes the side bow out more.  I ended up running a piece of threaded rod right through to the other side, but that didn't fix the problem quite, either.  Not sure what I am going to do about that, but for now I think I'll go back to the "stick through a box" method.

Here is what it sounds like: