Arrowmont Ukulele (IW#113)

So I love Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, which I have written about here and here, and most recently here.  This summer I was fortunate enough to be asked back to do a week-long ukulele building workshop.  It was an intense week, starting with lumber from my scrap pile, much of which was from pianos of course.  Some of that wood was poplar from the Wurlitzer piano that sat for many years in one of the common rooms on the Arrowmont campus.

As we worked through the week, I used some of that wood to make the demonstration instrument, showing the students how to bench build a uke, step by step, from scratch.  They did a fantastic job, and it was so cool (as always) to see people (some of whom had never worked in a wood shop at all) to come out with real, playable instruments.  Here is a photo of them.  What a great time.

The demo instrument came out pretty well, and has a great tie to the campus, so I sent it down to them to be put in their annual "Meet the Artists" auction, which is used to raise money for the school, much of which I think goes to scholarships.  (Shameless plug:  If you want to donate to their annual fund, which helps give scholarships to students to come learn all kind of things, go here).

Little chairs made out of the black keys of the piano.

The pile of scrap wood that became about 14 ukes.

So here is a great little player, and I did the same thing with that one that I did with the Pentaculum uke, and took two of the black keys and made two little chairs that I glued inside the body.  I like the idea of these little secrets in there, and I had such great conversations with Suzi Banks Baum about the implications of furniture and spatial arrangement.  Here is how it sounds.