Making a ukulele neck

These were purchased as neck blanks for making guitars.

The longer mahogany blank is 27-3/4" x 3" x 2-3/16".

I should have bought two of these instead of the cidrella. See later note.

As you can see, it is possible to get four ukulele necks out of one of these pieces of wood!

This was rough shape was cut out on a bandsaw for me by Pete Howlett. I don't own a bandsaw (yet) and so it is really helpful to have a friend who does, especially one who knows so much about making the ukulele!

A bandsaw makes very light work of this task in seconds.

I chose the sawmill cut face which was smooth and square, and sanded that on a piece of 80 grit sandpaper flat on the work bench. A few strokes was all that was necessary.

(Fingerboard face is up)

Be careful to keep it flat on the same plane as the top of the neck. You would easily see an "angled" line if it wasn't.

You don't need to go down to finer sanding on the headstock face, because it will be covered with a headplate.

The "finished" one is from a Stewmac kit. Note that it has a built up heel and a scarfed headstock joint, whereas my new one is all one solid piece.

This is the line at the angle of the top of the neck and the headstock. Everything else will be measured and marked out from here!

The width of the neck at the nut is to be 1-3/8", and at the 12th fret position the width is 1-3/4".

If you already have a pre-slotted fingerboard blank, then you can mark out the 12th fret position using this. Be aware that purchased pre-slotted fingerboard blanks come in different scale lengths, commonly 13-1/2" or 13-3/4".

Therefore the fingerboard determines the length of the neck from the nut!

AND... importantly when marking out the neck length, you will decide whether you want to have the nut sitting on the flat of the fingerboard, or like the Martin ukuleles, on the face of the headstock plate. Because the measurement is from the front of the nut.

Now we are going to mark out the positions of the tuner holes. First measure and mark two lines 1-1/8" apart (9/16" each side of the centre line). The first pair of holes are 1-7/16" from your main datum line (the front of the nut), and the second pair 1-11/16" from there. (Note that on the vintage Martin 3-M uke that I measured, the tuner holes are equidistant from the centre line, rather than an equal distance in from the sides of the tapered headstock, this allows the 2nd and 3rd strings to clear the lower tuning posts!). With the positions of the tuners marked out, I made a firm mark very carefully with the point of a pair of dividers. Any small sharp point will do, but the smaller the better).

The headplate is measured 2-1/4" wide at the top (measure out equally from the centre line) and 2" wide at the position of the lower set of tuners. Now we can mark those lines on the wood. The curve down to the the nut position was marked out using the inside diameter of a spool of sellotape. (It is about 3" diameter).

Finally, I marked out the shape of my headstock. This is the standard shape that I will be using on all my ukuleles. Have a go at designing your own shape, or stick with the traditional Martin or Gibson shape.

Transfer the marks of the neck width to the ends, (That's 1-3/4' wide). Transfer and mark the centre line on the end. Measure 2" down from the face of the neck to the end of the heel, and mark the heel to be 1/2" wide at its narrow point. (1/4" each side of the centre line). Join up the marks at an angle.

Actually, the finished heel will be concave at this point rather than a straight taper, but that will be done later by sanding.

Now is the time to start thinking about the order of cutting. And that's important!

We have to convert our neck blank into something that is virtually the same!

First I cut off the end of the heel. note that I didn't go right down tight to the marked line. That will be finished by hand later.

Note that I did it "square" to the face of the headstock. Some uke makers have it slanting so that it is square to the face of the fingerboard. Its a personal thing, but I don't like that.

I made a long saw cut up the length of the neck from the heel end. Note that I didn't try to angle the cut to match the heel end marks, Its just a straight cut, stopping just short of the nut datum line. It is also well outside of the marked pencil line. There's no sense in trying to saw that accurately, when it can be finished easily by hand later.

There's something really satisfying about shaving off neat curls of wood with a well sharpened plane. It's very therapeutic!

This was in fact much easier.

I am not trying to create a finished surface, just remove some of the excess wood. Note that I am holding the knife in my right hand, and using the thumb of my left hand to guide and push the blade. My right hand is doing no work! I am making little curved slices, not really pushing into the cut at all.

(My third hand is holding the camera)

This knife is an awesome tool. Pete Howlett once said to me that he could build a whole ukulele with just this one tool. I believe him.

• a bench hook (under the plane)
• A small saw (not shown)
• A coping saw
• An engineer's square
• A steel ruler
• A pencil
• The Sabatier knife
• A small block plane

Simple hand tools.

Despite being my first neck, the whole operation took less than an hour, including the reasoning, measuring and marking out.