It’s been ages since I started building a cardboard ukulele and that’s largely because I’ve been waiting for some parts to arrive – namely the tuners.
Well they arrived a couple of weeks back and I’m back moving along with it again. I’ve already ran into a couple of issues but I’ll explain and if anyone else is having a blast at making one then maybe they’ll help.
The first problem I ran into was that the tuners weren’t actually long enough (I bought these ukulele tuners from Amazon) – the headstock I created was a little too thick. I took a junior hacksaw to the headstock and took a little depth off it to solve this – whether it will be strong enough after my modifications I don’t know. The beauty of using the junior hacksaw is that it really gives you a flat surface to work from. Gluing the neck left quite an uneven surface which I’ll have to contend with when I start work on the fretboard.
The second issue was that I drilled the holes about 5mm away from where they needed to be. Drilling cardboard is a strange thing, it’s hard to keep the drill steady as you’re drilling into something that isn’t all that solid. As a result I’ve had to put the tuners on upside down. Not the end of the world and it does look a little weird, but then it’s a quirk instrument.
Finally, screwing in the tuners is a bit hit and miss. Because you’re screwing into corrugated cardboard, you can end up putting the screw straight into a void. I coated each screw in wood glue and also put a little on the back of each tuner in the hope it will fix this. I’ll have to wait and see.
Next up is getting the frets in place which I need to buy some parts for – where on earth do I buy some cotter pins from??
Good to see how far you’ve gotten, Dave. It’s no joke how long you have to spend cutting this out. I’d recommend hair pins instead of cotter pins if you can’t find them like me. And yes, it is a strange thing drilling through cardboard 🙂
Hi Kim, yeah it’s taken me a while mostly because I keep putting it to one side and then picking back up on it later. I managed to get hold of some cotter pins – now I need to source something for the nut and the saddle!
Good one. I ended up making the nut and saddle from cardboard, used some laminated ones instead. Otherwise I’ve been buying mine off ebay.