MIMF

This is a long scale soprano ukulele that I recently made as a gift for my parents. The walnut back, sides, and headplate came from walnut logs that were cut down on my grandparents' property about 30 years ago. My dad (a furniture builder) arrived after the trees had been bucked up into 12" le...

Considering how much work goes into build a qin, it is surprising they don't start out with better looking wood. Of course, as you mentioned, the wood ends up being completely hidden by the lacquer.

I browsed around in the guqin builders forum that the link I posted in the preceding message leads to, and it seems there could be other plans and documentation available for download, but you have to be a member and it seems there is some payment required using a token system. There is a good threa...

I have found that when I'm trying to find information online about things from other countries with different languages, I will find more results when I translate the search words into the native language, and then search with the translation. For example, guqin in Chinese is 古琴. Performing Google s...

There are 13 of them, called "hui". The book I referenced doesn't say how to lay them out.

Here is some help:

https://blog.nyl.io/guqin-part-1-harmon ... most%20dot.

Bob, check out the second photo at this link. Pretty close to a plan. It gives a lot more dimensions than I've seen anywhere else:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collectio ... /180015292

And they have similar drawings for some other guqins.

I hope to build a guqin at some point. I examined and handled some in Chengdu China a few years back. The closest thing I have found to a plan is a book called "Abiding with Antiquity", which is an English translation from an 1855 Chinese text. (ISBN 978-1-4303-0346-6). I even have my set ...

I am very happy with my Hakko FX888D soldering station. I bought it for typical to small electronic soldering jobs.

We use more expensive Weller soldering stations at work, but the Hakko works just as well for me.

Does such a thing exist? What I have in mind is building a solid body "silent" instrument with non-metallic strings and probably piezo or under-saddle pickup. Then an on-board preamp with bluetooth output to be used with bluetooth head phones. I'm really aiming for an acoustic sound, but w...

I used the instructions from Gamut music: https://www.gamutmusic.com/tying-viol-frets This makes a double fret, which is what my dombra book says to use. You can also tie a single fret, which Gamut says is for lutes. I used 60# nylon fishing line and used a soldering iron to cut and "mushroom&q...

I ended up going with individual frets.

This is my first dombra. I invested a lot of effort into figuring out how to build this using more or less traditional methods, and I'm planning to make more. The seven piece back is local Maine cherry. The top is Maine spruce. The neck is a pine/maple lamination with a cherry fingerboard. The ornam...

I am nearly finishing building a dombra, but I don't know the frets are tied. The dombra is a long necked lute type instrument from Kazakhstan. It seems the frets are all tied using a single continuous piece of line, starting with the first fret. The line runs down the middle of the back of the neck...

I recently purchased a string height indicator which uses a digital readout. The only pressure on the string is the mass of the plunger which is very light. I use it on nylon ukulele strings and I think it works great. I bought it from G-Tech guitar works, but I see LMI has something that looks simi...

Very nice! A machete is on my list of things to try sometime. Are those steel strings? What is the scale length?

It's all hollow, but the sides are pretty thick; nominally 1/4", and sawn from glued up pieces. I'm kicking myself for putting round dots in the fingerboard. Especially because I put square markers (turned 45 degrees) in the next uke I made. I thought about making custom pins with square heads,...

It is acoustic. It's is going to a house with very "active" 4 and 6 year old boys, so it's built rugged. It is set up and intonated well, so it plays fine, but it's not loud. I did consider that I could add a pickup to it at some point if someone wanted to use it that way. The jagged edge ...

It is a baritone scale ukulele.
The body is mostly poplar. The brown streaks became a lot darker under finish than I expected.
The dragon on the headstock is all wood and is proud of the surface (it's not an inlay).

Thank you for the reply. Now that you mention it I can see that two of the ribs are left wider. I just noticed too that this is a fretless instrument, correct? As I mentioned in your dutar post, I'm looking for the right time to start making a dombra. I ordered a book from a fellow in Kazakhstan, bu...

Looks great! And thank you for posting the build photos. I have questions: Are all the ribs cut to the same profile? Including the outermost two (next to the top)? How do you shape the joint surfaces between the ribs? I see the sandpaper taped to the bench and plane in the vise. Some use of those I ...