Baritone Ukulele for £7

The first £5 of the project was for the half-size spanish guitar from the Marie Curie charity shop in Harpenden. It was sold as-seen and was hiding in the corner of the window display. As with most charity shop purchases, if it's no good, it's still cash for a good cause, so it's usually worth the risk.

This model of guitar, a Stagg C510, is for a 8-10 year-old junior player, but the size is ideal for a four string baritone Ukulele, and also ideal for people with fat fingers, like me. I used to play a ukulele banjo when I was at school, tuned Upper-G, down to C, then E, A, but a baritone is lower D, G, B and E like the first four strings of a guitar.
The body was in a bit of a state with heavy chips out of the corners, but the spruce front panel was clean and the majority of the finish intact. There was a good chance that some shellac and an oil finish would make it look respectable again.
All six strings were present so having to fork out another eight quid for strings would not be necessary, at least for the trial build.


The obvious problem, and the thing that made this guitar a £5 bargain and not the usual £20 ready-to-play variety was the massive crack between the neck and the body.

However I could see a couple of the dowels, and there was no splintering of the wood so a re-glue would seem to be feasible provided I could separate the fretboard from the guitar front.
The angle of the wonky neck made the strings stand well away from the fret board but it seemed to pull back somewhere near with a bit of gentle persuasion in the shop.

Having persuaded the guy who was already considering buying it that it was beyond repair, as soon as he left the shop I grabbed it and parted with the cash.
The machine heads were of the usual mass-produced Spanish design (as opposed to the heavier folk variety), but were mechanically sound. The missing key head would not be a problem as I only needed 4 good ones. This type of head is easily taken apart to use the parts in a different place.
So here comes the bit where you need to hold your breath. The fret board seemed firmly stuck to the body, though if the neck glue had dried out the chances are that the rest is going the same way.

However if the glue is sound, there is a chance that great slivers of spruce will pull away with the fret board, or the fretboard would break in half, so first thing is to cut through the varnish, very lightly scoring the wood, so that a clean break would be more likely.
With the widest sharpest chisel held flat to the spruce front, and a heavy wooden mallet used lightly (if you see what I mean) a gentle tap at several places along each side should loosen it.

What you are listening and feeling for for is the yielding noise you get when you crack open the top of a boiled egg with a spoon. Not the hard sound of a chisel whacking a solid block. If you get the eggshell sound it's likely to break away cleanly - which it did!.
Lovely clean break!! Phew!
Then a wiggle or two pulled the neck right away revealing dowels and very little glue.
Big mistake would be to assume that the dowels are soundly stuck into the neck half. Reglue-ing with the dowels as shown is tempting but would probably lead to a similar break problem later, so I REMOVED the dowels with pliers, and slotted each one with a small tenon saw to allow the glue to flow out of the holes. As it happened they pulled out with very little effort. It is a good idea to countersink the holes to allow the mating surfaces to come together fully without wood chips getting in the way.
It's no good sticking glue to glue, especially if you don't know what type was used before, so the old stuff has to be scraped off. A wide sharp chisel can be used as a scraper...
...and also used as a chisel to get down to the wood again.
The thick web of varnish can be seen. Didn't want any of it to break off and get into the joint so I lightly sanded the sharp edge down. The crack would be dressed and filled with shellac later.
Again, getting slivers of varnish in the front joint would ruin the bond, so I used the chisel flat to take off the old raised web...
... and then cleaned up the glue to the joint line.
Turning to the fret board, now is the time to lightly remove scratches and pips on the frets which might cut the strings. Only light strokes with 1200 wet and dry paper...
... followed by a polish with Autosol or honing paste.

Not shown here but rubbing in SATIN black paint (like Humbrol coal black) into the wood between the frets will spruce up a tired fretboard.

Can't do any of this with the strings on!
Now a little vandalism using the sharp corner of a chisel will put deep scratches all over mating surfaces to give the glue a bit more hold.

I decided to use plain yellow PVA wood glue (Titebond from America) as it is one I am familiar with and is easier to clean off than Gorilla urethane glue and easier to use than mixing Extramite powder glue.


It's also very important to clamp up the whole thing using a couple of dowels and NO GLUE to make sure the clamps will do the job, and that the mating surfaces will meet neatly giving clean joint lines.

A sash cramp pulls in the toe of the neck, a small G cramp holds the end of the fretboard down, and a wooden guitar clamp holds the rest of the fretboard down to the sash cramp.
Once satisfied that the joints will close and the cramps will do their job, it is taken apart again, glue applied, reclamped and wiped with a damp cloth. Glue will ooze as clamps are gently tightened and the neck wiggled into place.

It is most important that the joint lines are close fitting. No gaps are allowed and if the joints will not close because of some foreign body or the dowel holes are too full of glue, better to pull apart now than to have it set with a gap. Another reason to use water based slow acting glue.

Re-stringing as a Baritone Ukulele

The wooden bridge has six holes, I wanted to re-string with four strings wider apart, using the two existing string positions, so the position of the 2 new holes needed to be marked up.

Using self adhesive paper stuck to the bridge, the position of the two outer holes were marked with ink and the distance between them was measured accurately.
The distance was divided by three and the compasses set to that distance. Marking from the outer holes inwards I marked the two new positions in pencil then CHECKED the distance between the two new marks with the compasses. If that was too small, the compasses were tweaked down and new marks made. Checking and repeating the process will give, in a couple of iterations, three equal spacings which can then be firmed up with ink marks.

The very same process is used to make two new slots in the plastic "nut" on the fretboard.
Before drilling the two new holes the four unwanted ones were filled using wood cocktail sticks which usually are a good fit if you select them carefully.
Short pieces are glued in with PVA and trimmed when dry with a scalpel knife.
Now I had the choice of lifting the bridge to drill the new holes, but this one was neatly glued to the front with no sign of lifting, so I decided to make a very long drill by fixing a 1.5 mm drill into some modellers' brass tubing with a 1.5 mm bore. You can use epoxy or in my case I pinched the tube very lightly and tapped-in the drill. Only a light grip is needed.
Using a drill-driver I drilled the two new holes. Now the need for the long drill can be seen!
Sometimes the sun shines on the righteous, and when visiting another charity shop the following week I found a complete set of spanish guitar strings marked "Du Pont Nylon" and "Made in England" - very old, very rare, very cheap too at 50p each! That makes the total of £7.

Refinishing

I made up some strong shellac polish by adding more garnet shellac flakes to a proprietary garnet french polish and allowing it to dissolve and the meths to evaporate a little over night leavig it like mum's thick gravy..

Thinned shellac was painted into the thin neck joints, and the thicker shellac dabbed into the large chipped areas. Painting back the black body line round the edges makes a huge improvement to the appearance.

Finally after a very fine wet and dry rub down, I wiped polyurethane varnish thinned 20% with white spirit over the whole body using a spirit soaked cotton rag, so that an overall thin but shiny layer covered the whole thing. If another coat is needed it needs to wait 48 hours for the poly to fully polymerise. Too thick a coat would dull the sound so the finish should not be over-done.

Re-Stringing

Re-stringing is the boring bit. I used the four winders nearest the body and discarded the other two, trimmimg the excess metal from the side plates.

Here is my new Baritone UKE!

Now I need to learn to play it!