The ukulele project is almost finished, so time to get this off the bench. I refitted all the hardware after the final coats of Tru-Oil had dried and then fitted the strings. I then fitted the nut I had made and notched it for the strings.
The frets need levelling so I loosened the strings enough to tape them out of the way. I then marked the tops of the frets with a blue indelible marker. I then used my radius block to flatten all the frets whilst maintaining the neck radius.
Gradually the blue ink wears away from each fret as they become level. There was one in particular which was lower than the rest but gradually the sand paper found its mark and started to wear away the ink on each fret.
Once I was down to the a level I used 600 grit, 1200 grit and finally 1500 grit paper on each fret to remove the marks from the levelling process.
Next I took a triangular file to crown the frets. Once again I marked the top of each fret with the blue marker pen and then filed each fret until I was left with a thin blue line along the middle of each fret.
The file has one corned ground away so as not to damage the finger board but I still masked the fingerboard up to prevent any damage.
Once each fret was crowned with the file I used 600 and 1200 grit sand paper to take out the file marks and then used my Dremel and a polishing compound to shine the frets up.
With the frets shining I re-tensioned the strings and fine tuned the string height at the nut end aiming for a 0.012" gap at the first fret. With that set I adjusted the string height and then fine tune the intonation and finally the project was finished and ready to play!
It's great fun to play, but the volume and tone knobs are a little restrictive and do hinder play a little.
I presented the instrument to my son and he seemed happy with it and did actually acknowledge it after looking up from his X-Box for a moment! Plenty of time for him to have some fun with it!
So there it is, a Telecaster Ukulele featuring an all pine body with a glued in pine neck with an oak fingerboard.
13 frets with guitar style dot fret markers. Chrome machine heads and a copper plated pick guard which should darken with age.
The pickup is a 'hot rail' humbucking pickup with volume and tone control. The four string bridge is fully adjustable and the strings are mounted through the body, the same as a regular Telecaster.
I installed one string tree on the head and printed my own waterslide graphics .
The tone is crisp and clean with a lot of treble, as you would expect from an instrument of this size.
All in all this was a fun project and hopefully something my son will keep for a long tine and get some pleasure from playing it.
Now maybe I can get back to my guitar projects! although everything seems 'scaled up' now!
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