Leaderboard

Thanks folks! For the fretboard, I had found an offcut of some purpleheart that I used for neck splices in the past. I sliced a length off on the bandsaw and radiussed it with a radius block: Then used a 24.75" (I think it was) scale in my fretting mitre jig starting at the 5th fret to give me the 17" scale: Next I added some sawn strips of purpleheart to act as binding, curved to radius and taper using my little block plane: As the purpleheart gets exposed to the light it will pinken markedly. Originally, I was going to put a plain ebony headstock plate over the mahogany...but maybe a bit of purpleheart there too? Got me thinking and experimenting. Hmmm...and was there room for a swift in there too? : Then add some dots and frets to the fretboard - this might work: Then back to the neck. No trussrod needed but, as it is a mahogany neck, maybe a little extra stiffness would not go amiss - so I slotted the top for a couple of hollow carbon-fibre beams: With that sorted, I could bandsaw the neck and start shaping that. Before shaping the heel, I added an extension to its length. The neck is just laid on top of the fretboard - it won't be glued on until the neck angle is fully sorted (a long time yet!): Did a bit more carving to start sorting the neck profile and, in the same way that you can't have too many clamps, you can never have too many swifts! You can tell the age of my iphone by the colour aberrations of its camera!! Starting to look like an acoustic guitar neck

I really like the idea and will be keeping a close eye on things.

Yes - same concept. I'll play around with the key tuning when it's done to see what the tone and playability is like with the differing string tension so it may not be used A to A - could be, say, down tuned a couple of semitones but the relative tunings of the strings will be guitar-like rather than uke-like and then, if the grandchildren progress to larger guitars in standard tuning, at least they don't have to relearn the chord shapes, etc.. For the tone, I am also going X-brace and a pinned bridge rather than a more standard classical guitar fan bracing and top loaded bridge. I have decided this purely on a hunch and have since thought, 'do any uke's have X-bracing?' so did some searching on the web. Not many do, but how about this for a pertinent Youtube video...and it's a Tenor size body too!!!! Remarkable sound difference - and each good depending what you are after. And it confirms that my hunch might be right for the particular sound I am after (which is emphatically not a uke sound for this particular build)