Tag: home made

Concert Box Ukulele

A recent creation influenced by Sam Kamaka Jr’s 1940’s cigar box ukulele.

Built from merbau side/neck/fretboard/bridge and pine braced marine laminate front and back, this is a concert scale length uke. Fretboard has a 9.25” radius, something I don’t usually add to my ukuleles.

Finishing in linseed oil and beeswax gave the uke a nice dark aged look.

It’s reasonably thin bodied, but rings out nice as the strings settle in.

It’s been a while since I posted a project here. An alternative (if here for projects not photos) is to check out my YouTube channel as I have a bunch of historic and up coming project builds there also: https://m.youtube.com/c/MikeHawkey/videos

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Frankenstein’s Uke mark1.5

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I featured this creation a while back and have since made one big adjustment – a new home built neck. The old one certainly had a look about it, but was too wide at the top, making it hard to play. This new neck (along with quality strings) has made a world of difference. Crafted out of seconds pine planks, it’s kept the build cost low. Next…practice!

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The Arcade

Arcade 1 buildDigging through some photos I thought had been lost with a computer changeover, several computers ago, I came across my arcade projects folders. All in all I have build 5 arcade machines to date. Two full standing, two bar top and one mini tabletop unit. Todays image, loosely based on an Aussie Lowboy, was my first. Built from the ground up with MDF, running a CRT and using Mame.

For me arcade machines made up a big part of my younger years gaming. Home systems were nice, but never as advanced as the games at ones local corner dairy. 20 cents would get you a round of ‘The Main Event’, ‘WWF’, ‘Double Dragon’, ‘Golden Axe’…the list goes on. Of course then came ‘Street Fighter 2’ and all of its roll offs (then 40 cents). Generally a pile of recognisable guys, all battling it out on the arcades, arguing over secret moves, boasting high scores and ocassionally asking for ‘secondies’ (ones second life).

Having ones own at home brings back such memories. The games are just as addictive as they once were, but certainly a step back graphics wise compared to todays units.

 

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