Mastodawn

At long last, I'm going to document what was probably my most complex project so far. The actual thing is finished now, but I somehow missed the right point in time to start a #buildlog - so here it is. 🧵⬇️

Backstory: A few years ago, I decided that I first want to build a machine for building guitars, then build an actual electric #guitar. The machine - a huge CNC router that occupies the floor space of my office almost entirely - had been complete and working for a while now, so in late 2024 I finally managed to get started.

Side note: I'll try to update this thread faster-than-realtime, so I hope it won't take me another 1.5 years to finish it.

#lutherie

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viernullvier May 9

At that point, I only had a mostly theoretical understanding of #woodworking (earned through days of watching YouTube videos) and some limited experience with working with my CNC. The idea was that I'm going to screw up my first instrument anyway, so I settled for an electric baritone #ukulele instead of a full-scale guitar to save material and reduce some complexity (Spoiler: Little did I know that the non-standard nature of the instrument rather raised the difficulty quite a bit).

Why a baritone ukulele? I find the fretboard of a regular ukulele a bit too crammed and tiny to play comfortably, so a longer scale length should also improve things a bit. Also, standard tuning of a baritone ukulele is identical to the four high strings of a standard guitar tuning.

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viernullvier

I started out with a #CAD model of the entire instrument. At the same time, I gathered all of the hardware parts and wood blanks (and modified the model accordingly). One important thing I learned at YouTube University: Have your parts ready when designing the instrument. It definitely helped a lot and probably avoided countless mistakes.

I was using #FLOSS software exclusively (save for the operating system) - #Dune3D for modelling, #FreeCAD for CAM, #OpenBuilds and #FluidNC for machine control.

So, how do you draw the shape of an instrument from scratch? Turns out it's really complicated to come up with something aesthethically pleasing. My first attempts didn't look very promising, so I decided to go with something tried-and-true and just settled for a #Jazzmaster (which earned the project the nickname "Jazz Apprentice").