New here

[Ron Sommers]

Hi, glad I found the forum.

I live in Colorado Springs and have built 5 violins.

Currently working on an L5 inspired by Bill Moll 15 years ago.

Got the back glued and ready to shape.

Hope to add to the discussion.

[Alain Lambert]

Welcome aboard Ron!

[Maxxwell Cassidy]

Hi, I'm Maxx, and I'm new here. I just had a total disaster with my first build, a soprano uke from an East Asian kit out of basswood ply. I followed the instructions blindly and put the fingerboard on in the wrong position, instead of just following my instinct and lining up the 12th fret with the edge of the body. I haven't fixed this yet, but I used white glue to put the kit together and that meant I was able to get the fingerboard off again using heat. I overturned a Paella pan and put a hot fire under it on the stove, put the frets right down on the hot back, was able to get a paint scraper under it, got it to come off, washed off the white glue, was back to square one.

I was hoping to post this sort of thing, including notes on my first from-scratch build. I was hoping to have all of my major mistakes on this first build, in public, so that I can learn from them. My daddy used to say that any fool can learn from his mistakes, but that a wise man learned from other people's mistakes. It is my hope that other people with learn from my mistakes, and that my airing my dirty laundry (I recently scarfed a neck all cattywumpus) will help my develop new techniques that avoid the pitfalls, some of them.

To what forum and in what manner should I do this?
I have some pictures out on a major website I am afraid to mention, lest I come up against rules, but if you pin something there, people can see it. I'm completely amateur at this point, hoping to make instruments for friends and family, at least at first, but if I sell even one of them for almost no dollars, there's a tax deduction for me I might wish to have. Do you host the pictures, media, etc., here? Should I just use this forum to store all these pictures and notes? Would that be burdensome to the forum or should I just post away telling every stupid thing I do?
Your advice on how not to step on toes would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Maxx Cassidy
Cassidy Lutherie
50+ years of woodworking, 50+ years of musicianship, 10+ years playing guitar,
family heritage includes 8 generations of music, and I have two whole months
experience building Ukuleles.

[Jim McConkey]

Hi Maxx, Welcome to the Forum!

We do host media here, an even encourage it, though we ask that you stick to some reasonable size constraints. Instructions for doing so are here:
http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1656
Some members do post on other sites and link here. That is fine if you already have the images somewhere else, but we generally encourage users to upload here. We have now been around for over 20 years, and we have lost some valuable information in old posts lost because the links no longer work, which is why we prefer images to be uploaded here.

There is a lot of free sharing of both techniques and mistakes here. Learning from others' mistakes hopefully keeps you from making them, too, and we can all learn from others.

The best place for this is sort of a toss-up. Since your uke is still in construction, start a new thread in Other Strings (anything that is not a guitar, but not bowed). If it was already finished, i would suggest putting it in Repairs, but Other Strings is probably better right now.