There’s a fantastic ukulele shop here on Oahu called Kanile’a Ukulele. They hand make gorgeous “ukes” and have a great tour of their facility. It’s family owned and operated and the pride they take in their hand-made instruments is so palpable – well, I had to have one. More about that later, but here’s some pictures of the tour.
Here's the start of the tour. Our guide is holding a newly milled uke neck.
Their ukes are made from the local Koa wood only found in Hawaii. They have a giant bandsaw that cuts the wood to about 1/10" thick, then they "book match" it. After they are dried, they are put into production here.
Laying out the pattern on the book matched sections of wood.
After the top and bottom are ready, the sides get bent and put into a mold for assembly.
The sides go into this machine which is a custom shaped mold with electric heating pad...
...the wood gets sprayed with water and then clamped down and the machine is plugged in. You can see the wood relax and bend.
After popping the sides out of the bending machine, they are carefully sanded until you can't see a seam, then glued together into this mold.
In the mean time, the top is getting it's "structural pieces" and put in a suction gluing machine that holds all the pieces down while the glue sets.
Once all the pieces of the body are prepared, they get glued together. Here you can see how the book matched wood really makes for a stunning pattern. Each one is absolutely unique.
On the other side of the room, the headboards are being glued to the necks.
Logos are cut out of contrasting wood...
...and inlaid into the headboard. Each piece of the uke is carefully matched and has a serial number on to ensure the best combination of wood color and pattern is built in.
Fingerboards and frets being prepared. Mine will have a rosewood fingerboard with mother of pearl position markers.
Once the parts are all joined, the uke goes upstairs to the finishing area. The first phase here is to progressively sand it from it's rough form (left) to a ready for finishing stage (right).
These are all sanded and ready for finishing. I was able to order one of these and customize the finish (gloss body with "silk" finish neck). Mine is the second row from the top, fifth one in from the right. It will get finished over the next couple weeks and sent home. Really fun to look through all the wood to find one that really jumped out at me. It has an amazing, shimmering burl type of grain pattern. It is a piece of art as well as a beautiful, hand-crafted instrument.
The first stage of finishing is to apply three coats of UV-cured filler...
...then the gloss finish is applied in the spray booth.
After the finish, there's progressive sanding all the way up to 1600 grit sandpaper and then two different grades of polishing compound on polishing wheels. Then it comes to this man for final finishing - applying the bridge, tuning keys, nut and strings. They put the strings on one at a time and test each for the best "feel" and adjust the nut and bridge height as needed. The result is a really easy "action".
So of course my camera battery died before I could take a picture of the one I picked out, but this is an example of the kind of grain and finish (but not the heart shaped sound hole - that's custom to this one).