Pocket Sized Foldable Ukulele

The pocket-sized contest inspired me to make this small Ukulele. It almost completely fits into my pocket.

It is a bit weird how the strings go in and out the box when you fold or unfold the ukulele. The tension on the strings is applied when you close the box, because the strings go from the front to the back over the bottom side which gets smaller if the box is open, so this reliefs the string tension.

This ukulele is mainly build with layers of 6,3 millimeter thick planks of wood which are glued together.

Materials: Tuning gears; Set of ukulele strings; Fretwire, Wood (Beech for neck,headstock and body, spruce for front and back and ebony for fretboard); Screws and bolts; Woodglue

Tools: Saws (normal and jigsaw, fretsaw and iron saw); Screwdriver, Glue clamps

(add technical drawing)

First build the headstock and the neck because these two parts should fit together perfectly. To get the headstock as small as possible I placed the two tuning gears a bit shifted in the same slot.

The neck and headstock are attached with a small bolt and nut with a 3 mm diameter.

The sound box is fitted around the neck and headstock as closely as possible. The soundbox is divided in two parts the front and the back. The neck is attached to the front part of the box in such a way it can fold in and out of the box.

Now it is time to add the bridge on the body, this will define how the frets should be placed. Because the ukulele is very small I put the bridge as close to the end of the body.

I use the one of the leftover parts of the fretboard that I sawed of earlier to help me saw the fret grooves in 90 degree angles.

You can use this url for calculating where the frets are going to be:
https://www.stewmac.com/fretcalculator.html

Succes!!!