Gourd Ukelele

I teach research skills to a bunch of gifted middle school apples. Each semester as they learn how to do college level research on a topic of their choice, I do a project too to demonstrate the lessons and strategies. Last semester I chose to research gourd musical instruments, in particular a gourd ukelele.

I started with the song, Follow the Drinking Gourd. Dr. Uke's Waiting Room has the lyrics and chords on his website. In fact, the Audio Play for the song is a terrific way to learn it....Brilliant Dr. Uke! The song's history is long and varied depending on the historian questioned. In any event, it started my personal research into gourds in combination with music.

These were the pieces I ended up using for my project: a kettle gourd, a front from a guitar, and neck from a mandolin. The final ukelele is still in the garage being assembled, but so far so good!

A kettle gourd cut in half. 

An old guitar face shaped and glued on
the gourd with a reinforcing bracket
across the belly along the front of
the face interior to keep the gourd from
changing shape over time.

   





                                       

Mandolins have a foreshortened neck. There are too many
thumbscrews, so two from each side was removed.

Now, as the semesters have gone by and I have come up with some gourd parodies (see previous posts Always On My Mind - 3/20/15, Gourder Ladies - 3/10/15, Wooden Heart - 2/13/15, WonderGourd - 2/10/15, and That's A Gourd, Eh? - 2/8/15), it is time to revisit the gourd ukelele! I have decided to forego the mandolin throat and use a tomato stake and thumbscrews purchased through Amazon.com. This will be more aligned to the rustic, gourdy appearance I want to maintain with this project. Unlike gourd banjos by Barry Sholder, this one will be earthy and a lot more knock-about.



Right now, the back of the gourd has been wordburned with the beginning of vines. There will be leaves covering the empty spaces, to embrace the entire surface. Once that is done, the stake can be woodburned to continue the vine/leaf concept and put into place. Then, it is just a matter of stringing it up and let 'er rip!, song-wise that is!






[week later]  The next week, the belly was burned with leaves while chattin' with the gourdheads at a patch meeting. Hours passed but look at the leaves -- it produced an overall design that is fun to touch as well as see. A chisel tip was used on a basic, Boy Scout-type burners purchased at a big box store.






Another day of exploring new ways for old ideas!  
Keep Crackin'!