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'!

An Historic Look at Doodling

Continuing on our crackling gourd time of doodling, let's have a look-see at another time when doodling was popular, and now collectible. Delft pottery is a blue on white design that originate in the city of Delft, Holland in the 1700s when potters made imitations of Chinese porcelain with earthenware fired with white glaze and painted with blue designs. Only one factory remains in Holland that makes Delft designed pottery, Royal Delft. Today the blue/white designs are still eye-catching and highly collectible.

How did we get to this area of study? One of the Crackles is a member of the Guild of American Papercutters and in preparing to do an egg project, located a wonderful Ukranian egg YouTube with Lorrie Popow. At a recent gourd patch meeting, as the group was discussing the contrast of blue and white we noticed our snack of the day was in a Delft-inspired bowl from Dollar Tree -- what a cowinkiedink!

By reviewing the YouTube, the snack bowl, and various Delft auction items on eBay, we found there are some basic lines similar to all. By repeating those lines in various combinations, and maintaining the blue lines on white background concept. The flower is built, as you see, from a center circle, by adding more and more petals. The petal tops can have different finish tips as shown. The basic long, curved line and scallops can have infinite variations. Why not apply Delft to gourds?

The first trial started as an exciting exploration until we found out using white gloss spray paint to produce the background made the surface too slick, and the Sharpies we were using would not always be clear so lines had to be re-drawn to strengthen them. Using a satin spray made that problem much better.

Once done, spraying to protect the design became a real challenge because of bleed. Krylon and Rustoleum clear acrylics made the Sharpies bleed, no matter how light the misting was applied. Using paint to do a one-stroke painting would have been far better -- if only any of us knew how to do that!  [Another skill to investigate!]

One lesson learned, and only  hindsight made this real to us, was the fact that applying spray paint to a gourd in a cold garage -- even though it dried hard -- did not keep the paint on the gourd!  When trying this at home, spray a room temperature gourd with room temperature paint. Otherwise, everything can be flaked off with even a minor fingernail scrape.

So, lessons learned and explorations complete, we have a gourd bowl with a variety of Delft-inspired designs around the belly. In the next project attempt, we would choose one design and repeat it around the bowl for a more controlled and deliberate look. As of now, it has the look of a doodle. Eventually, this bowl will have a silk ribbon rim sown onto it after the edge has been cut to mirror the edge of the design for an uneven, dynamic top.

Great exploration Crackled Apples!