Hey Team!

The ukulele is built and will be on display at the Guitar Now! conference this weekend! Pat will have an entire display of his works, complete with live Go Long (!) footage, and our very own Lucas Haneman will be giving a master class! If you are interested, read more HERE!

“Hey Danielle,

I reached a milestone today - except for the bridge, nut and saddle, the building of the ukulele is done. I started today by changing the up and down angle of the neck to the body. In the first picture you can see that a ruler placed along the frets was just hitting the bridge whereas it should be just clearing the bridge. So I shaved and sanded the face of the heel and got it right as you can see in the second picture (this is probably more detail than you are interested in, sorry). When that was done, I glued the fret board to the neck using a big elastic as a clamp. I routed all around the binding with a small 1/8” radius round over bit. The rounding over improves the look of the binding and makes the instrument much nicer to hold. And that was it. I spent a couple of hours sanding and then put it together to take the last bunch of pictures. I’ll start the finishing tomorrow. There are a number of steps to finishing so it will take me four or five days till I’m done. Looking forward to seeing this wood under finish - it’s going to be amazing.”

“There are three main steps to the way I will finish this ukulele:  sealing the wood, filling the pores and the top coat. I start off by doing my best to get dust off the wood. The best method I have found for this is just to blow it off with compressed air. I do this each time before the next application of sealer/pore filler/top coat. The sealer coat has three functions: for oily woods it acts as a barrier between the oils and the coatings that follow, it enhances binding of the next coating to the surface and lastly, it physically fills the very small nooks and crannies i.e. things that go deep into the wood and are even smaller than pores. The last function is important because the pore filler and top coats are cured with ultraviolet light and it doesn’t penetrate well into these very deep, tiny fissures so, unless they are filled, they will retain uncured finish. This is also the reason I apply three coats of the sealer and the results are shown in the third picture.

The fourth picture shows the uke after two applications of the pore filler followed by sanding back. I always amazes me how difficult it is to fill wood pores and, sure enough, in this picture you can see top left of the sound hole the area where the light is hitting at the right angle to get sparkles off the surface. These sparkles are pores that were not completely filled and, therefore, not hit with sand paper when I sanded back. Although there is only a small area showing the sparkles, that’s just the lighting and, in fact, the whole ukulele surface is like that. So at least another round of pore filling is needed. The pore filler is a ultra violet light cured gel and I apply it with a spatula then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.”

“Here are some glossy photos.”

“I just got your ukulele strung up for the first time. Sounds great! I still have to make further adjustments to the action but it’s best to let it settle at tension for a few days prior to this.”

Hey Team! 

Here is a long overdue ukulele post! It is almost done and will be debuted shortly! Visit Pat Hawley here: www.hawleyguitars.com!

“Hey Danielle,

I got down to carving using my multitool, oscillating sander, rasps and sand paper. I use my drum sander to take wood off the back of the head and at the same time leaving a curve for the volute.  In the last couple of pictures I’m gluing together a couple of pieces of koa which I will use as the veneer for the top of the head.”

“I decided it was time to get the neck sitting properly on the body. Recall that the face of the heel was created on my table saw when I made the tenon…The first thing I do is to hollow out the cheeks of the heel with a chisel as shown in the third picture. I like to leave about a 1/8” ridge of heel face that actually contacts the body of the ukulele…It might be worth mentioning that at this point I’ve got a lot of fragile sharp edges on the neck that need to be treated carefully. If I put a ding along the top edge, that will show up under the fret board. Similarly, if I ding the edges I just created on the face of the heel, that would show when I mount the neck to the body. So I’m now extra careful in my handling of the neck. After the neck was aligned, I sanded it to the point where I don’t want to sand it anymore without the fret board in place. So now I can glue on the veneer I made up yesterday on to the head.”

“I got a really nice piece of koa to make the veneer for the front of the head. On the back of the head I put a black veneer. The veneer on the back hides the scarf joint that is formed making the head and the gold tuners pop nicely on the black. To cut the slots in the fret board I tape a print out of the fret lay out to the back of the board then, using a stretched thread as guide, run it across my table saw using a special blade that makes slots just the right width to hold fret tangs.”

I “pinned” the fret board to the neck by drilling small holes through a couple of fret slots into the neck and inserting nipped nails into the holes in the neck while leaving their tips protruding. This allows me to relocate the fret board accurately on the neck and do final shaping and glueing of the neck without the fret board moving.”

“Attached are pictures of doing the inlay on the fret board. First I lay out the shell (this is one of those steps where you have to keep track of right-side-up), then trace around it with a sharp pencil. I route out the pockets with a rotary tool with a small bit. I have an air blower attached to the tool and I where magnifying goggles to keep things so I can see the lines. When the pockets are done, I mix up some epoxy glue with some rosewood dust and glue in the shell with a generous amount of glue. The next day I sand off the excess glue to reveal the inlay.”

“Because I bound the fret board, I have to file back the fret tangs on each fret end so just the top of the fret goes over the binding. Getting smooth fret ends takes a couple of steps and I also knock off the sharp edge of the fret board at the same time. I’ll have to do more of this after I level the frets.”

Hey Team!

We are throwing a tour kickoff concert in Ottawa on Thursday, July 18th in the early evening and were wondering if YOU would host it! We will be starting a campaign to sell advance tickets to help raise funds for our five province tour and want to share the experience with you. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please contact us at go.long.music@gmail.com and we can plan an evening to remember together!

xo

Dani, Luc & Nic

So, the contest ended last night at midnight with over 3000 new followers on Facebook and Twitter. We couldn’t even get into the new comments and subscribers on Youtube, Reverbnation, or Soundcloud because it is overwhelming. We cannot thank you enough for sharing our music with your friends…this will really change a lot for us moving forward. We wish we could date all of you…but for now you will have to settle for extra love at shows. The winner of the WIN A DATE contest is…SUZANNE KING! She had luck on her side with her consistent commenting, sharing, re-tweets and mentions and we couldn’t be more excited for our night out on the town with her and a friend! We decided that one winner wasn’t enough, and with so many new followers overseas, we decided to add a skype date to the bill…and the winner, from Israel, is…EYAL MOYAL! Eyal is the head coach for the “Go Long” triathlon (an excellent name, if we say so ourselves…) so we are so excited to learn more about his day-to-day work! 

A huge thank you again to all of you for all of your support…it means everything. 

xo

Dani, Luc & Nic

We’re sitting here at the Go Long Headquarters - post-pizza binge in celebration of some of the most amazing news we have ever announced.

We will be joining Canadian power-houses like Craig Cardiff, Don Ross, and Brooke Miller on the artist roster of Partick Artists. They will be taking over our booking for the next few months and helping us with our Canadian tour to take place this Summer. If you need to get a hold of us, you can contact the amazing Jon-Rhys Evenchick…we can’t thank him enough for everything he has already done.

We are so excited we are writing songs.

You can check Partick Artists out here:

http://www.partickartists.com/

https://www.facebook.com/partickartists

I have said it before, and I will say it again: working with Pat Hawley is an absolute honour. I cannot believe how hard this man works. I already have so much to update you on in terms of the ukulele build, but on top of that, Pat received our K&K Pickups in the mail on Wednesday and had them installed in our two guitars by Friday for our huge show at Algonquin College. We couldn’t believe it - and playing these guitars in a dream.

Now…DOWN TO BUSINESS.

“Hi Danielle,

Today on your uke I installed the end graft, bent the bindings and installed them on the top (so far). When installing bindings I tape them into place then use elastics to bring them in tight to the guitar.” 

“With the bracing done, today I was able to fit the back and top to the
sides. The “fitting” part is cutting notches in the linings for the braces
that end up going under them.  The first picture shows gluing the back to
the sides. I’m not really putting much pressure with those giant clamps in
the picture, they just had the reach I needed. Elastics work great to put
pressure all around the edge. After the glue cured, I trimmed the top with
my router as shown in the second picture. The arm that the router is
attached to is to keep it vertical. This is actually more important for
guitars where there is more of a dome to the top and back so you can’t just sit a router flat on those surfaces and get a uniform channel for the
bindings. After the back, I glued on the top and trimmed it once again. I
took the series of pictures of the uke sitting on the block of wood after
the top was trimmed. Then I changed the depth of cut in the router so that it was set to make the right size ledge for the binding and went around the top and back edge once again.  The last thing I did tonight was to take some of that dark rosewood I showed you and cut up some pieces the right size for the bindings. I will bend and install those tomorrow (after I put in an end wedge).” 

“Tonight I scraped and sanded the bindings. Pictures are attached to show how the body looks with bindings. Still more sanding to do and I’ve got to route the mortise to receive the neck tenon. Then the body will be done!”

“The attached pictures show the steps I’ve done so far on the neck. I measure out to the 12th fret where the neck will meet the body and add some to allow for the tenon. The excess I cut off into two pieces and use those to make the heel stack. When the glue is cured, I cut the tenon on my table saw. Then I use a drill bit placed in the hole in the block in the body of the guitar to mark where it lines up with the tenon. Then I drill a hole in the tenon and screw in a thing called a hanger bolt which is a wood screw on one end and a machine screw on the other. The single screw, combined with the glued fret board on top, is more than enough to hold the neck on a ukulele.”

STAY TUNED!