Big Island Ukulele Guild
Minutes from 4/16/2019
Aloha guild members. Twelve members, including several newcomers, gathered for our March 16th meeting at Pat and Gary Cassel’s Waikoloa Village home.
Click image for next photo or start a slide show
We had a fun kanikapila prior to the meeting. Carlos Newcomb led us as we played along to a collection of tunes from The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. A lot of chords!
New president Carlos Newcomb resided over our first meeting this year and filled in for vacationing treasurer Tom Russell with the guild financial report. We have $3399 in our coffers, $827 from current memberships.
Carlos addressed our current guild website with suggestions for enhancing its capabliities; such as promoting members with links to their work, including the use of 3d images, allowing visitors to our website to take a complete look at the instruments we build. He suggested that this might encourage more membership, which is currently down to 31 members.
He also set up live video coverage of our meeting – a first! Tom Parse in Alaska tuned in, as did Garth David from British Columbia and Roger Johnson, who was on O’ahu.
Here’s an update on possible ukulele exhibits. Gary Cassel contacted the Kahilu Theatre and it appears that we’ll have no show options this year, but Carlos and Gary will continue working on this possibility. We are checking out two possible venues in Kona – the BMW dealership and the Hawaii Community Federal Credit Union, but both would require freestanding display boards. Sam Rosen mentioned that the Donkey Mill Art Center might have some display boards that we could borrow. We’ll continue to explore this idea. Roger Johnson suggested other exhibit possibilities at the hotels lobbies lining our Big Island coastlines.
To build interest in the guild, Terry Davis suggested a display at the monthly Kokua Kailua Downtown Village Stroll. We’ll keep you posted!
Show & Tell
During show and tell, Barbara Bach displayed her purpleheart tenor ukulele with a unique sound port cut using a jeweler’s saw and bird’s beak - and a laminated neck that should look very interesting after she shapes it. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!
I’ve been experimenting with zero nuts and modified one of my U-Bass. Looks promising – and much easier to set the action of an instrument. I’ve included a photo of my Corian version and a ZerO Glide Nut sold by Gold Tone Music Group.
A discussion arose about rub on finishes such as ColorTone Wipe-On Poly Finish, Wood Welded Emmet's Good Stuff Wood Finish, and I’m about to try spraying CrystaLac Waterborne polyurethane, so members sharing their thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.
Demo
Carlos’ demo was very high tech and interesting. Building upon a ukulele photo booth first demonstrated at a previous meeting by Tad Humble, Carlos hung an instrument in the modified booth, took a photo of it and spun the ukulele ten degrees for each new photo. Using a computer photo program, he merged them into a short, seamless video of that allowed us to get a 360-degree look at the uke. This would be a great way to show off instruments on our website!
Terry Davis worked out how to make offset rosettes using a StewMac Precision Router Base and Soundhole and Rosette Routing Jig. He made it look easy and there perhaps we’ll have a workshop for this.
And meeting host Gary Cassel concluded the gathering by offering up a rendering of a simple-to-make ukulele that might make a great student project. Something to consider for a future guild project?
The location of our June 15th meeting is still to be determined.
Our webmaster Tom Russell is on holoholo, so I’d sending the meeting notes and photos as an email attachment until Tom can repost them on the guild website.
Chris Stewart, BIUG secretary