Sheepelele ~ Part 1 ~ Unique Instruments

 

Sheepelele ~ Part 1 ~ Unique Instruments

Good grapes, guys, this project has been much more trying than I would have ever imagined.

I've put together a lot of strange and unusual things over the years and this one is pretty much my favorite out of all of them...the Sheepelele.

My son found this sheep skull in the grasslands and I made a trade with him so it wouldn't end up sitting on a shelf for the rest of its life.

After the trade, I got to work pretty quick. I spent an afternoon cleaning every nook and cranny with a toothbrush and a paintbrush to get all the grasslands grock out of it.

Luckily, there wasn't too much grock to dislodge and then I spent the time with a lot of superglue to make sure every bone, tooth, and flappy piece was well attached.

I had a hard time deciding between leaving this natural or painting it solid black. I ended up using an onyx stain that would still show all of the seams, teeth marks, wear and tear, etc.

It turned out pretty amazing if I may say so. I left the teeth natural because they had a lot of character.

I realized that this guy was missing a few chompers on the one side, so it was time to dig through whatever crystal points I had left and find enough to fill the missing pieces.

After letting the new teeth set for a day, I got to work on the ukelele parts.

The bridge didn't quite fit in the ONLY area that the bridge could be attached, so I used an old tip (that I hadn't had the heart to throw away yet) to cut the bridge down the best I could. I used an E6000 adhesive beneath it and screwed it to the top of the skull. It took a good 3 hours for the adhesive to fully set, so I set it aside and started working on the neck.

The stain matched a lot better than I expected, but there was a problem with the shape of the neck and attaching it to the back of the head.

I probably spent an hour trying to Dremel this into a shape that would closely match the skull and still have enough left to attach it. 
This was a really bad idea that I will explain later on. I never should have done this, however, it did fit perfectly on the skull.

All right. Next up was attaching the neck to the skull. I know I'm horribly out of order, but really...who

really cares. It's a Sheepelele. This was a lot harder than I expected. Trying to level the fretboard with the bridge was incredibly difficult. However, I got it pretty d@mn close. So I added more adhesive and screwed it into the back of the skull. I left it to sit for almost two days (mainly because I was way behind on important things).
 

Next up, I started to put in the knobs and spent way too much time trying to figure out exactly which knob goes where. 

(I've never built a ukulele before)

THEN, I took out my strings just to see which ones I needed in which place and the instructions that came with them said to go by their labels. 1 through 4. There were no labels. 

I ended up borrowing my daughter's actual ukulele and tried to match up the strings so I could label them myself. Good lord that was more difficult than I had imagined.

After (I thought) everything was completely dried and fully secured, I started stringing this bad boy up. Yes, I realize the bridge is way too close to the neck, but it's what I had to work with...this is the problem I'm dealing with now and why this post is labeled: Part 1.

So now, I have this super cool Sheepelele, one of a kind instrument, on my kitchen table that doesn't make the right noises - or even close to the right noises. The noise at this point is irrelevant to me. It looks like a demon ukulele so I don't care if the sound is off. However, when I tried to tighten the strings - the neck pulled free from the skull. 

I'm a little heartbroken and I should have realized this in the beginning, but the bone was softer than I thought and it pretty much bored the screw hole out.

So this brings me to the semi-unfortunate end of part one. I had to completely detach the neck the rest of the way (which was much easier than I thought) and see what I could do to remedy the problem and make it better in the long run. And I mean make it better by making it make the right sounds.

I stared at this thing for hours trying to decide how I was going to make this work before just cutting my losses and ordering a replacement neck.

In Part 2...hopefully...I plan to lengthen the distance between the bridge and the neck and also find a way to support the two pieces better together. I have an idea already that I'm really hoping will work, but only time will tell.

I'm in a waiting game right now as I wait for my replacement neck during the busiest online delivery season of the year. Sh!t...

But, I am pretty happy that I got this far and I still have some pictures of the original Sheepelele put together for a short time. If all else fails with this project, I'll have an awesome piece to hang on the wall.

Until next time: