On contracting a disease...

In my last blog I shared how I happened upon the playing of ukuleles. Now I very quickly was "hooked" and without even knowing it started to have symptoms of a new disease. I later learned that it it has a name... UAS or Ukulele Acquiring Syndrome. This also triggered something else more insidious, read on and I will explain.

I started to dream of getting a banjolele. This is an instrument that sounds like a banjo, but plays like a ukulele. I am not sure why I wanted one, but it seemed unique and interesting. After searching for one and seeing the price (gulp), I figured I could build one. How hard can that be right. Ignorance is bliss.

"This led to weeks of crazy behavior."

In the process of building a banjolele.

This led to weeks of research, drawing, trial and error, and other crazy behavior. I only have a few hand tools so the biggest challenge was to figure out how to make something I have never made before with the equivalent of "stone knives and bear skins".

Now I will jump to the end of the story. I did build a banjolele. It did play (and sounds like a banjo). It does not cure UAS but actually makes it worse.  It stoked my insatiable, irrational desire to have more ukes AND drove me to want to build another ukulele. Maybe this a viral strain of UAS like UBS (Ukulele Building Syndrome), UBS creates and insane thought like "What am I going to build next?" BTW, it felt pretty good to start from scratch and have a playable instrument. It wasn't perfect, but still quite nice. Also, more building did come but that will be another post.

"What am I going to build next?"

The finished playable banjolele.