Soap Bottle Ukulele

This ukulele is made from an ordinary soap bottle and a few scrap pieces of wood. It works surprisingly well and is simple to make, but you do need a few tools. I like it because a lot of ukulele tutorials on the internet are fully made from wood, and this one is a little bit easier to make! I did not give dimensions for all the wooden pieces because the dimensions don’t really matter. I gave them for some of the pieces, to make the building easier! 

scrap wood, 4 pieces: 

• Body: 65cm x 6cm
• Small piece for the bridge: 7cm x 1,5cm
• Small piece, needs to be thick enough to drill holes through!!! 
• Saté stick 

Metal: 

• 4 Big bolts 
• 6 screws 

Soap bottle 

Strings: ukulele strings/nylon thread 

Good scissors (see picture for the scissors which I used)

Saw 

Wrench

Drill 

(Super glue)

Cut the top of the soap bottle (just under the cap). I used metal scissors, but you could also saw it off. Next cut a hole on the bottom of the bottle, for the big piece of wood to fit through later. It needs to be 3 cm x how thick your piece of wood is. Make the hole a bit smaller than it should be to allow a snug fit.

Next, make the big wooden piece. I made a drawing using fusion 360 to show what the dimensions are. After you make that, drill four holes at the top, depending on how big your bolts are. Make the holes a bit smaller to allow a snug fit.

Here, you should put the wood piece through the previously cut hole, and screw in two screws a little below where the bottle meets the wood. 

Simply take a screw and screw it onto the big wooden piece! 

This piece holds the strings in place, but also doubles as a support piece for the bridge! To make this, drill four holes through it, big enough for the strings to fit through. Then attach it to the big wood piece with three screws. 

Take your strings and put them through the holes of the support piece. Then take the saté stick and tie the strings to it. BE CAREFULL! If you are using ukulele strings, make sure to put them in the right order! The order is GCEA. 

Tie the other ends of the strings to the bolts. If the knots don’t fasten well, add some super glue. Once dry, place the bolts inside the corresponding holes. 

Now, take your wrench and start tuning your ukulele! It might sound silly, but it is the only way to tune it! At first you will have to turn for ages, but, as soon as there is some tension on the string take your tuner and look for the right sound! If you don’t have a ukulele tuner, I would recommend downloading an app, like for example “guitartuna.”