Cut up your old band saw blades or hacksaw blades into 2 and 3-inch sections. Cut up some scrap hardwood ½ thick by 1' high by 2 or 3 inches long. Kerf one edge of the hardwood section about three sixteenths deep and insert the toothed edge of the bandsaw blade into kerf and secure with 5-minute epoxy.

Flatten opposite blade edge with flat mill file...burnish edge to create a hook and you will have a sharp and handy scraper.

Super glue stored away on your shelf? Used just a bit a couple of months ago and now the tube is rock hard and ready for the trash? Keep your super glues in the refrigerator to give it a longer shelf life.

Rule of thumb. For unwound strings slot depth to same diameter of string. For wound strings usually depth is ½ diameter deep as string is wide. However, if you are an aggressive strummer and play like Sid Vicious. deepen slots a bit.

Buzzing on open strings without depressing frets is usually indicative of faulty nut slots. Too narrow and string pinches. Too wide and string wanders, rattles and buzzes. One other culprit maybe a saddle that has no crown and is flat. String doesn't know where to be...add crown.

Filed slots should be in the same direction of your tuner placements and following the same angle as the ramp of your headstock...which means the top of your nut is angled toward tuning gears in the same angle as the headstock scarf joint.

Tools from your local office supply. Take a trip down to your Local Office Supply Store and purchase these items: Fat Rubber Bands: great for holding together sets and keeping loose items together. Metal binder clips…both small and medium sizes. Use the clips to hang up soundboards, gives them good air circulation. Clips are good to hang any tool or jig that doesn't have a hanging hole already. Also doubles as a mini clam for tentalones bindings and purflings. Flat erasers…a must for sanding. And don't forget the magic markers…always a need for a strong visible line. Canned aerosol… compressed air in a spray can. Always at the ready for quick clearing of the ever-present dust and sawdust buildups…sans the noise and racket of an air compressor. A bulb syringe also works well.

For you fish lovers another must device is a simple air pump that can be used while inlay routing to provide a constant stream of air to get rid of dust and enable one to actually wear a dust mask that covers ones mouth. No need to blow now…let that air pump do the work. For most users of the fabled Dremmel an air pump affixed to the Dremmel and a clear plexi base is a must for fine, quick and accurate routing of inlays.

I'm constantly employing different methods to thickness saddle/nut blanks…(usually by router or sander to hog off large amounts) .Then final smoothing and polishing by hand. Here's another method that I recently tried, to hog away excess nut or saddle materials. I chucked a Dremmel # 115 high-speed cutter in my drill press. It's the high speed bit with the spiral cut flutes on the sides and bottom. I set my drill press stop just short of the estimated finished thickness. Turned on the press and cranked down on the flat blank as if I were drilling multiple holes...actually using the bit like a rotary surface planer. Its safe and you'll get a uniform thickness throughout. Final sanding can be easily done by rubbing blank on sandpaper face up on your bench. Aloha Nate dba GUITARSMITH.

Having trouble matching colors when you are putting together your Ukes complete with back strips, tail grafts, purflings and bindings and all that requisite cool design mayhem? Here's a tip…take a stroll down to your supermarket and stroll down the aisles with pencil and paper pad. Check out the products for sale and note their respective color schemes. Most products average 3 to 4 color combinations to flaunt their logos or product-packaging theme. Now these colors are not randomly picked. Companies pay the large bucks to designers who produce these color variations…so take your time and look around and jot down your favorite combinations…you will be surprised how integrated your uke will be when attention is paid to color schematics…and best of all, its free. Your uke will be a bit tastier and without the chaos of a slew of exotic woods and inlays converging on one another looking like a 70's love mobile.

For finishing blunders and those accidental scratches, here's some tips. Andy Berard of Okona Ukuleles and Guitars…uses Micro Mesh finish papers for rubbing out scratches…Howard Tanaka took Andy's advise and Micro mesh and was able to rub out scratches from his lacquer finish. Emil Bader uses Novus Products 1 and 2 to get at scratches as well; and 3m Polishing papers are also truly effective for light defects in the finish, followed by rubbing compounds.