How it started:
2025-05-17
I picked up this Amahi Under the Sea Soprano Ukulele at a thrift store for $8 yesterday.
It appears to have had nail polish spilled on it. The strings were covered in it and there were spots and smudges all over the whole thing. I removed a lot of it with acetone before thinking to take before photos.
Today, while poking around the shop, I decided to start sanding it. I managed to get most of a first pass with 80 grit done before I ran out of energy for today.
How it’s going (so far)
2025-05-20
I did some more sanding. I still have plenty to go with the 80 grit. But I wanted a peek at the wood, so I went back over some areas with 120.
I recognize that it would have made a lot more sense to lightly sand and paint over the old paint. But I like having a slow, meditative project to chip away at sometimes. Plus, I could use the sanding/patience practice.
It’s a cheap ukulele and the wood grain won’t be spectacular, but I’m planning to stain and seal it. Probably with some painted details as well.
2025-05-23
Done with the 80 grit! The top layer of whatever paint was on there was a real pain to get through. I’m glad to be done with that part.
I’ve got the ukulele and some sandpaper scraps stashed on the back porch, so I can chip away at it any time I’m sitting outside enjoying the weather and want something to do with my hands. It’s very satisfying.
2025-05-24
Almost done removing the paint with the 120 grit. Each of these sanding sessions is anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours of hanging out on the porch whenever I feel like it. It’s nice!
2025-08-08
Finally staining! I’m using an oil based “Black Cherry” stain.
2025-08-09
The stain didn’t come out nearly as dark as I wanted, but this is still a nice improvement.
2025-08-24
More coats of stain didn’t help, so I mixed the stain with a warm gloss oil based polyurethane. It’s hard to get it on smoothly and evenly.
2025-09-07
I sanded the poly back, and got an airbrush. I’ve been wanting to play with one of those for a while. I mixed up some more stain/poly and thinned it out significantly with mineral spirits. I did lots of tests on scrap to practice and was doing okay with it. I managed several okay, if somewhat splotchy coats, but eventually got some pretty significant runs.
2025-12-06
Oops, I kinda stopped documenting the process. It was really dragging on. Anyway, I sanded the poly back and finally gave up on the airbrush and applied several thin coats of a slightly less thinned down stain/poly/mineral spirits mix, lightly sanding between coats. It’s still not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it. Though I think I should have stopped a couple coats earlier. I went a bit too dark, I think.
I reinstalled the hardware and strung it and now I’ve been randomly picking it up to play with. I’ve never learned to play an instrument before, and always felt awkward even holding one. But now that I’ve handled this ukulele for many hours, I’ve definitely gotten over that part. I still don’t really know how to play it, but I can make some sounds on it!
Here’s how it looks as of today:
It’s splotchy and imperfect, but still a major improvement, I think! Plus, I learned a lot about oil based stains and finishes. I’ll still keep messing with it from time to time. I want to change the color of the blue fret inlay markers least.
As a joke, I learned to play Taps, so now I can play sad little tune when someone drops their sandwich or whatever. I gotta say that Taps played on a ukulele is really goofy. I love it. I’ve also started learning the Jeopardy “waiting” theme. So I guess I’m using this instrument as a silly soundboard rather than actually playing songs. That feels about right for me. Anything that gets me playing it is still progress towards learning an instrument!
