Oud building: step-by-step

I would like to share what I have learned in the past and still learn everyday with all the oud lovers and builders.
My special thanks goes to Khalid Belhaiba in Morocco, he is real oud master builder in our time.

There will be many aspects in my oud building process that other builders may have different opinions about, any critisim or advise is welcome as long as we respect each other opinions an way of working.
Also, In my opinion there are no oud secrets, every oud maker build the way he think is best of course by respecting some basic rules that are common in in the oud. like measurements, wood quality etc. (my couscous will not taste the same as my mother's, even If I robocopy here)


The purpose of thisproject is to build a good looking oud that sound like an OUD. I will talk about wood, glues, hideglue, soundbaords...

I will make as much pictures as I can and even some videos from time to time. (difficult to hold the camera and work

So let's get to business.

This will be a very interesting thread Samir...thanks for sharing and looking forward

The Wood


I will not talk about all types of wood that are good for oud building, simply because there are so many.

a good wood for a first time oud builder, would be African mahogany or simillar wood. but there some expensive type of mahogany, like Cuban and Honduran. any accoustic wood that can be bent is fine.

there some kind of woods thar are famous for the accoustic quality like, Brazilian rosewood, Indian Roswood, Maple, High grade walnut etc.

for this project, I have chosen, High grade Indian rosewood and Flamed maple for the bowl. I will talk about the other components as I progress.

I have purchased a nice block of aged maple like this one:





so you need a good planner and and a saw table of course:

Final measurement as you see in the picture;
length: 70 cm
thick: 4 cm
wide: any one will do: I think this one is 18 cm. enouph for one oud. I have a professional thin kerf blade that save money and wood

ribs sawing

Sawing the ribs out of the block.

This wood is already couple of years old, this is very important or it need to be dry enouph so the wood will not move much when the oud is finished. the wood is always a life.

after sawing the ribs, I leave them in the working room for 2 or 3 weeks before starting the oud build.

The thikness of the ribs is about 3 mm when resawing. by the way, this is a dangerous mater as the wood block get smaller, the hand and finger are closer to the blade. I always use wood pushers, safety glasses and dust mask. you should take all the security mesures or have at least some experience with wood sawing.

I will reduce the thikness to 2.5 mm later with a small thikness planner.



I will do this for the maple and the Indian rosewood.
I need about 21 ribs(2 extra). The bowl will be made out of 19 ribs. 11 Rosewood and 8 maple.





You notice some pen stripes on the maple. I have the same on the rosewood. Before I saw the ribs I design a triangle on the wood, this way I know which rib is which for the esthetic of the oud later(like book matching). I will come back on this one later.

Great idea Samir !

I'll follow closely this thread.. It'll be a classic for sure


regards,


Dan

Thank you guys,

Working with flamed wood is always a challenge, specialy maple. Maple tend to bend back after a while. so it need always some adjusements when mounting the ribs.
Issue number 2 is thiknessing. a thikness sander would be perfect but as I dont have one, I use a miniature thinknesser, but it damage the flamed wood sometimes because of the structure (waves). so the trick is to wet lightly the wood and wait 10 min before thiknessing.

issue number 3 is flatening the ribs with the planer. the edge of this waves becomes little holes if the planes is not rasor sharp and just about extended for shaving.

Way to Goo. Good luck. I'm smelling some mastership. Go on Samir.
All Best Wishes for YOU:

Preparing the purfling

I have also have cut some Cherry and ebony blanks to make the purfling for in between the ribs:
the cherry will be used fot the roswood\mapel oud, the ebony will be used for another flamed maple oud I'm building at the same time.

this purflings are about 0,9mm. the smaller and finer they are the nicer the oud will look. It's like jewelry.








Bending the Ebony is difficult and time consuming. ebony is very breakable, so you need lot of heat and patience.

A broken ebony ribs

Hey Samir,

That's the kind of 'feuilleton' I like to follow.

Furthermore, an oud made of flammed maple with ebony purfling... hmmm. It's gonna be a delectable one.

Robert

Hi Robert,
Thanks, I Iike also the contrast black and white. I may call it black and white.

here are all the ribs for the 4 ouds I'm building this time. from left to right
Indian rosewood, indianrosewood/flamed maple, flamed maple, Brazilian rosewood

Neck and tail blocks

the neck and tail blocks are also ready. you can also see the tools I have used to make the blocks. You also need a hand saw.
the neck block is made from high grade mahogany, the same they use for the guitar and the tail block is made from russian triplex beechwood, easy to work with, very strong.



the neck is 14 cm wide and high. the same for the tail exluding the space for the last 2 ribs that finish the oud at the end. so the tail is actualy 14cm + the last rib. the last pictures shows this.

Ribs layout

The marks on the ribs I have made before help me recongnize the ribs and make the pattern I think would be nice on the oud.
Also drawing a line and numbers at the back of the ribs help outlining the ribs when mounting them, this way I will achieve an exact shape on both sides of the oud.

Continues

the neckblock and the tailblock are mounted on the air-mould
the flat part of the neck block is at one level to the bottom of the tail block.



the first 3 Ribs are bent and cut close to the line drawed before and finaly planed smooth to 45 degree




The first 3 Ribs and purflings are joined with glue simply by a thin rope, this will be the base of our oud. the rope make a super join without any gaps. It was hard to learn, but with practice things become easy this way.



3 ribs are mounted, when the glue is cured, I added 4 and 5 eetc...
the neck block and tails are marked by pen and devided by exact space to the number of the total ribs. except for he last 2 ribs at the tail block

Hi Samir,

Beautiful work as usual
Following this with a cup of mint Chai

Flamed maple

Thank you guys for you nice comments it encourage me ..
I couldn't resist finishing the maple oud first. I will continue with the other one with more pictures the construction.

I have finished he bowl 2 days ago, the paper strips with hot glue are in place after thoroughly romoved all the glue and dirt inside.
The bowl is sanded with 80 grid sanding paper and some scraping to remove little dunes where the ribs join.

The bowl is excalty 50cm long 36 wide and 18 cm deep. this measures could be changed a bit with couple of mm when mounting the sound board. I will aim for 50,5cm and 35,cm

the flamed maple waves follow each other and make nice circles all over the bowl. the ebony purfling and back circle add some extra to the oud.

The Bowl is also flattened to 100% flat table.

there is one thing that some LUTE builders in Belgium do, is to lower the area around the pickguard of the bowl by 1mm or two make the plucking area high enouph for the risha. but the sound baord will be little curvy at that place. I may try this another day.



I have showed in another thread before how the paper strips are glued:

Hi Samir

no this is not what I do for living.
It take about two days to build a bowl. But there is lot of preparation to it, like measurements, sawing, tuning and planing. and don't watch much tv.

In the summer it take take less time because of the warm weather, the glue take less time to cure.

there is a french proverbe: C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron - it is by forging (i.e. making horseshoes) that one becomes a blacksmith..

Justement c'est bien dit... et en effet mon homme, tu forge

2 jours... ca me prend 2 semaines... minimum.

You must have developed some techniques for speed because that is really phenomenal work rate.
Also, can you describe how you go about cutting, bending and fitting the liner strips in between ribs? thank you.

liner strips in between ribs

Thanks paolo, it is indeed a nice combination.

maker, I use Titebond glue.

Here is a picture showing how I bend (very traditional), and how I put the liner strips in between ribs., I first glue both sides of the ribs (not the strip) and startjoining them using the tape. it is an easy process, as long as the ribs are 100% flat to eachother.

Flamed oud

In between, I have cut the sound holes, mounted the soundboard and the neck for the flamed maple Oud.

scraping and sanding the flamed maple is difficult, but after couple of hours of intensive sanding up to 600 grid, the maple become very nice.

I have also appllied a combination of two light thin coats of stain . the wood came out beautiful (goldish), I have also applied some frensh polish.

The neck is also flamed maple....

Back on track

The bowl is now finished:
Some thoroughly scraping is done from the inside to remove any glue, bump or dirt.



A circle is drawn inside the neck and the back and covered with tape. This is done to achieve a nice and clean paper strips ends when applying hot glue



Paper stripes with hot glue to reinforce the ribs



After the hot glue is cured, the back is now scraped.


The bowl is flattered to a flat board with a hand planner.

Bridge

Quote: Originally posted by sabbassi

Hi Kelly, Thank you. I always mount the bridge at end of the oud building process. it gives much more flexiblity, as the heght, lining etc...I don't think mounting the bridge to soundboard before fitting to the bowl is good Idea. the neck is 19,5cm, which mean the strings lenght will be 3x19,5= 58,5 from bridge to nut.

Soundboard

I have choosen for this project an aged peace of cedar wood. I have sawed 4 peaces (book matched) couple of years ago and stored them in a dark dry spot in the basement and hope this will be rewarded with a nice sound.



The sides are planed flat with a planner until there is no light gap between the boards.



Joined together with Titebond glue.



Planned, scraped and sanded down to 2.0mm.



The soundboard is cut following the bolw shape



I have choosen an oval design for the holes with a (not fixed) bridge this time. this is my first mobile bridge by the way. the centre of the big oval is 19,5 cm away from the top of the soundboard.



3 holes open.



the holes are rounded (decorated) with 5 lines strips: Tulip/ebony macassar wood tripes



7 braces are also in place.
5mm thick 18mm high at first place(all of them)



The braces are then lowered and shaped to a pyramid shape
from top to bottom:


13mm,15mm,15mm,16mm,13-14mm,16mm,13mm

and lowered at both ends to almost 5mm, 4-5cm away to the ends.

Quote: Originally posted by sabbassi

Hi Yaron, This oud wil be with a mobile bridge. But I can show you how to mount a fixed one. it easy. I will post a picture.

soundboard mounted

before the soundboard is mounted to the oud bowl, a dovetail opening is made to the neck. the outlines of that frame is projected to the neck with an exacto knife for later.



the soundboard then mounted, everything need to be alligned, the braces need to fit exact inside, touching the bowl but not pushing it.




the neck is then hand sawed to fit in the dovetail.

Fantastic work once again Samir
sure it will be a happy Eid this year for you and buyers

sanding

Thank you ya abusin.
3id moubarak also.

Sanding paper from 80 grid to 2000 grid.



After couple of hours of hand sanding the oud is ready to get the firt fillers and an oil coat:
the soundboard is also finished , 500 grid is fine enouph
the 800 and up to 2000 is for the bowl. but used later when using french polish.




the back is oiled: tung oil.
the top with a very thin coat of purified linseed oil

Mehran, thanks
yes it is my first floating bridge. no major changes between this one and the fixed one. the braces are 1/2 mm thicker and the placement is to achieve less bass.

I started applying shellac and from time to time sand with 2000 grid and a filler. it's a real killer for smooth surface

shellac and pegbox

After a dozen of shellac coats, the bowl looks very nice. I will leave it to cure for 24 hours.




in the mean time, the pegbox is also ready.

END

The oud is finished and strings are up. a sound sample will follow up sometime...but it is very promissing already
thanks everyone for following this project.
soon another one.