Thanks for all of the useful information and comments. I have been using a four piece neck and covering the scarf joint on the tuner section with an overlay. My thinking was that most likely the original necks were mostly made of one piece of wood and would be weaker if the angle were too steep between the neck and the tuners section. However, with the scarf joint I doubt that this will be much of a problem especially a the uke and not having too much string tension.

I discover that by tuning the uke to A, D, F#, B, rather than the normal G, C, E, A, the sound improved considerably. Guess that would put more pressure on the oak. Rather than doing a lot of experimenting I've sent away for some spruce for the next few ukes. I'm planning on building a uke for each of the grand kids that show any interest.

Hopefully I can keep the cost factor under control by using as much of my own wood as possible. Several years ago I cut some trees, had the wood kiln dried and its been seasoning for some time now. Mostly birch, maple, oak, walnut and aspen. Wonder if anyone has had experience with walnut? A friend gave me some mahogany from an old wooden boat that he is dismantling. A uke made from that would have quite a story to go with the music. The boat was even shipwrecked one time near Put In Bay on Lake Erie.

Mooh, after honeing my skills a bit on the uke's I would like to put together a flat top mandolin. That four piece neck is interesting and would probably be simpler than for me than using a thrussrod.

Cap't Bob