A few months ago, Jess accidently stepped on one of the ukuleles neck and broke the neck in two. Here you can see the break. It broke at the splice that was already in the neck. The fretboard came off at that spot as well. We had recently build a ukulele from a kit, so we knew what to do.
The first step was to glue the two pieces of the neck back together. I cleaned up any badly-fitting sprigs of wood and mated the two pieces together dry to find the correct length. If it isn’t the correct length, then the fretboard won’t fit back correctly and the scale will be off.
Once I got the placement correct, I used Titebond II mixed with a little water to thin it out and used a paintbrush to apply a thin layer of glue to both sides of the break. I clamped it with a mini cam clamp and left it for 24 hours to dry.
Once this was done, I attached the fretboard piece. Due to the way it broke, I had to file down a couple places before it would fit correctly. I used the same mix of glue and water as before to attach it. I clamped it with two large 24” bar clamps. I used these because the large foot applied even pressure on the face of the fretboard. Again, I left it to dry for 24 hours.
Finally, there was one loose fret and a couple of places where the fretboard didn’t seat fully, so I used water-thin super glue to wick into those gaps and used the bar clamps again to apply even pressure.
With the exception of the fret I replaced being a bit too low, and the chunk missing from the back of the neck, it is as good as new! There is only a very slight buzz on one string due to the fret I replaced being too low and I’ve since been too lazy to fix it. Otherwise the uke plays as good as it did before the accident. I think the key is patience with this type of project. We learned that with the uke kit we built previously. You absolutely can’t rush things else you will ruin them.