Lowering the Action on Ukulele
 

Today I did minor surgery on my ukulele. When I received it the action was very high so today I lowered it myself. All I did was remove the white piece of plastic/bone whatever it is and re-tuned the ukulele. No buzz and it is considerably easier to play. Seems to have a more warm mellow sound now.

Will the removal of the plastic piece at the bridge cause any damage to the ukulele or to the bridge?

Lowering the Action on Ukulele
 

Johnny, removing the saddle is not typically a recommended solution to lowering the action. You’ll want to keep the saddle in its slot, but just adjust its height to lower the action. The material of the saddle is normally one that can produce the best tone and quality of the string as it’s plucked. Considering that an ukulele’s strings are soft, it won’t necessarily cause damage to the bridge without the saddle, but the bridge would most likely eat away at your strings a lot faster as it’s not shaped nor meant for that purpose. Maybe you could YouTube videos on “how to shave Guitar saddle” as it’s fairly straight forward.

With that being said, it’s your instrument and there isn’t a law against what you’ve done. Whatever gets you playin’.

If I sand down the plastic to the height I want, then the sides of the slot will be the same height as the plastic. Is it alright to sand down the top of the slot so it will be slightly lower than the plastic? What percent of the wood could I remove, half, only a small amount?

you removed the whole saddle? So what point were the strings terminating? On the edge of the bridge plate. That would certainly lower action considerably, but also massively throw off the intonation. The top of the white saddle needs to be in a very particular position to accurately terminate the string to ensure the right scale length between nut and saddle.

The right way to lower action at the saddle is to sand the base of the saddle down a bit, keeping it flat - thereby dropping the strings, but keeping the break point at the same place