Originally Posted by Neal
In general, when we as guitar players change our strings, we pull the string thru the hole, leave some slack for the windings, loop the excess over and under, or lock it at the post in some way, and tune up, clip the excess. Then we lift the strings off the fretboard gently to seat and stretch the string. We're good to go in minutes after that is accomplished, with some minor tweaking for a day or two.
Do the same thing with the uke with the exception of leaving slack for the winding. Pull it thru all the way, preferably with the post hole facing mainly down, if not all the way down. This way, when it is tuned, you will have 2-3 windings around the post and the strings will settle much quicker. If you have a lot of windings around the post, it truly will seem to, if not actually, take forever. Also, settled strings will always sound how that particular string will sound on your uke, probably best not to judge a set until that's done.
On pulling them gently to seat them properly, I do, directly from the 12th fret, but that may be just superstition and have no basis in the physics of nylon or fluorocarbon. They're usually settled in a day, with the stability to play in tune available pretty quickly.
Also, strum the heck out of it for awhile. Not only fun, but helps.
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