Play your mandolin like an ukulele?

Hello everyone, a while ago a local luthier helps me to turn one of his mando (he made it) into a 4 strings ukulele, he left the tail piece on it and now it becomes an ukulele with low G string on it. Since then I fell in love with steel strings and love the fact I can play ukulele chords on a mando. However, he didn't charge me for the conversion so I would not like to bother him again. Recently I saw some antique but good condition mandos on eBay, I wonder if I can just leave the 8 tuners on and take off 4 strings, will it have the same result as that luthier did for me (he took off and made the Mando with 4 tuners though). The antique mandos just look too tempting... (I am sorry if my question upset mandolin players, I like Mandolin as it is, it just my fingers are too small to hold two strings at a time). Thank you for reading my post.