Another Week OFF!

As it turns out, my weekend home was quite a whirlwind. It was great to see my girl Michele, my dog,Jake, and the few friends I got to see at the two weddings on Saturday! I got to have a sushi dinner with my good friend Jon and Darlene, sweet of them to take the time! I also spent my daughter Heather's birthday with Her, Josh, her beau Geoff and Mish at our fave mexican place. It all was way too brief, and it will be another 6 weeks till I see Mish on Turkeyday! I miss everyone so much! The result of this time apart will be well worth it. As for that, you can see by the pix, our electrics are really starting to look like guitars!
I have received 90% of the hard ware, just waiting on the pick-ups. I made a custom headcap for my electric as well, which is made og what I call Bubinga paper, a piece of book-matched bubinga, left over from my acoustic sides, thickness sanded to aroun .030, about half as thick as a toothpick! I had to pre-bend this, as there is a slight arch on the headstock, it had to match, which required making a matching clamping caul. It took almost all of friday and was rather nerve wracking as if you mess it up you have to sand it off and start over! I also routed channels for the tortoise shell binding that will be going all around the body. I will fit and glue that in on monday. Next comes finish sanding and we will be in the spray booth by middle of next week, then fretting and final assembly. There has been rumors that the electrics will be done before Thanksgiving, or pert near. The acoustics obviously take a little longer, care and work. As you can see we have carved and glued in the sound board graft, transverse brace and X-bracing. Face braces and finger braces will be carved and glued in neck week, we are also gluing in kerfing, that holds the top and back to the sides and give you something to stiffen the sides and rout bingding channels- I also assume we will be doing acoustic neck inlays and neck carving next week and the following. Although the work is hard and sometimes overwhelming, there is a sense of comraderie among most of the people in the shop. People commenting on how good each others guitars look and comensurating when mistakes or accidents happen. And they do! the thing is, you have to look at mistakes as an opportunity to learn how to fix the problem without starting over! So it is applicable to the restoration and repair part that we will learn later on. The instructors to their own repair work while they work with us and so occasionally they will "DEMO" how to fix a top crack, repair a loose brace, replace or repair a tuning machine or fret work. A constant influx of incoming information. There will be so much to learn even after school is over, I guess thats why they call it a "practicing" luthier- you never stop learning, from practical experience, from others, books, etc.
Please be thinking, praying that a plan is already in place for me to use this new found knowledge and to use it in a way to help others. I have a lot of studying and note transcription to accomplish this weekend, so wish me luck!
Taking a few hours out tonight for a church sponsored OKtoberfest party then back to the books tonight.
I will eventually post all the links to the instructors music and instrument websites, I have to search teh web and compile them. soon.
Thanks again for your love, support and prayers! Miss you all!
Scotty

What a week(s)!

No blog info last week-what does that tell you, It was a tough week, In the creative sense, I am attempting to do a decorative head cap on my acoustic guitar which require me to make a laminate of hard woods that are thickness sanded to about .015
(that's thousandths of an inch) 1 piece of Maple, 1 ebony and then the decorative Bubinga and bbony cap all to equal around .070 see pics. on top of all the other work we have to do. I am currently cutting out support braces for the soundboard top-BENDING SIDES!-Lets just stop here a minute-They make it look very easy, but I will tell you this is like trying to wrestle a wildcat into a paper bag. The process is simple enough, wet them, wrap them in aluminum foil,put them in the bender, wait ten minutes, cool down for ten minutes then clamp them into a mold that is the shape of your guitar. Simple right? well this process require about 15 clamps, with cauls and four extra hand as well as the strength of 20 year old! and they must fit perfect, and they must com in and out of those molds to trim them to fit end to end, on the CENTER LINE! So at the end of that day I was spent! Everything else seemed to be going well, sound hole rosette was inlaid, the back braces installed and carved. My decorative inlay pieces cut and ready to fit. then it came time to align the neck for my electric. One moment of stupidity can ruin your whole day! I zigged when I should have zagged and wound up cutting my fretboard too short. Which means starting over on that process. That means thickness sanding, re-cutting fret slots, re-radiusing the fretboard, and re-registering and tapering the fretboard to get back to where I was the day before. Lemons to lemonade- I got to do all these processes again on top of performing a step that is usually reserved for the instructors, radiusing the fretboard-Kris Olsen (instructor) was very helpful and supportive. He showed me how the machine worked, how to set it up to carve an arch in a flat board and then actually perform the task of cutting a compound radius fretboard. So good came out of it. I am still performing quite averagely on my quiz's. There is so much info to absorb and retain, I am never sure what to study! I think I mentioned it we had a little mini concert by the Harp Guitar Trio-I will post their names and links soon. with more info-some pics for now.Things overall are coming along quite nicely- there will be plenty of beautiful guitars coming out of this class! Keep praying for knowledge and for me to keep all my fingers! I am looking forward to a trip home in a week! I miss you all but may only get to see a few-I apologize for that but I have two weddings on Sat. and church and a birthday on Sunday.
We are already in week 5 of a 20 week course so it will fly by. We have been told we will be spraying (finishing) our electrics in less than 3 weeks! I will take pics of it but will not post the finals until I return. Tease. Thank you all again for your thoughts, support and prayers. Here are a few pics
Love and miss you all-
Scotty