I am approaching the halfway point of my week-long vacation, so I decided to finally get going on a few guitar-building projects.

The adventures began on Monday, when I ventured down to Denver to a place called Aspenleaf Millworks to get some of the guitar bodies that I had purchased resawn.  For those unfamiliar: the guitar bodies that I purchased were 3 1/8″ thick.  Les Paul bodies are 1 3/4″, so to maximize this expensive old-growth stock I wanted to find a place to cut these 14″ wide slabs along their thickness.  This would yield me the Les Paul body stock that I wanted and an extra piece to use in a future project.

I’m really grateful for Shane at Aspenleaf Millwork… I had called 15 different places to get someone to resaw this wood for me, since I lack a band saw and thickness planer or sander to accomodate this size of a blank.  Everywhere else either didn’t have the capacity to do it, wouldn’t do wood that wasn’t theirs (what?) or wasn’t interested in helping me for such a small project.  Shane not only helped me, but went above and beyond to do the job right at a very reasonable cost.  I know where I’m going if I ever need this type of work done again.  For anyone that needs custom molding or millwork done, give Shane a call and you won’t be sorry.

That project is going to kick off in earnest later on this week.  I spent today getting the first steps of my acoustic project off the ground.  The first step was building a workboard and getting the neck and tailblock glued into position.  It was my first experience working with hide glue (it sets up fast!) but I was able to get the pieces in the right location and clamped up.  We’ll know if I was successful tomorrow when I unclamp things and see if it all stays together.  I also realized why the professionals seem to have a form that they place their bent sides into, then use screwed cauls to apply pressure to the sides and to hold the blocks in place while gluing occurs.  The hardest part of the process was fighting against the tension of the bent sides to position and anchor the tailblock in time to glue it.

I used a combination of spring clamps and cam clamps (three on each block) to apply even pressure while the glue dries.  With any sort of luck everything holds together when the clamps come off and I can move to applying the kerfing strips to the inside of the edges.

Right before I left for my business trip, a large box arrived at my house that contained the guitars that shipped from my cousin, John.  John is the owner/operator of a business called Custom-Relics that creates guitars inspired by famous artists or customized just for you.  Since I run his website for him, he made me two special guitars in payment (as is our deal).

The first guitar I got was a thinline rosewood telecaster with a Bigsby B-16 bridge (on the left in the photo).  I asked John for something similar to that because I like rosewood, and the inspiration for the bridge (that proved to be John’s bane) came from a posting on the Unofficial Warmoth forums.  I thought it was unique looking, and asked for it.

The guitar in the center is my Made In Mexico strat, which was in John’s care to get the pickups rewired.  This guitar was the project guitar that he and I were working on in December of 2009, adding Klein pickups.  At the time, we left quite a solder mess in there and John replaced the pickups and rewired it using the experience that he gained since then.

The guitar on the right was a surprise/Christmas gift.  John informed me that he was building me a unique strat and I would get very little additional information about it until I got it.  On Christmas, he surprised me with it… the paint job inspired it’s new name (Boba Fett), and the neck shape is the same shape as my Les Paul… big and fat.  I have spent quite some time with it since I unboxed it last night, I really love the guitar.

Having all these nice axes is great… I need to play more and learn some lead stuff so I can properly enjoy these instruments.  Thanks John, you’re the best!

In just the blink of an eye, a few weeks have lapsed since I have updated the ol’ blog here.  The good news is that my lack of long-form writing is due to a lot of real-life stuff going on.  There’s a lot of work stuff going on and a few less than great personal things going on, but I’d rather spend this time to focus on the new, fun, and exciting stuff that is happening.

For those of you not currently tuned in to my Facebook page and my Flickr page, I have been making solid progress on finishing my Dad’s ukulele.  The French Polishing is turning out to be both fun and relaxing.  It is a technique that will take some time to master, but I feel like my progress has been good for a first-timer.  I even got noticed by Breedlove Guitars on Twitter!  Because a lot of this work is happening in the garage, I tend to be posting progress on this project more in mobile photos and status updates, but I’ll probably do a wrap-up once it’s all complete.

Since that project is nearing completion (if I’m lucky, it’ll get done in the next week or so) I went ahead and ordered my StewMac dreadnought guitar kit and a small luthier’s shop worth of tools!  My main concern at ordering the stuff for this project so late in the summer is that I’m going to run out of nice weather to finish the project this year.  I may have to actually (gasp) get up early on the weekends if I’m going to have enough hours in the shop to actually complete it before winter hits, or I’m going to have to invest in a space heater and some shop lights for my garage.

But regardless of the weather conditions, I am excited about this project.  I’m confident that I’ve educated myself sufficiently by reading books and the Internet to get this kit built, and the lessons learned on Dad’s ukulele give me confidence in the finishing and binding processes.  So now it’s just time to execute!  More soon!

Today I started the complicated work on my Dad’s ukulele.  He wanted me to install cocobolo bindings, something I have never done before.  I followed the instructions as best as I could, taking special care to measure things carefully and test out my cuts on a piece of scrap.  The StewMac binding router bits worked like a charm, and after a little practice I was ready to make my first cut on the ukulele itself.  There was no going back now!

The first cut that I had to make was for the purfling strip, which needed to be as wide as both the binding and the purfling together.  This was a wider cut, which ran the most risk of ripping the top right off the ukulele.  I was really pleased to make both of those cuts on the front and the back of the ukulele without incident.

The second cut is the ledge for the binding, which is a narrower cut but deeper down the side.  When I clamped the ukulele down I heard some cracking, and on closer examination the kerfing strips that brace the inside of the ukuele were very poorly glued.  I told myself that I needed to be careful, so I took my time when doing my test cut for the binding.  Everything seemed fine, so I carried on across the back.

As you can see, this cut seemed just fine.  Gaining confidence, I started in on the top.  I couldn’t tell the extent of the crappy glue-job until I noticed that the top of the ukulele was sagging because the entire bottom edge of the kerfing wasn’t glued AT ALL.  This caused the router to sink lower and cut deeply into the side of the ukulele.  Damn.

I tried for the rest of the afternoon to even the sides down to a consistent measurement so I could re-glue the top on, but on second thought this might dramatically affect the sound of the ukulele and I’d rather not waste the binding material and risk messing up the tuners on an experiment, so I am going to order an additional kit.  I tried cutting the binding slot using a shallower bearing on the back and it seems that this going to be the trick.  You can see the damage to the left.

At least it was a learning experience!

I got a nice gift today at work.  My friend Dave received some duplicate luthier tools when he made an order to repairs on another friend’s axe.  Since he had no need for duplicates and I am looking at buying tools, he opted to donate them to my cause.  In return, I’m going to find him some curly maple for the eventual Les Paul project that he’s going to do next year.

Thanks for the tools, Dave!  I’ll put them to good use!

A coworker pointed this out to me today: the Gibson Anniversary Flood Les Paul.  They’re coming out in a limited run of 300 per color to commemorate last year’s flood that wrecked the Nashville area.  In a roundabout way, the flood is how I ended up with my really awesome Les Paul Custom.

You see, the flood happened during a time when I wasn’t watching the news too frequently and shortly after I placed my order for a Les Paul Standard Gold Top.  I saw the payment go out, and then I got an email (with no explanation) that my order was delayed indefinitely.  This didn’t sit well with me, since I didn’t like paying that much money and having nothing in return.  So I called up the company I ordered the guitar from, raised a minor stink, and got them to agree to fill my order with a  used Les Paul Custom Gold Top that they had in stock.  They shipped it out shortly thereafter, and all was well.

I only realized later why my original order was delayed: the shop that constructs and fulfills orders for Les Paul Studios and Standards was badly damaged by the flood.  I must admit, this made me feel like a considerable ass but there was nothing I could do about it at that point.  I think it’s encouraging that Gibson recovered from the flood so well that now they can commemorate the event with a limited edition guitar.  Things could have gone much worse for them.

I wish I could afford one of these guitars… who knows, I might get lucky and cross paths with one further down the line.

Today I finally made the time to go to Hobbytown USA.  My buddy Doug got me a gift card for my birthday, and it sat in a basket by the door for almost an entire year before I finally made up my mind that I was going over there and was determined to spend enough time in the store to actually pick one of the thousands of cool things they have for my very own.  I felt a little guilty for procrastinating so long to use my birthday gift card, but no matter!  It was shopping time!

I ended up with various items in support of my lutherie hobby:

* A razor saw/miter box set for cutting bridge blanks, nuts, and fretboards
* Some Titebond II wood glue for use on bindings
* A variety of small pipettes for french polishing

I priced things right, with the grand total coming up to $30.18… my $30 gift card was successfully spent.  Thanks goes to Doug and Shelly for introducing me to Hobbytown USA!

What a great day!  Tasha and I started out by shipping back her purse to Longaberger and my old Blu-Ray player to the Memorex return facility, and then we headed down to Colorado Springs so I could meet up with a luthier whose shop had gone out of business.  I got treated to a crash course in acoustic tonewood selection, Steve was nice enough to wade through his stacks and help me select the best pieces and match the sides and tops in the best possible way.

I purchased enough wood for eight guitars (enough to last me a LONG time) and he discounted it further off of  his already bargain prices.  He also showed me how to select the best wood, some of the unique qualities of some of the wood that he sold me, and even gave me some advice on which tools to buy.  I will inventory my stuff and take some pictures of the notable pieces so I can show them off a little.  That being said, it is going to take me a LONG time to get the skills to attempt guitars with some of the nicer pieces of wood that I got.

After that was done, Tasha and I went shopping at the local mall (she got more maternity clothes!) and then we had an early dinner at Cracker Barrel before heading back to Westminster.  After I got home, I helped my parents spec out a new laptop that they are going to buy.  Once that was done, Tasha had already crashed out for the night.  Since we’ve got a deadline looming at work, I opted to head to the office for a few hours while she was asleep so I didn’t have to go tomorrow while she was awake.  My office is a pretty creepy place at night… there’s a lot of creaky noises and echoes that are inaudible during the day and I was happy to do my work and get out of there.  Hopefully it will place us on a good footing on Monday morning and we can meet our deadline.

(Don’t worry, I’m not the only one from my team working this weekend.)

Now I’m home and looking forward to the rest of a relaxing weekend at home.

For the last few months, I have been cultivating an interest in the construction of acoustic guitars.  This started simply enough this summer once I finished my ukulele kit and continued after I saw Andy McKee perform in Denver.  After some research into his Greenfield guitars, I got interested in figuring out what it would take to start building acoustic guitars on my own.

I found a myriad of different kits, and this led people to send me links of other fingerstyle acoustic players including this one by Antoine Dufour.  Dufour plays guitars by Mario Beauregard, who apprenticed from a man named Ervin Somogyi.  As I investigated further, several other luthiers have apprenticed and raved about the abilities of Somogyi so I headed over to his website and found this excellent video.

It seems that Somogyi has written some of the best books available on the topic of acoustic guitar building, but they are very expensive.  After thinking it over for a few months, today I ordered my book and DVD set.  I plan to read them over the winter months and select a project next year to begin.  I plan to start with an acoustic guitar kit or two so I can get some of the mechanics of assembly down, and then attempt hand-building a guitar myself if that goes well.

I am excited about this new hobby, expect to see more here over the coming months!

On Thursday night, PW and I headed down to the Fillmore to see Crowded House.  The band is fronted by New Zealander Neil Finn, so suffice it to say that my kiwi friends were very excited to get to see these guys.  Paul and I got there early, had a beer at the Cheeky Monk (down the road from the Fillmore) and then got to the show shortly after the doors opened.

The Fillmore looks as if it was an old auditorium, more suited for ballroom dances or proms.  Up at the front, there was a very peculiar band on stage named Paper Bird from Denver.  The group had a guys on standup bass, guitar/banjo, and trombone and was fronted by three girls.  They had a very harmonious sound and reminded me a lot of the sing-a-long movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Thanks to the banjo and trombone they had a very bluegrass feel to them as well, something I wouldn’t have sought out but was happy to get to hear.  They have a song up on their website for free so you can hear for yourself, I found them very interesting and made for an entertaining opening act.

After their set was finished, Paul and I (mostly Paul) struck up a discussion with a middle aged woman who was standing near us to save a place for her daughter.  She explained that this was one of their favorite bands and she always listened to them while she was taking her daughter with her to work as a child.  Needless to say, she was excited and warned us that usually she dances a lot and liked to wave her arms around.  Both statements were true.  She ended up hugging and kissing (on the cheek) both Paul and I before the night was up, and she instigated most of the front rows to dance along to songs.  It was quite the experience.  Paul had some wise comments about how much mothers seem to love me, based on this experience and how much his mom likes me.

The band itself was really great, honestly a lot better than I expected.  I knew several of their songs, most notably “Don’t Dream It’s Over” as I grew up in the 80’s.  Neil Finn was very high energy, I was impressed by his guitar playing.  Since I’ve been interested in guitars for awhile now, I like to spot different guitars.  At several points during the show, Neil was playing a truly strange guitar that I’ve never seen before.  As usual when I can’t figure these things out, I forwarded it to John.  He couldn’t figure it out either.

After the show, I found out that it was an Australian guitar called a Maton Fyrbyrd and only 120 guitars were made between 1965 and 1966.  Follow the link and look at that strange thing!  The headstock is 1/2 classical and 1/2 electric… three magnametle (really?) pickups, Bigsby bridge and weird steampunk-style knobs.  It’s like someone picked out six guitars and photoshopped them all together.  The weird thing is that it sounded GREAT.  I can’t seem to find any for sale to know how much it would cost to get one, but I’m betting I couldn’t afford it anyway. 🙂

The show was great fun and we capped off the night by heading back to the Cheeky Monk so the rest of the group could have a few more drinks (I was driving, so I had water.)  There’s only one more show on the 2010 schedule for me, and that’s Muse in October.  More soon!