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Spent 3 days in a cabin in the woods with my wife and the dogs. No bars on the cell phone and no internet. Managed to read some back issues of GAL and Guitarmaker. Back home and unpacked so I'm headed to the shop for an hour or two - maybe I can get started on the neck carve for the size 0.

Edit: went down to the shop and carved the neck. I usually use mostly a rasp but this time went with a spokeshave and various chisels instead. I really enjoyed doing it that way. Very nice way to end a great weekend!

My best friend is getting old, like me, but she still likes to carry her share on our hikes/

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Putting a finish on this today:

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

Nice work everyone! Getting my last commission ready for delivery on Tuesday. This one a bursted ziricote OM. Now I shut down the shop for a few months to golf and fish!

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Very cool! I've pondered the idea of a "ghost" guitar before And indeed, Ernie's pecan stash is good stuff. I made the bridge on my harp uke from a blank he gave me, and it sounds and looks great. Thanks again Ernie!

I'm taking the summer off from guitar building to get back to one of my other passions, which is video game making. Just got the sound system finished up Always one of the most fun parts, especially working on Gameboy Advance where you get to fiddle with the hardware directly. Any other ARM assembly coders around here? http://deku.rydia.net/temp/SoundMix.txt

But I do still need to finish up my harp guitar, which can hopefully be done despite the high humidity (it's been ranging 55-70% in here these past few weeks). I think I'll need to buy one of those refret saws from StewMac though, as I once again misunderstood the neck geometry and made the fingerboard too thick, and may not have enough slot depth left after thinning and radius sanding. Hopefully won't have to alter the neck angle, since that definitely needs to be done in low humidity on an integral neck. Shouldn't be too difficult if I do though, since I haven't done the back binding yet. In the meantime, I've been having fun playing it fretless

That's a pretty great best friend you have there, Steve!

That is so rich and beautiful, Ken. Amazing!

I put together a Sapele/Italian parlour on the weekend. Finished by Tony Ferguson-who does unbelievable work.

Wow, that's a beautiful set of Sapele, Neil. The guitar is really unique. Where did you get the fret markers?

Wonderful stuff!

Love these threads!

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Hi Beth

The fret markers are wood. In this case mahogany if I recall. I just zip a line on the fretboard (before it's attached to the neck) with my table saw to make them.

I haven't had any time in the shop for a few weeks so I don't have anything to report there, but I did take the mando form the recent challenge out for a spin. My friend texted me Friday night asking if I was coming to see his band play at a family friendly park gig Saturday. When I said yes, he informed me that I had to come and play the mandolin part of that Lumineers song "Hey HO." The only problem was I didn't know the song, nor have I had a change to learn how to play the mandolin in general. I built the dang thing and have been too busy to make a serious effort into learning to play. Saturday afternoon he emailed me an MP3 of the song and I hastily made a radio-shack buzzer pickup for it. And so it was that Saturday night, I made myself look foolish on stage with 20-30 minuets of mandolin experience under my belt. . .

I would have refused, but I couldn't resist the chance to have two of my instruments played together on stage.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Ken that Bursted ziricote is gorgeous. I would love to see it in person. I'm a big fan of white guitars but I think a burst done well with the right combination of side and back wood is just beautiful. Very well done Ken.

Absolutely gorgeous guitar! I love the body shape.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Just finishing up the carve on #2


A little solvent on top to show the figure. It's sort of a hybrid between a prs Santana and the regular prs.

Thanks Beth and Anthony!

And Neil, that is a gorgeous parlor!! I have an Ashborn style parlor on the docket for the 2nd half of the year.

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Ken and Neil - you got me drooling. Really nice work!!

Just got this back from Finish Master Joe White. IRW back, sides, binding, fretboard; lutz spruce top; wenge headplate and heel; evo fretwire.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Some cool design aesthetics there Steve - like how the headstock matches the heelcap!

Thanks, Robbie!

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I might be able to help with getting an even color, I've been learning quite a bit about finishing the last six months since our last finisher decided he no longer wanted the job. Anyways, I've kind of taken over the whole thing and it's been quite the learning experience. I've found the best way to spray color is as a toner after you've either stained the wood and done a clearcoat (I prefer two) or just on top of natural wood. I make my toners out of sherwin williams dye concentrates and lacquer thinner, and like to spray them over lacquer (not vinyl sealer as the toner doesn't grab as well and can run if you go heavy). Whatever finish you're using I would use a compatible thinner for the toner so that it actually grabs onto the finish. The only times I use a colored lacquer anymore is for doing solid colors, for transparent I only go with toner. One benefit of this is you can blend color with toner without adding more finish, which you will hit a limit on with how much you'd want to lay down at any time. Also, a toner will be faster to work with because you don't need to let that lacquer fully dry before adding on your next coat.

I like to mix up my color so that it will give me the color I want after two coats minimum because spraying technique dictates a fifty percent overlap from one pass to the next as you move across what you are spraying. Then I take that mix and add twice as much straight thinner as the initial toner had, so if I used 16 ounces of lacquer thinner to get the two pass color toner, I add 32 ounces of clear to get a dilution that should get to the same color but in six passes. This gives you more flexibility when spraying your toner and lets you creep up on the color rather than end up with one spot that's too dark and be forced to match everything to that.

The next thing is how you spray. For years my boss has just sprayed toner on in stripes either with the grain or across the grain and the results have been, well, striped. As a result he was always really reluctant to tone things unless we absolutely had to, mostly to even out stain on cabinets which often have sheet stock and solid stock mixed and take the stain differently. I wasn't convinced this was the best way so I started reading up on it. I found the best way is to spray my first color coats at a 45 degree angle to the grain, keeping the trigger pulled before and after I spray onto and off of the surface. Then move the object 90 degrees and repeat. This results in an "X" pattern that doesn't create any stripes that either line up with or are perpendicular to the grain, which our eyes pick up on more readily. Since I started spraying our toner this way our toner has been totally consistent, and the look of our finishes has vastly improved.

I don't know what your setup is but I'd recommend a fine tip if you're using a touch up or spray gun, an airbrush will definitely be fine enough, though you'll be filling it a lot at that color dilution.

Hope that helps

A little late here, but I finished up some replication parts (buttons and pins) for a very patient fellow OLF'er.
These are copies of vintage Martin parts, all in elephant ivory from Warther.
The machines are Rodgers and are crazy beautiful.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Burton, those are beautiful!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Amazing, Burton!!

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Thanks guys!
The buttons proved to be really tricky to make and I am very happy they came out as well as they did.
It is worth saying again how amazing the Rodgers machines are. If you look at the worm and gear on those compared to a set of Waverlies it is like night and day. Not that the Wav's are bad, just not even in the same league as the Rodgers.

Ken, your guitar looks killer! The burst is totally awesome.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.