Out of Exile / When Doves Cry

For those of you that haven't caught on by now, I have been trying to use song titles for the titles of my posts, and, yes, I did just use an Audioslave song...shame on me, right?

Right, so...where did I leave off last time? Just let me reference the butt-ton of pictures I took over the weekend...oh yeah, the Scarf Joint Project:

 

As you can see, it looks more like a guitar neck and headstock. I still need to drill the tuner holes into the top portion and do a little bit of sanding and shaping before I get this step graded and I move on to actually shaping the neck from a square block of wood into something radius-ed. (apparently a past tense of radius doesn't technically exist...)

I am also working on a set of hand-carved dovetails:

 

These are a pain in the butt to do, especially trying to cut and clean out the section in between the two protruding sections with my various saws and chisels. I tried working on this at home, but what really complicates this project is trying to find an effective way to hold the workpiece upright without any sort of bench vise. I guess this one will have to be done mostly in the shop. 

Trying to burnish my scrapers is also still giving me problems...I've had to restart from the second step in the process a couple of times now because I still can't quite get it right. I need to get this figured out quickly because these scrapers are going to be super important in shaping my scarf joint project.

Elsewhere in the world, this was mine and Zach's man-date weekend. There was a lot of adventuring to make up due to time lost. Obviously, I had to show him the giant Red Wing Boot, which I'm pretty sure he got a kick out of (pun totally intended). Then after a brief tour about town and a fill up at the kwik trip (which I found out stocks Faygo for all you juggalos in the area),

 

We went about our way on the most confusing and troublesome highway system to the Twin Cities. Seriously, they allow the least amount of time from telling you which exit is coming up to the actual exit, so if you are not in the right lane a mile or so before your exit, you will most certainly miss it. Work on that, Minnesota D.O.T.

Any way, our agenda for the day was to bum around the Mall of America for a bit (because I haven't been there since I was about 9 years old when my sister would travel for volleyball tournaments), before we would head a little bit further north to check out a boutique guitar shop and do a bit of vinyl shopping.

What we didn't anticipate at the MoA was a giant scrapbook convention. There were tons of "mom-types" going nuts for scrapbooking all over the first floor of the mall. It didn't necessarily detract from my mall-going experience, but it was still crazy to see how many people love gluing pictures to paper. I also was able to see some of my previous co-workers from the Brewers games that just so happened to be at the Mall that day, too. That was kinda neat. Almost made me miss that place. Oh well, Miller Park doesn't have a 35 foot tall Lego Robot:

 

 

 After that bit of fun, we went to The Podium to, I kid you not, work on an actual assigned homework assignment...play lots of expensive guitars to get ideas on wood combinations/body styles to use for when I build my own in Spring. I knew I liked this school for a reason. Not only was I able to see a Mcpherson Guitar (5 of them, actually) in person, I was allowed to play it. Ooh man, those things sound almost piano-like...its beautiful.

Yeah, I got to play those...NBD.

But just like any guitar shop, there is always one douche-y kid that can't play guitar well and possess any sort of etiquette for the other players much better than him trying to hear themselves play and get a feel for the nuances of each different instrument. Yes, we can hear you loudly strangle that poor $2500 Martin D-28 that your parents will buy for you because you think that the more expensive guitar you have the better the guitar player you are. UGH. Even the shop owners/workers who were trying to help him/give him an informative history lesson as to why each type of guitar sounds the way it does (which totally caused Zach and me to stop our playing and listen) were getting annoyed with him. It felt nice to receive appreciative glances and comments because we knew what we were talking about. It sucks that people like that can totally put a damper on an otherwise awesome experience.

My sister put it perfectly that those guys are like the meathead power lifters at every gym. You are just there doing your thing with the 25lb. weights, not dropping the weights or drawing attention to yourself and he's over there screaming/orgasming over his reflection while he's "totally shredding his bi's, BRO"

Vinyl shopping was neat, if not a little bit disappointing because the store was packed and incredibly picked over. My vinyl budget for the day was more or less untouched (I found 1 of the 4 I wanted/saved for). I guess that is what ebay is good for; finding the same stuff for cheaper prices (mostly).

After all of that excitement, by the time we got back to my place, Zach and I were more or less spent of energy. A bit of sushi, a few beers, and SNL, and we were practically falling asleep on the couch. The next morning, I took Zach up to Memorial Park for one last Red Wing send-off. A great view of the city and an impromptu album cover modelling session.

If that doesn't scream Christian-pop album, I don't know what does.

 

 

P.S. I'm going to have to 2 part this post because a lot happened this weekend and I've already been talking too long already. Prepare for part 2 tomorrow...