Do it Good

Hello again friends.
What new adventures do I have for you, you wonder?

Well, I am glad you asked...

On Monday, my instructors had all of the second year guitar students bring their acoustic guitar build into our first year class and us first year kids were able to ask them all sorts of build questions like which woods they used, bracing patterns, body styles, etc. and, most importantly, we were able to hear them being played. All of this in an effort to help us first year kids develop some sort of idea about what we want/will be able to build in the spring semester. It most certainly helped me solidify some aspects about what I want to build, and because I am a visual person and really have nothing better to do with my time most nights, I took to the photoshop and created my guitar from photos of the different woods I intend to use and other stock photos of the body shape and miscellaneous appointments.

The Spec list for this guitar is pretty neat:

• Body style: OM (with dreadnought depth)
• Scale length: 24.625"
• Bracing: UNDETERMINED
• Body Wood: Red Spruce
• Back/sides: Padauk (its this really awesome bright orange)
• Neck: Mahogany
• Fretboard: cocobolo (brown with mustard yellow-y stripes)
• Bridge: indian rosewood 
• binding: "tortoise shell" 
• headstock: custom design with indian rosewood veneer and abalone silver fern inlay 
• fret position markers: abalone micro dots 
• rosette: #137
• tuners: gold grovers (probably)

Other than that bit of fun, I was finally able to work on a guitar saddle (read a guitar was finally available for me to work on). I had never wanted to smash a guitar more than I did after working on that guitar that first day. The saddle slot in this particular guitar was filled and re-routed for proper intonation; except when it was re-routed, it was routed WAAAAAAYYY too deep. I didn't realize this fact until I had redone a second saddle for this guitar, had barely taken any material off of the blank, and it was STILL reading .02" too low. So I had spent an entire work day on fitting a saddle to this guitar that would read too low no matter what i was going to do to it. The guitar required some minor surgery in the form of a shim glued in place by my instructor in order for me to be able to work on it. The best part of this whole thing is that this whole out-of-my-control-set-back caused my saddle to be turned in for grading a day late and 10% of my grade on it. I still managed to do well on the saddle despite all those problems, but the "lateness" (which I am still pretty butt-hurt about) caused me to go from a solid B to a very low C. It is my first C in guitar school. I also forgot to take a picture of it.

In neck reset class, I finally got my neck set to flush after too many hours of shaving and fitting and shaving a bit more. Now, I have to shave a 1/8" rise in the neck angle, which should take about a dozen or so passes with a piece of sandpaper. Not a whole lot.

oh, there it goes...I DID IT!!

 My friend Jason came up this past weekend, too. For whatever reason, he seems to really like this town. I reckon it is because he thinks this town is like a movie set in feel and appearance. To me, it is just Red Wing. He also found out that the bar scene in Red Wing ends at about 10 and not regular bar close because, Red Wing. Now, I have an extra-long weekend to look forward to this upcoming weekend and I think a road trip of sorts may be in order.

real key lime pie from the Florida Keys. My roommate gets the weirdest crap in the mail.