All of the processes leading up to that stage, with all of the stringing up, checking the height, de-tuning, making your adjustments, re-stringing, checking adjustments (repeat until correct), de-tuning so you can put your intonation marker in, retuning, checking intonation, de-tuning to move the intonation marker based on it it was sharp or flat, re tuning, checking intonation (repeat until correct), then move on to the next string....UGH. (about 2-4 hours on a good day)
That is what I typically deal with when I am making a saddle, but interestingly, I enjoy it for the most part. It is just the right amount of frustrating to keep me engaged and wanting to keep doing it. Each one is a little mountain to conquer.
I've also gotten to the point of making copies of guitar bridges. This involves taking a pre-existing guitar bridge, and with some careful measuring and tracing, and a hell of a lot of sanding and scraping, we hopefully come out with an as close to exact replica of what we started with. Power sanders become your best friend in this exercise. When I was working on this back at the house using only sanding plates and blocks and elbow grease, I wasn't getting anywhere with my coarsest sandpaper and a few hours of rubbing. I take it to the edge sander in the shop, zip-zip...two hours of sanding done in about 15 seconds. It is really helpful in the early stages in the shaping when you need to hog off a lot of material to get it closer to its final dimensions and not so "beef-a-saurus rex" as my buddy/work bench neighbor, Jake has taken to describing it.
I also took a road trip back home this past four day weekend because as great of a place Red Wing is, I need to get the heck outta dodge every now and again and the cities doesn't always cut it. Plus, when I go back home, I get this crinkly puppy to play with:
I decided to drive this time around as opposed to being at the mercy of whenever the train decided to pull around into the station. 4.5 hours one way isn't so bad when you have good music/audio books. Plus, my car needed to be run for longer periods since I was getting super-shitty gas mileage with all of the short trips I make everyday. I was also able to raid the pantry at home so I could put off grocery shopping for a few more days. Victories all around.
Other than that stuff, it has been very low-key on my end. A lot of just putting your head down and getting to work. Hopefully something exciting happens that is worth mentioning, because even I am bored with this post and I'm living out all of this stuff.
Until next time...
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