Another neck being glued on the body. This very simple, small, and very light guitar is yet another experiment of tone and playability. I'm really all a twitter [twitter?] waiting to hear this one. A few days more. Meanwhile, yet another neck on yet another guitar shall be glued up probably today. It too is hard to wait for as it is an unusual combination of woods and bracing. We shall soon see and hear. Edwin

What does breaking concrete have to do with making guitars? Not a damn thing. Except taking time. Time spent making a guitar is the most valuable, the most necessary part part of making a decent instrument. Time spent on design is probably the most important of all, cause if you start with a bad design, no matter how much time spent on building is will still be a bad guitar. Factories simply can not spend the time to create as can custom builders. Custom builders make guitars for a purpose other than making a lot of money. All of which has lead us to yet another day on chipping away concrete, not guitar building. This too shall pass.

The time spent in the finishing process, which is mostly waiting for stuff to dry or cure, would be mostly boring if it weren't for the start of the next guitar. I'm always very curious how the last guitar will sound, and play and feel, but by now I have a fairly good idea how it will look. But we will just have to wait. However, its always exciting to start a new guitar. It will be different from anything I've done.{they all are different}. It will be visually stimulating. It will sound different from the rest because of many many things done or not done during construction. The best guitars, for whatever reason, get picked up and played more than the lesser guitars. Whether the tone is inspirational, or the silky feel makes one grab it for a while, the best guitars are picked up and played. As always, that is my hope for every one of my guitars, that they are picked up and played...often.

So, you wonder, what does sailing and visiting the tropics have to do with building guitars? Everywhere we went on our boat "Just Imagine" we found people making musical instruments . In any small, perhaps backward town, one can find people playing music. Where music is played, the are people making the instruments. Be seeing how guitar making is done elsewhere in the world, and how the results sound, and feel and play, we can better flavor our own guitars. Seeing how guitars are made all over the world also has influenced our visual perceptions of how a guitar should look. For me every guitar should look different than the last on. Factories all over the world produce the same thing over and over and over. BORING!!! Every guitar we make, or will ever make will be unique, will have superior sound and feel, and will be very cool.

Last night the came down so hard that I was reminded of sailing and living in the tropics. Living in Western Oregon gives a person the impression that we know what hard rain is. That, however, is a misconception. A place called Portobelo Panama, is the rainiest spot in North America. It is warm and sunny all day long. Every day. Every day until 3 PM that is. Then, the clouds gather and the rain falls in torrents. It rains so hard that one can not see 10 feet distant. It rains so hard that a 5 gal. bucket is filled in about 30 seconds.. The weather carries on this way for an hour or so then the clouds go away, the sun comes back out, and things are warm and sunny once again. Until the next day. Remembering this weather in Panama makes me realize that a vacation remembered is almost as good, and in some cases better, as the original vacation. And in todays economy a lot cheaper.

Well its yet another lash-up that is unlikely to escape anytime soon. This time it is a carbon fiber strip being glued into a routed channel in the neck. The carbon fiber acts as a stabilizer in the maple wood. While regular maple is quite stable, figured maple, sometimes called "curly", is not so stable. Since we don't want no stinking plain old boring wood in our guitars, we like to use the curly or the quilted or the spalted or anything but boring wood, therefore the carbon fiber. Its expensive as hell, not fun to work with, very light and very, very strong... A good thing for a guitar neck.

I once worked at a boatyard in San Diego. A friend came to visit, and I showed him all around the yard. We saw many yachts being worked on for many reasons. Later that night over drinks he commented that almost every worker in that yard was sanding something. The same can be said for sculpting a guitar neck. Hours of sanding. Sanding to actually do the shaping. Sanding to smooth out the scratches from sanding. Sanding, sanding, sanding. When asked how I know its smooth enough, when its done I must reply "its never done, they just come and take it away".