Day 68: Cuts

Today was a good day because I had oatmeal for second breakfast. I love oatmeal!

When I was training for my marathon I would make a serving for three and eat it all. I would add in dried fruits and raisins and all of the fruit would swell up. Delicious! I was so worried about my cholesterol then because I was eating at least two eggs a day--and sometimes four, so I thought that the oatmeal would balance it. I guess it did because my cholesterol is low. But I even ate oatmeal as a kid, and I seem to think it was a lot during the winter. My mom would get the instant kind, and I'd mix packages up. I'd always eat two. I don't use instant now, but I still love it.

Today was important because I had to survey the instrument for specific measurements. This is important because the transverse braces on the top need to fit into the machine. One measurement is for the fretboard.

There are four different measurements that are taken for the length and four for the half-width. It is the details like this that make this instrument superb beauty, projection, voice and action--the way that Dwain makes his and teaches me.

Then I had to put in the braces, and, as you can see the measurements that I took are really important here. I can always just eyeball it, but there would be no consistency. And do I really need so badly those two minutes that it will take to do this? Of course it took me a little longer to do this than two minutes, but this is only the second time I've done this. And Dwain had to give me a refresher. My notes are much more thorough this time now that I'm not overwhelmed with new stuff. The third should be even more specific; and the fourth should be more so.

So measure and cut. Done. There is also a brace that goes across the waist of the top. And once I put that name on it I cannot see this without seeing the female form. I know I wrote about this before, but it is really obvious to me now. This is a really pretty shape, and I'm definitely warming up to it. I cannot wait to hear how she sings and in what voice!

Then I worked on carving down the bottom for its fiddle edge. Dwain said as I was trimming down the instrument that it will be a lot easier to cut the excess off with the bandsaw and carve as little as possible. And after doing the edges I now understand why he said that, and I will take more care when cutting off the excess next time--I won't leave so much!

I'm still getting used to carving with a knife. I've always done this, since I was a small child I've carved wood, even if it was into the proverbial spear. One of my favorite things to do when camping is to carve a spear with a head and then temper it in the open fire. I got really good at this, and maybe I'll do that soon to stir some memories.

The wood is sharp, and most of the wounds on my right hand are cuts from the wood. Perhaps the bottom is not so happy to be cut up with a knife first, so he's just standing his ground. Maybe. But after some time I had the edges down and ready to be cleaned up. I'm getting better with the knife, but the wood is still a bit rough in some spots because of my carving. Beaver chewed, I call it. I'll work on that, for sure.

The last thing I worked on was carving the peghead so that the curves line up with the ribs and everting flows from the spiral in the front to the spiral in the back and then back again. Since I've not done one of these Dwain showed me how he approaches it and then just let me go to town. While the same idea will be applied to every machine like this, it is really intuition and aesthetics that bring this together.

By the end of the day I had three bandaids on and some open wounds breathing. At least the cuts are split between my hands!