Don't Fret It--and I Didn't!

Today was a great day because I got to see Val get ready for their Holloween Camp, which turned out to be a blast.

And then in the shop we were in making moods, and I remarked to Dwain that he was in zone--focused intensely and intently on his work. Dwain calls it the groove. I can dig that.

He is working with a client, and it was great to get a feel for the business end of what I'm doing and deciding not to do. Dwain also got me in contact with a luthier, Paul, who focuses on repairs. Paul is going to give me all of his junky pegs! What sculptor would turn that down? And then Dwain cooked my favorite sausage sandwiches for us for dinner. Being around Dwain has been really good for me, and I'm taking advantage of as many of the opportunities as I can so that I can grow.

And I am really growing in so many ways at so many different paces that I've been a little out of balance. So what does a wobbly guy do but start his taiji--again. I really began at the beginning of the summer, but this was only a change from the other stuff I've been practicing. It seems I forget more and more mantis each time I work out because I just don't practice it. Maybe I will, though, because I really do like the stuff. Maybe as my taiji strengthens I can do more mantis. But until then I'm just doing it in the garden, kind of like a mantis.

I worked on the sound holes today. I worked on them last night until I was done, but they were drawn really sloppily. I used the eraser tool. So today while Dwain was testing his tonewood I was drawing them again. And I get the lines tightened up, mostly. We talked about Photoshop vs. Illustrator and I told hi that I started learning it 5 or 6 times before I said forget it. It is just not intuitive enough for me to engage me long enough to get going with it. Maybe I'll try it again someday. Maybe. But probably not.

I printed stuff out at Dwain's via Bluetooth, and away I went on the sound holes. The last time I did this I used a plunge router, and my work was a bit beaver chewed. I remember I had to do a lot of filing then and today. When I'm doing this at home I will use the scroll saw, for sure, because there may be a little more work to get to the cut but there is virtually none afterwards. Val figured this out because last year I was using a variety of blades to cut and she was cleaning each piece--we were slammed with orders and loved the work! Once she realized this, we made a change in the blades we use now.

Dwain gave me a Dremel to use this time, and I did a better job than the one I did with the router. But there was still some beaver chew going on. So more work with the files. But I could see clearly through plates and doing this would be great for my folk art you can play with. I do hope Paul has some instrument bodies to give me.

Dwain made a fret template for me for the two sizes of fretboard I'll use. So today were were going to use it and do the fretwork by hand. Let me just tell you it was my first day at this, oh boy. I should have known it was going to go screwy because I had crazy eyes like Crazy Eyes while I was polishing up the fingerboard.

Then we set the rig up and set to cutting. In the first three frets there were five slots cut. At first the fretboard was going to get tossed, but we came up with the idea to do a zircote fingerboard.

So I put some shims and glue in the bad slots, and trimmed the excess wood away. Then, because we were adding a top to the fretboard we had to plane it down about an eighth of an inch. So we used the jointer planer. After about the seventh pass I realized that we were blowing our squares. After a measurement that should have happened a couple of passes before showed us that, yep, it ain't square.

There wasn't much wood left to play with, so Dwain decided that the drum sander would be the best way to fix this. We got that sanded down and did the zircote, too. Then we used fish glue and put the pieces together. We used a lot of clamps because nobody wants a fretboard related injury! I have a set of Caspari pegs that I think would go great with this instrument!