Day 18: Chai, Long Life, Indeed

"Chai" is like a Hamsa or Star of David in that it is an important Jewish symbol. The Chai is usually worn as jewelry and stands for long life or Jewish identity. But yeah, long life to all. Except the A-holes and those who are done with the planet.

The planet is wet here.  I cannot drive my car to the end of this road where I'm staying while building this banjo. So I walked back. It wasn't too far, and I really do love to walk even though I've seen a podiatrist who said that my time running and walking painlessly is waning.

But really, does this foot look so bad?

So I'm living with two dogs here. They are quintessential farm dogs with their own idiosyncrasies. Max is going blind, so he is pretty skittish. And Diesel is a geriatric British Mastiff. So when there is thunder he thinks he supposed to go to the battle lines and protect the Roman captains, at least his DNA tells him that!

When I was in the army they encouraged us to march. Encouraged highly, that is. The rucksack was about 50lbs, and then there is all of the other gear. The distance was not too bad, only 15k or so. But, damn, those hills. Ft. Leonardwood, MO, and in December. I remember that we were picking up walnuts because we never got enough food. Never!

Today was fitting it all together. It is a slow process that I rushed because I had to be done by today. Dena (http://www.storygourdworkshop.com/) is a deliberate person that some may mistake as slow. But, nope. She's just deliberate. And what great energy to be around! Really, make time to learn from this builder!

The gourd and skin were dry enough to work with, so it was a lot of slow trimming and cutting.

The object is to get the gourd, which is an organic shape, to sit into the wood neck. So there is a lot of geometry and calculus involved, but I don't do calculus. I cannot even begin to figure that out. But at least I can geometry! It took a lot of time, but I got the gourd looking good on the back.

The front is a different story. There is a pretty big gap. I have so much finishing work to do on the machine, so I decided to carve some spirals there, just like I will on the fifth peg hole.

Did I tell you this is hickory? I would never have chosen to use this to make an instrument. Hickory is really hard. This is from my wood bible, the wood-database.com: " Difficult to work, with tearout being common during machining operations if cutting edges are not kept sharp; the wood tends to blunt cutting edges. Glues, stains, and finishes well. Responds well to steam bending."

Yes to all of this!

I eventually got it to where I wanted it, though, except for the finishing and polishing, which consists of getting tool marks out and doing the low relief carving.

That's right. 3.5 days to make this guy from a big old chunk of 100 year old hickory. This was an amazing challenge that I couldn't have accomplished without Dena's help. Sure, I made a pretty nice gourd banjo on my own, but I'm now worlds ahead of just one build now. Thank you, Dena!