hooglebug

well its taken far too long and it doesn't look like I imagined it looking (every time I see a nice pink/purple evening sky i'm annoyed) but I still like it and at least its done. and sounds really nice. even before you plug it in.

the pickup is an old bare knuckle p90 (dont ask which, I cant remember). tuners are graphtech ratio (with buttons I made because I love that shape) which are really nice tuners. bridge is also graphtech with a ghost system. 

anyway, heres some pics

you can see some remnants of the pink that would NOT come out right at the bottom

you can barely make it out but there are the Japanese characters  'sakura' on the 12th fret (cherry blossom if you didn't know) which was the most fiddly bit of inlay to cut

by the way, the top and back are from the same plank of wood - it cost £25.  not bad for that price!

i'm really tempted to just smash the stupid thing. its doing my head in. this will be the 7th time (I think) I've sprayed the top. I cannot get it to look even remotely like the back. I might have to just strip the whole thing and start again. 

or smash it. either way i'll pissed off

well you'll have to wait because I STILL haven't got the top to look like the back yet and its doing my head in. I've just sanded it back to wood for the 5th time. I THINK I've got it cracked now though. 

I had for some reason assumed i'd used a powdered dye for one of the layers, but now I think I must have used a liquid one. we'll see I guess.

also, I think I've gone off the idea of painting pink behind the flowers. i'll have to try and see

well I've been trying different colour thingies for a while and finally thought I had a good plan. so today I excitedly started spraying...

and the back looks pretty good. I think I'm gonna keep going on the back. but the front. oh dear. so that's coming off tomorrow and i'll try to get it looking more like the back. 

by the way, the pink I got is bubblegum pink, which sounds horrendous, but under the blue (with a  few highlights on top of it) I think it works

yeah its clearly going to happen isn't it.

before I've finished sanding everything (because I hate sanding) im trying out some colour ideas on the back. so far I have it in my mind that im going to stain blue and fade it out towards the bottom third, then in that clear bottom third do pink, sanded back, then the whole thing will have a light blue almost wash over it, so the blue gets deeper and the pink goes a touch purply, so its like those pinky purply clouds you get on an evening. then maybe a slightly darker blue burst that fades away again. and finally some pink painted on behind the flowers (not like Barbie pink or anything, calm down)

I just did that piece as a test to see if I liked it or not. its just burnt on with my soldering iron so its easily sanded off if I didn't like it. but I do. and I think it'll help the flowers stand out more once the colour is on as well. i'll just have to wait till I've done all the sanding before I do it otherwise i'll be doing it over and over again

poll time

do I add shade/add small branches, or leave it as it is. 

so good news...no, wait, the opposite of good. you know, the other thing.

it seems heat makes my wrist worse. and we're currently in the middle of the most ridiculously terrible hot weather. so for the last week or so I have been able to do precisely bollock all

Not that I know of

thanks for that, a bit late for these ones as the hole is already too big and they're going to be push on ones, but a good reference for another time

I just couldn't leave it blank now could I?

the Dremel was clamped vertically in a bench, I put a dowel in the hole of the knob and just did it freehand. kept looking at an existing knob I had and got as close as I could

yes, THE wakefield

in between world cup games (my wrists been so bad I've watched every single match, even the crap ones!) I did the other two. one of them needs a tiny bit more shaping on one side but its just sanding them now

I tried to drill the centre hole, or rather expand the centre hole that was already there from gluing them up (I used a toothpick to hold them in place), but for whatever reason it drilled off centre, so I had to Dremel it instead. 

I pushed a dowel in there to give me something to hold onto, clamped the Dremel with a little sanding drum in a bench, and started shaping. 

so heres the first one roughly shaped.  

well, I just glued some veneer to some ebony, cut a little slot in the veneer and glued a sliver of ebony binding into the slot for a marker, then cut some smaller circles and glued them on top and cut the knobs out so they look like liquorice allsorts.

tomorrow i'll see if I can make a nice hole in the center to put the bits I've cut from some other knobs in so I can get them onto pots, and then at some point if my wrist can stand it i'll just try shaping them with a Dremel like I did the tuner buttons 

9 minutes ago, charisjapan said:

Just did ... Wow!

Once a year, my whole neighborhood is sakura ... probably six or seven different types all blossoming at different times, so more than a six week season.  

@hooglebug, your work is as good as any I have seen done by Hakone Zaiku artisans!  (and I've been visiting Hakone for nearly 50 years)  I also know what it's like to be laid up with problems that kept me out of the shop for months, in my case tedinitis and bursitis.  Hope you get the right advice ... and take it! I tried to bluff my way through it - like when I was younger - and made things worse.  Now, my doctor gave my nurse (Mrs. Charisjapan) strict orders, and I'm on the mend. 

Be well!!

thanks!

i'd love to see that, i'm very jealous.

as for my wrist, I've had everything done that they're willing to do. im pretty much just stuck doing very little and wearing a brave whenever I do do something and hope it clears up. 

2 hours ago, Norris said:

I made mine using a pillar drill, a set square clamped to the base plate as a guide, and an 80-grit sanding stick

that would be the plan, only my drill press is broken, and im going for the bell type, rather than just a barrel shape, so it looks like i'm Dremel-ing away

my wrists still not right, but I just found some offcuts from ebony fretboards and theres enough (if I have a sliver of maple between them) to make three knobs.

now I dont have a lathe, so it might be a bit trickier than it should be, but i'll give it a go. the only thing is, I want them to be push fit ones, so i'll have to find some old push fit knobs and cut the middle bits out and glue them in. unless anyone has another thought?

well, a couple of months ago I woke up and my wrist was a bit sore for no reason. then over the next week or so it got steadily worse and worse until it hurt when I did any work. so I went to the doctor and its a tendon thing, so I got anti inflammatories, which did nothing. so I went back and got cortisone injections. that was two weeks ago, and again, it did nothing.

then this morning, I was woken up by a massive gust of wind and in my half asleep state for some reason thought i'd felt the whole house leaning over, so went to look out of the window, and in doing so put my entire weight on my bad wrist. 

and now I cant do anything. I couldn't even hold a toothbrush or wash myself in the shower with it. I was going to have some lettuce in my sandwich, but I couldn't, because I couldn't hold a knife and put enough pressure on it to cut LETTUCE without being in agony. 

so it looks like tools are downed for the foreseeable future

2 hours ago, komodo said:

That had to have been almost meditation. How did you manage to hang on to the flowers as they were cut?

What a gorgeous instrument you've made there.

i just tried really hard not to let go! plus my nails seem to grow rather quickly so I always had a bit of something to pinch onto them with. I dont know how many I dropped (a lot!), but I only lost a few

2 hours ago, ScottR said:

HOOGLE'S BACK!

Good to see you again. And my God, what an ambitious and creative project you've come back with. My eyes would start twitching if I tried anything remotely like that.

Absolutely exquisite work.

SR

I could manage to cut about 40 before I started going a bit blurry. I limited myself so I didn't go blind!

thanks! they both have a lovely bluesy growly sound to them

well here's the jnr+. i really like this one!

haha not really no. that chrome thing i was doing just would not work at all. and i could find no reason for it either. nor could the people who make (or sell) the product. i did everything by the book, using only the products recommended, and it just would not work. there would be patches where it would look good then the rest was awful and there was no reason for it.

luckily, i had explained before hand that i had never done it before and made no guarantees it would work, and while annoyed, as i was, he accepted it so that was ok. but yeah. super annoying.

haha. i let things get on top of me a bit, but now things are rolling again i should be around more. if i remember to post stuff! im terrible at remember what i've posted where

well its been far too long. other things have got in the way, but finally one of them is done. the jnr + developed a problem with the finish on the top (dont ask me, it started cracking and wouldnt stop), so thats been resprayed as we speak, and is already spoken for. but at least i've had time to get this one finished!