Learning 101

If it seems like I’m doing everything more than once, it’s because I am.

This guitar has been stained and oiled. Then we reverted the whole thing and put wood primer on it to spray paint it.

(I’ll get to that later, so keep hanging in there, Sylvester-Stallone-in-Cliffhanger style.)

I’d be lying if I told you I’m enjoying this rinse-repeat process.

But it might be the only way to learn.

Got time for a story detour?

I lived most of my adult life in pure conviction, that I’ll never be able to play the guitar.

Sure I owned a Telecaster when I was a teenager, but that was mostly an effort to impress friends and girls.

Turns out you need to play semi-well for the second part to work.

But the dream was still there.

So, at age 30, I purchased a Flight Travel ukulele on a whim.

I’m not a physicist and don’t understand string theory, but 4-string complexity is much lower than 6 string complexity - especially since most chords can be played with 2 fingers or less.

That got me hooked.

I was still convinced - despite having massive hands - that a slimmer neck would make it easier for me to play.

I backed a Loog guitars Kickstarter campaign and got myself a red Loog Pro VI Electric.

Waited a while for that Kickstarter reward to ship.

Major no-no: turns out tiny fret spaces don’t mix well with huge hands.

I decided to stick with ukuleles for a while, but go up a notch and try out a Kala baritone ukulele.

Great purchase, although it gets very little action.

Then I swiped my wife’s classic guitar.

Didn’t read the instructions on the tin and put steel strings on it.

That ruined it in a month or so - delaminated the bridge and bent the neck to some non-guitar-ish origami shape.

So, I decided to try out a low-end Flight acoustic guitar.

Loved it. Still do.

But it doesn’t mix with my lifestyle well.

I mostly like to play the guitar at night and acoustic isn’t your ideal “this-is-what-you-play-when-you-don’t-wanna-wake-your-sleeping-family” instrument.

So, I landed back in the electric category with this thing I’m building.

That concludes the detour, thanks for sticking around.

ETA: weekend(-ish)

When I first purchased the kit, I was sure: 3 days of work - tops.

But I didn’t include the idle time.

Turns out there’s not that much to do, but there’s plenty of time to spend just looking at the walls.

Would have probably started climbing them, if I weren’t in a wheelchair.

Apparently, we’re sub-2-weeks in, but it feels like forever.

After a nice weekend with the family, I wanted to get this build over with.

Even made a super-aggressive schedule spreadsheet.

This also means that I had to use some of my non-workshop time for workshop prep.

Used plenty of masking tape and protected the front side in preparation for spray painting.

Took extra care of the neck pocket, since I don’t want to modify its dimensions unintentionally.

Spray and pray

Set up the spray painting station today.

Away from the shop, cars, the house, and anything that could catch the spray in the process.

Didn’t count on having to look at the weather forecast too.

It was windy, so I had to spray from a shorter distance.

The guitar definitely got flooded in paint, a little on the heavy side.

It turns out, once your sides start looking like the surf waves are forming on them, you’ve been a bit too generous with it.

I was done with the first coat in about 20 minutes or so.

I stood next to it for an hour, trying to decide how retarded it was to wait for the full 24 hours for it to dry.

If this build were a song…

I’m still s(t)anding, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes it feels like the only point of guitar building is so that you have something to sand.

Every process starts and ends with sandpaper.

If you’re the sandpaper company, this is probably the reason why you get out of bed in the morning.

There’s always a luthier in distress somewhere, in dire need of some 240-grit sandpaper.

Remember the R. U. Guitars logo on the headstock idea?

Turns out the oiled in an otherwise quite pretty-looking headstock was in the way, since the spray wouldn’t stick well.

And since waiting is hard, I took the random orbital to it and primed it.

Was done with it in about 20 minutes - again.

Primer needs 24 hours, so instead of one, I was now waiting for two things to dry simultaneously.

Not sure this was progress, but it felt like it.

Did I mention I was bad at waiting?

The first coat of spray paint has been drying for about 2 hours and the wood seemed dry.

My father came home from work. Turns out, he’s not a fan of waiting either - which was ideal.

All you really need when you’re not sure if your idea will work or not is someone standing next to you and gently nudging you in the direction you wanted to take all along.

So, we coated it generously again. The surf waves were mostly gone.

Great success.

Still plenty of work to be done. One or two coats of black spray for the front side, then lacquer - just to be safe.

I will be back at it tomorrow.

At this point, it’s looking optimistic for a Saturday hardware installation - finally.