Loss For Words

Anyone who really knows me can attest that I am seldom without something to say.  My apologies if I've ever left you feeling "caught in the tractor beam".  I like to say it a certain way and, damn those writing classes, it takes time for me to get happy with it.  Tonight though, there are 10 things to do in a three thing night.  I don't have hours to put into this post.  What is abundant tonight is pictures.  As much as I can yak, the pictures say it best.  This week, I give the gift of saying less and showing more.  I just posted 91 photos online.  I'll pick some favorites to describe and you are welcome to view the rest at http://s121.photobucket.com/user/timhallhair/library/Furniture%20Refinishing?sort=2&page=1.

This is one of four chairs that I am refinishing.  A final project, if you like.  I must strip at least four dining chairs of any previous coatings down to bare wood and then re-finish them.  These belong to Dan and Jess, who kindly gave me an interesting job rather than a run-of-the-mill request.

  This is phase one.  Toss the chair into the pit of despair.  Actually, it's good ol' "probably carcinogenic" methylene chloride.  Look it up, if you like, but trust me.  It's icky.  It will eat away stuff that was made to not be eaten away.

"Ooh.  That's exquisite!  A nice shower is just what I need after that dip into the Berkeley Pit.  What's that?  Let me go!  Put me down this instant!"

"Cough.. sputter... cough, cough.  Gurgle.  Oxalic acid. You mother..."

This chemical nightmare left me feeling a bit dazed.  I would hate to be a piece of wood in this situation.  At any rate, the process does what it does, which is break the bond of the film finish and neutralize certain types of staining in the wood.  You gotta clean the furniture up afterward, but it leaves you with a generally clean slate to work with.

  After some controlled drying procedure, the four Norsemen are ready to get dressed up.  However, the final look requires some damage to be inflicted.  For this, I picked up my massive farrier's file and went to town, no holds barred.  I may have scarred them for life...

The next step is to begin building the color from the inside, out.  That interesting job I was given by Jess and Dan entails matching the chair's finish to an item that they already have in their home.  I imagined my way into reverse engineering that finish.  After a few days of sanding and color formulation, I shot a dye onto the wood to establish an undercoat that would be revealed later.

  The shine, or sheen that is visible on the chairs here is a result of a vinyl sealer application, followed by a topcoat of lacquer.  Here again, I am planning for the future, which will arrive in the form of a custom colored pre-catalyzed nitrocellulose lacquer.

The first rule of color matching is, Color matching is fun.  The second rule is... oh, don't worry about that. This is after the polychroming of the piece.  I'm not finished yet though.  There are several stops left for this train to make. I mixed up and applied an appropriately colored glaze to achieve a bit of color striking of the pores for more visual texture. A toned topcoat is the next step...

And it gets us most of the way there.  I will let the final topcoat (applied just a few hours ago) cure for a few days then, it will be all about the rub out...

I hope you enjoyed this.  I'll give you another quickie real soon. 

Spice O' Life

One of the things I love about building instruments is, I am compelled to hustle for odd jobs to keep the bills paid.  The variety of work is key to my ability to maintain a mostly positive outlook.  If I can function as a Swiss Army Knife in a given situation, I'm happy as a clam.

One of the things I do from time to time is install a 3M product called Dinoc.  The manufacturer refers to it as an Architectural Film.  Honestly, it's a lot like the contact paper that your granny used to line her cupboards.  It can be applied to a variety of substrates, including automobiles, and the several hundred styles offered can add a lot to the look of a room.  I spent the last week driving from Minneapolis to Chicago and then just making figure-eights through the lower mid-west for a few days.

The client was Marriott Hotels Fairfield Inns.  We were to complete some recent obligatory renovations by wrapping the elevator and the nine swimming pool windows at three locations.  One thing I noticed about the decor at Fairfield Inns is, the colors were well chosen.  Everything is tied together and when we finished the first elevator, it was obviously meant to be.

Note the yellow of the entry walls and how it is repeated ever so lightly in the Indian Rosewood style Dinoc inside the car.  There is "open grain" on the visible surface of the vinyl sheet which adds a certain believable texture. This was the cleanest install I have ever done.

They start out looking like this!  This look was cutting edge when it was originally installed 40 years ago.

It took almost eight hours to prep the car and wrap this interior.  There are cross-grain seams behind each handrail and a bolt/cylinder connector for each twelve inches of rail.  This means grain matching the cut (not a big deal, actually) and making cutouts in the proper place for every connector and then trimming each one very cleanly to make it look like the most natural thing in the world.  The second half of that really is a big deal and takes lots of time and patience.

The finished product.  Ta-da!  We don't do floors and so someone came along, perhaps, and fitted a nice piece of rug here.  I streamlined the process and manage to shave off two hours from this installation.  It was definitely easier to do the job without the carpet on the floor.

Kiss 'em goodbye! The windows were a cakewalk after dealing with an elevator.  All the employees we came across thought this was a bad idea.  I directed them to the corporate designer.  This was the first time I 've put this stuff in.  Nice to have another trick up my sleeve.  Anyone want their auto windows frosted?

It was nice to get back home and lay into some building.  I have some shiny bits on order that are holding up the process on the uke I'm building.  Needing to make some progress on it, I moved to another project; finishing the fingerboard.
 
The bound fingerboard from the kit comes pre-slotted for frets.  This is nice because I am not currently set up for this task.  However, the surface had no radius and indeed, was not even sanded.   Lucky for me, I know how to do this.  Notice the two brownish streaks on the sanding block paper.  When those two lines connect in the middle of the block, the radius is completed.
  I cut the frets and notched each tang to fit in over the binding.  This is another long, tedious job but it has to be done.  Time to pull out the reading glasses...

After a bit more prep to the fingerboard, the fret press does a beautiful job of seating the fret wire.  Because of the detailed prep work, very little leveling is required.  A little filing to the fret ends and... presto!   This sucker is ready to go.

Now it's time for a little mando work.

I moved on to the final shaping of the soundboard.  With the fingerboard off of the neck, I can get my finger planes into the the highly sculpted areas at the top of the body.  I love this work.  I could do it for hours.  That's good, because it takes a couple to get this far.  Just a bit farther to go, but it's bedtime.

After a nice session, it's good to wind down with a little bit o' guitar.  This is the first time I've tried posting video.  If the player sucks, let me know.  I'll put 'em on youtube in the future.  Cheers!

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

The title for this post speaks to the idea of Conservation.  This notion is starting to become understood as efforts in preserving an item for posterity, in whatever condition it is in, without taking any existing part of the original away. Those with an opinion on the matter would agree that reducing intrusion, reusing technique and recycling any original material (such as loose finish chips) would put you on the right track.  Lately, I've been finding out just what sort of high pains are taken by those who conserve .

The past couple of weeks have been fantastic.  The days at school have gotten a little shorter and the sun stays up a little longer.  We have moved past "the heart and soul of the program" aka Advanced Finishing II.  Our muse is now Antiques and Conservation which brings a multifaceted challenge to our critical thinking and technical skills.

This class supposes that the item we are considering is of some special value to either the scholar or the collector.  In this situation, an object transcends its intended purpose.  From that point on, every moment that passes in the presence of the object or any contact therewith must be considered for possible detriment to the object.  In order to put a face on the name Conservation, we took a field trip to the Minnesota Historical Society.  Before heading out on this trip though, we needed an introduction to a couple of the tools of the Conservator;  French polishing and solvent testing.

Yep.  It comes in a can.  Easy!

French polishing is a method used to apply an evaporative finish to an object.  The process requires only the simplest of tools and done well, delivers a coating of exceeding beauty.  It is said that there as many ways to French polish as there are people French polishing.  I like that.  We used garnet shellac and the classic tool, the tampon, to coat a piece of Cherry veneer plywood.  Learning this technique is perhaps my most gratifying moment spent at DCTC thus far.  I don't need no stinking spray booth!  After a few days of familiarization with the process of solvent testing, which clues us in on how to proceed with conservation, we were ready to see what our some of our professional colleagues were up to.
 
This is what the finished product looks like.  Pictured is an uncoated Cherry board and it's cousin, all dressed up and nowhere to go.  We used Garnet shellac, some cloth, a tiny bit of mineral oil and a dram of ethanol.  Have gun, will travel.

We were received on the ground floor of the Minnesoat Historical Society by Tom, an objects conservator at the museum.  We all piled into an elevator car and quickly plunged down into a secure area.  Turns out that this was just the entrance into the Very Secure Area.  Moments later, we found ourselves in a subterranean warehouse.  Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?   We stood below rows and rows of Important Stuff, neatly shelved and tagged like cadavers. Only about one percent of these items would ever be displayed in the galleries.  Necks strained and craned as we tried to glimpse the treasures in this room.  After introducing us to Minnesota's first female cabinetmaker (from 100 years ago) and fielding a few questions, Tom lead us out of the catacombs towards his brightly lit lab.
  This is the testimony table from the Minnesota Supreme Court.  It has been retired.  It's in for some TLC before heading off to its new home.  This lucky piece will actually go on to be used, rather than sitting eternally in the dark place.


This is a genuine Cival War sword.  It was especially cool to see this item just laying out on a table rather than sequestered in some glassy cube.  My inner Zorro managed to keep his cool.  But damned if he didn't want to snatch that thing up and swashbuckle for a minute.  En garde! 

The Objects Conservation Lab is where additions to the collection are observed and a condition report is prepared.  Later, the condition report will guide conservation efforts on the item in question.  Several projects were in transit in the lab.  Tom filled us in on details of half a dozen objects including the testimony table from the Minnesota Supreme Court, a sword and pistol from the Civil War, and an autographed cleat from the Minnesota Kicks soccer team.  Many thanks to Tom and the Minnesota Historical Society for opening their doors to us.


This one put a lump in my throat.  From the bridge collapse of August 1, 2007.

The next museum we would visit would walk right into our classroom.  The curated body of knowledge that resides in the mind of Don Williams is stupefying.  Don was, until recently, employed as the head furniture conservator at the Smithsonian Institution and as far as I can tell, he has done it all.  He really should take a whack at competing on Jeopardy.  Given the time, I could write a entire book about Don but the information is already out there.  His published works abound.  You might search for the name Donald C. Williams with good results.  Don generously spent two days with us, blew our minds on multiple topics without missing a beat or a joke and it was a rare treat.  Thank you, sir.
  
The mighty hand of Don Williams and a smattering of dry shellac forms.  I'm on the lookout for some 2001 Kusmi #1 in which to swaddle my mando if any of ya'll are holding...

The rest of the school year looks like it will zip right by.  We have a couple more distinguished guests scheduled to visit and then from there on in, it will be all about our final projects.  Each of us will strip and completely refinish a dining table and chairs.  We will each give the "whole enchilada" treatment to a rogue chair, utilizing all of the finishing techniques we have learned.  Then, it's on to our elective pieces.  I will be sprucing up my A2 mandolin from my last year at the Red Wing school and also my sweet little Koa ukelele.  I think I feel a recording session coming on...

Have a great week everybody!

Icing the Cake

You may have wondered if it was time for me to change the title of my blog to something else.  "Tim Must Have Been Buried In The Snow" or "Why Does Internet Service Cost So Much?" seem like reasonable contenders to me.  I'm happy to report however that there is no need to change said title.  I build guitars!  And ukeleles too.  But we'll get to that later.

   The first week of classes.  We are all already befuddled. 

For the last seven months I've toiled at Dakota County Technical College in a very unique program called Wood Finishing Technology.   You know, at this point in my life I have a fair amount of post-secondary education under my belt, not to mention combat training as an Infantryman in the good ol' US Army.   In that light, I'm pretty sure that this is the most difficult thing I've done.

   A wee Cabriole leg.  There is an easy route to making this classic style leg, large or small.


The program is also known as the National Institute of Wood Finishing.  It's the one place nationally, and very likely on the entire planet, to learn this stuff in a nine month program.  I chose to become a student there to take my instrument building endeavors to the logical conclusion. That being, making pieces that look, feel and sound absolutely inspiring.  There is another guitar builder in the class, a homeboy from Red Wing.  We've both been through the Archtop Building course that is second year curriculum at Southeast Tech, for which we were awarded PhDs.  (Pretty Hard, Dude.)

   Careful with that chair!  That was my grandma's!

   Oops.

My classmates spring from diverse backgrounds and it is such a cool mix of folk.  Among us are a former nurse, a ferrier, a youth-leading outdoorsman, a former Minnesota State Trooper, and several talented makers. We are young and old, each in our own ways.   And then there is our Commander-in cheif, Mr. Mitch Kohanek.  Mitch is a known guy in the world we currently inhabit.  His articles are in the trade magazines on our library shelves, on the short list of certain video search results on Youtube and spinning through the mind of every student who has taken the challenge. 

We have about two months left in the program.  There are some big projects to get through in the coming weeks.  I will keep you posted as best I can.  Until then, enjoy a few photos of the results...


Shades of Brown and Shiny...


A stab at refining my decorative fill project. 


Hmmm?  What could this possibly be?


Here's my shot at doing a grown-up sunburst, ala Gibson.  There are seven different colors working here and multiple application processes.  Dye, stain, seal, tone, tone, tone, topcoat, tone, tone tone, topcoat, topcoat, whew.  It looks fancier after the high gloss rub out I did on it.  Thanks to Ryan for the Gretsch plate.


A peek at one corner of my recently acquired dedicated workshop.  This is so cool! Plenty of room, at last.


This is one of my newest projects, a tiny soprano ukelele made from Koa wood.  I'm testing a "kit" to determine if I can take instrument building into a kids classroom.  Interdisciplinary learning at it's finest!


  Blocks and kerfing installed.  I'll brace the top and back next.


Happy spring to all!  Thanks for reading.

A Few Introductions

For the most part, this blog has focused on my education experiences at MSC-Southeast Tech in Red Wing and the results of the work I've performed in the classroom.  For this installment, I would like to turn the spotlight on my mates.   Let's have a look at some of their great work.
 
 Towards the end of the school year, our finishing area and spray booth fill up with this wonderful sight.  Handmade guitars everywhere! The finishing process for one instrument can take just a couple of days to complete or up to several weeks, depending on the choices made.

 Phil Kirst made three really cool instruments this year.  A wee ukelele, a Joe Satriani-type electric and an A-style mando.  Here's Phil and his sweet little mando. 
 
 Phil did a beautiful job on his finish and was the first of us to get strung up.  I was truly impressed by the sound of his instrument.  And also, very excited by it because I knew mine would sound pretty similar as we built from the same blueprint and both used Adirondack Spruce for our soundboards.

Here's my buddy Andy Fulton with his lovely A2. His fetching, hand-rubbed sunburst is a real eye-catcher. Andy is a pretty laid back fellow and over time, we found some common interests and shared a certain insight. We both wished we had connected as friends in our first year of school in Red Wing.  Better late than never.

I didn't get to play Andy's mandolin. Or his super cool blue and chrome Thunderbird bass for that matter.  Maybe we'll get together soon to share some war stories and do some pickin'.

Mr. Nate Marcy blew me away with his tasteful instinct for inlay work. Nate built a striking Benedetto-style jazz box in the arch top class and this comely F-style mandolin for his CNC build.
 
CNC stands for computer numeric control.  This is basically a robotic router that will do whatever you tell it, right or wrong. After mapping all of the 3-D contours into the program, the router takes over and renders your drawing in wood.  This class is part of the guitar production program at Southeast Tech.

My pal Dave Helmer built this gorgeous Dreadnought guitar. The hypnotic top is a piece of Redwood with huge flame and the back is made from figured walnut that Dave found at the lumberyard!

Dave and his cool lady friend Sam were kind enough to put me up in their home during the last few days of class and saved me from many extra hours of drive time that I was not interested in doing.  They are both talented musicians and fine, friendly folks too.

One of the greatest things about the second year of the school program is that you are pretty much in anything goes territory.  Because we already have a good foundation, we can move on to designing our own projects.  Luke Kenning created this monster of metal, starting with a just drawing and an idea and finishing with a long-scale, neck-through body axe that is made for just one thing.  It ain't jazz.

Ben Williams is a man of few words and many talents.  This pair of peaches is what just got Ben a job building arched top instruments up in Montana.  For a hiring manager in the instrument making business, the proof is in the pudding and these very clean builds make up one very big, very tasty bowl full. Congratulations Ben!

This snow-white lefty was built by Ryan Welch.  Ryan was the only southpaw in our class.  This seems like a uniquely tough challenge to overcome.  All of our resources depict instruments made for right-handed folks.  Our curriculum, blueprints and teacher are constantly encouraging, either subtly or overtly, right-handed builds.  Ryan did a great job of keeping things straight and even managed to source a one-of-a-kind left-handed pickup for his electric build.

Every guitar class in the world should have a kid in it named Robert Johnson.  Being the youngest, and perhaps brightest builder in our group, our Robert Johnson found himself on the receiving end of a lot of ribbing.  His youthful ways and general lack of acquired life experience gave many of us in the class pause. At the same time, these traits inform Robert's building and helped him create what one visitor to our guitar show called "her favorite one". I won't be a bit surprised to see his future guitars in magazines or on the stages of the world.

This is Robert's Maccaferri-inpired build.   This type of guitar was made famous by jazz virtuoso Django Reinhardt back in the 1930's.  The maker took his influences, added numerous personal touches including a unique interior bracing system and produced a very cool eye-catching instrument.  A true success. Good luck, Rob!
 
David Lemons decided to exceed the challenges of building an average 6-string acoustic.  He selected an 8-string baritone with lots of inlay, multiple purflings and binding all around.   He took inspiration from a similar Taylor model and ran with it, creating a build that is exciting to see and hear. Great work D.D.!

Mr. Tim Boyson set the pace in our arched top building class.  He took an early lead and maintained it from start to finish. As the point man, he was always doing everything first. This left him to work without the benefit of seeing a process performed multiple times before actually having to do it. Tim built a great looking A-style mando and he also built this...

This incredible fretless bass incorporates numerous design elements taken straight from the Cremona builders' handbook. F-holes, the scrolled headstock and the lack of frets all tip the hat to the classic instruments of a stringed quartet.  This axe puts the C in Custom and really demonstrates what you can achieve by letting the world be your inspiration.

I owe all of these men a debt of gratitude for being a part of my experience at Southeast Tech. I have learned something important from every one of them.  And as a guitar player, I feel confident that they will help provide the world at large with a healthy supply of well made, great sounding stringed instruments.  Bravo!

Readers, if you wish to commission any of these builders to create your special instrument, contact me at www.lowstrungguitars.com and I will put you in touch with them.  Thanks for reading.

It's All In The Execution

 I am now in the process of setting the neck to my mandolin build.  This employs a not-very-large mortise and tenon joint to connect the neck and the body.  This ancient builder's joint will live it's life under a great deal of string tension. Thus, it must be fashioned without errors.



The pace in the classroom lets us crawl to the destination.  This way, we will have an undiluted sense of the precision work that is required to achieve our goal. It feels to me like I'm learning an elemental secret. The mortise and tenon predates Twitter, omelets, and Stonehenge. I cannot call it anything but a deep lesson to the learner.

 

The overall dimensions of the heel have already been crafted.  The only variable here is the total height of the heel.   That dimension can be accurately figured by measuring the box from the inside surface of the button to the top line of the soundboard.

Chalk fitting, one last time, will reveal the minute imperfections that are preventing full contact in the joint. It's like an X-ray in that the chalk allows us to see things that aren't always visible to the naked eye.

We trim only the inside of the mortise. It's a good idea to use chisels that are very sharp. The heel angles have already been cut. So we chalk up the fitting area of the tenon (heel) and cram it into the mortise. Then we pull out the neck and look for the white spread of the chalk.




The chalk clings to the high points inside the mortise. They are reduced with a slicing motion from our chisel. More chalk, more fitting, more slicing.  When the heel hits the button and fingerboard is still above the body, it's time to trim the heel. We use a Japanese razor saw for this and take off about two millimeters at a time.  Then, back to chalk-fitting.

Eventually, trimming the heel with a razor saw becomes trimming the heel with a block plane, taking off slices that are thinner than paper. And then, at some point, everything just fits perfectly.  It's impossible not to smile when then happens.

Before gluing the neck in, I am going to go ahead and inlay the Lowstrung Guitars logo into the headstock overlay.  The simple, two-piece design uses mother-of-pearl and Abalone shell. I cut the pieces out with a jeweler's saw then file the edges until they are smooth and the curves fit together. Next, I mark the location of the inlay on the headstock.

To keep the work clean, we trace the inlay shape with an X-acto knife.  Then we grind a little chalk dust into the finely scribed line.  The tiny white line show up really well on the black wood.  We use a tool that is similar to a dentists' drill to remove the wood from inside the lines.


Once the inlay fits well, super glue and ebony dust are used to hold the pieces in place.  A little sanding levels everything out and... presto! Instant logo inlay. 

My teacher, Mr. John Reed, likes to say that the neck should look like it just grows right out of the body.  No gaps, no wiggle, and your should hear and feel a nice groan when the pieces are fitted together.  Once this is all accomplished, it's time to glue up.

Of course, it's smart to dry clamp several times to be positive that it all fits together perfectly.  Once John gives the go-ahead, all you need are an extra pair of hands, a tiny bit of hot hide glue and a single Jorgensen clamp.


I mixed those ingredients on a Thursday night which meant my glue joint would have over 96 hours to cure.  The following Tuesday, I removed the clamp and had a "one-piecer" on my hands. Sweetness. Another bit of good news was that it was time to carve the neck, which is one of my favorite steps.  And one of the most character-defining.

Hand-carving a piece of wood can be a wonderfully organic experience.  A sharp knife in the right hands makes a fantastic sound.  It is much like a singing voice.  Steel and the knowledge to use it become an irresistible force and the wood sheds a song as it is crafted to the desired form.
 
We begin by carving the button. Once it is finished, we take cues from it that guide other dimensions on the neck.  We draw guide lines onto the neck.  These let us get into the work without going too far.  When we reach the boundaries of the lines, we modify and refine them to bring us closer to the finish line.
 



When the button is finished, I am able to install the binding to the back of the instrument.  This goes in just like the top binding did, but terminates at the button.  The fit and finish is then manipulated to make the intersecting components look like one cohesive whole.

The neck carving process continues in the same way using progressively finer and finer tools.  Moving from knives and spoke shaves to files and finally, the amazing cabinet scraper.   We can skip the final sanding of the instrument altogether if we are diligent enough with the scraper. Properly utilized, the scraper leaves a finer finish than sanding as there is no dust to be pressed into the pores of the wood.

Here's the proof of that.  This beauty is ready to be fretted and to receive a final going-over with the cabinet scraper.  Then it's off to the spray booth!

 

Until next time...