Ok, I'm gonna tell you up front, Santas been in a bad mood. Last years blizzards, and an early cold and windy blast have left me in an irratable mood, with little tolerance for the reindeers antics or the elf union negotiations.
So I decided to take a little break and build myself one of these newfangled retro box guitar things I see on Shane Spiels website so I could strum away while imagining I was in some tropical paridise.
Things got started off on a bad note when I found that the elves had used the last peices of mahogony to build a batch of pull toys, mobiles or some such drivel. But I had some well seasoned wood laying about, and have heard some old piece of poplar could be fashioned into a useable neck. I will note that I grew and harvested this wood on my own property, so that there is no doubt this is a legit primal box guitar build. But as you will see it may take a little Christmas magic to fashion this thing with the tools in the elf workshop.
About an hour of whittling and I had a neck roughed in and had fashioned and grafted a headstock into place, here is an unfinished picture as I was finishing roughing in the head stock with a back saw and some course sandpaper:
It didnt take long to get a nice finished tapered neck and useable headstock fashioned up:
Cutting out the notches in the box went pretty smoothly, a little final fitting and it was ready for a trial assembly:
And in no time at all I had added an ebony fingerboard and some tuners. I shaped a bridge and nut out of some hard maple, strung it up and was ready to try it out. As you can see I couldnt resist a little red mahogony stain to disguise the poplar a little bit:
I gotta say I dig that retro sound, it plays real nice. But if those reindeer dont behave tonight I am thinking I will call it quits somewhere in a tropical latitude, and I will be playing this thing with a reindeer bone slide! HO! HO! HO! HO!
Got my back up band warmin' up too!
Merry Christmas everybody!!!!!!
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