I spent the last 2 months restoring this lovely old Swedish yacht. It's exactly 50 years old this year. I've wanted a sailboat since I was a boy, and the opportunity to get this one presented itself, and it came at the perfect time in my life.
It has been incredibly lovely, healing, restful, frustrating, overwhelming and rewarding. Its got a mahogany top, there are a lot of scrap Ella body blanks used to repair old rotten mahogany planks. It's also been really lovely to use my woodworking skills for something that's for myself, and just for fun. I had to remind myself at times that it didn't really matter if it wasn't perfect, as it isn't for a paying client, it's just for me. There are absolutely patches that aren't sanded to perfection, and that's just fine ❤️
Anyhoo, today with the help of two much more experienced sailors than myself, we got the mast up, and now it feels like it's "done" (although it will never be done).
I feel a bit like I've just restored an old 911 and can't drive, as I have a TONNE to learn about manipulating the wind, and tying knots, but I'm excited for it.
I've had so much help from some really really lovely friends I've made along the way.
Thanks so much to Gert for helping to get the motor running, to Steen for the daily warmth and support and Andreas for the opportunity!
Oh, and for those interested. Guitar building is more difficult, but boat restoration is more labour intensive.
Alright!
I've had a few huge projects I've been pouring a ridiculous amount of time into the last month, so I've been quiet on Instagram.
However these projects are nearly done, and nearly ready for me to show off, so I *nearly* have the headspace to be visible again.
Here's the first thing I'm happy to show, an Ella I'm taking to @stringbreak_uk
Before you ask, yes it's sold.
But you can order one made to your specs!
@stringbreak_uk guitars are coming pretty hard.
Still undecided on what pickups to put into the MK2, probably a set of P90s.
The Ella will be a nylon/steel string hybrid.
Two very lovely, very different guitars.
This is fun, I hadn't tried this before.
You want acoustic bodies to be as efficient as possible at turning wood vibration into moving air.
My Ella bodies are able to pump enough air to blow out not one, but two large candles, at a distance of approx 30mm from the sound hole.
#moarella
This is pretty custom.
So it started as a Morty with a jazzmaster vibrato. Sounds simple right?
Ok, but jazzmaster vibratos need a neck break angle and a high bridge to work properly (actually, they work fantastically when set up right, just not on Jazzmasters)
And T bridge pickups sound best mounted to metal plates, rather than directly to the body (you get more sympathetic resonance, and a *bit* more high end cut. Just a touch more clarity.
So, to get the best of both this guitar needed a custom designed plate, with holes for roller bridge tunomatic mounts.
These are the kind of lengths I go to to ensure my guitars are as close to perfect as possible.
I spent a few months working on this bridge setup (on a back burner) and will likely never use it again, it was just for this specific guitar.
#moarguitars
Hey all!
I gave myself a little break from social media the last few weeks. I have been very very busy, but enjoying not taking the time to video every wood shaving, every dust blow, and every twang. Sometimes luthiery is just for me.
Anyhoo, this lovely thing left the care of my workshop today to go to it's new home. It was a very very hard guitar to ship.
Yet another one that I wanted to keep.
Love you all! I'll try to be better at filming "luthierporn" in the coming days. And dont worry, I don't mean naked me, covered in wood glue and wood dust doing strange things with truss rods, but slow motion handplanes making perfect curly shavings. You know the type.
I've been deep in a few tricky builds the last few weeks. This guitar was "done" a few weeks ago, I invoiced the client for the remaining sum, and organised a custom flight case for it. But I kept on feeling like the guitar had a little more in it to give.
So, I re-shaped the neck, thinned a few sections on the guitars back to get it moving a bit more, refinished it, gave it a new nut (twice as I didn't like the second one, so this is the third). And it's finally feeling like it's got nothing left to give.
It's a bit like chasing a shadow, edging a guitar closer to perfection (especially when we consider that perfection doesn't exist). The deeper I go into my life long quest to make the best guitars I possibly can, the more experience I have to know instinctively when a guitar has more left to give, and it's a really hard thing to quantify.
Sigh
Anyway. This one's perfect*
#moarwayfair
I'm trying to leave my phone switched off this week (still responding to emails and DMs on my computer) but thought this was too pretty to not photograph.
Deceptively simple, very very time consuming to build, I'm proud of this detail on my instruments. You're looking at 9 different pieces of wood in this photograph.
#handmadeguitar
#luthiery
