Guitar Building Session #1
Last night after a long day of working on designing invitations for my mom, I finally entered our workshop ready to get to work on this guitar. Accompanied by The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, and Pharrell (What?! I needed some serious groove.) I set up my work area, took a deep breath and read the instructions for my first few steps for maybe the hundredth time (that’s not an exaggeration). I’ve read these instructions and many others so many times that I’ve begun to feel like the work that I have to do can’t be all that hard and can’t possibly as nerve-racking as all of these Luthiers make it out to be. Right? Wrong. As I began to clamp my shooters and soundboards to plane the center joint I felt it immediately, a gasp in my chest, a tremble in my hands, and a heart rate I probably don’t even get while running. There’s just something about the wood, about the beauty of the grain, the idea that even though it feels and is SO delicate, if I treat it rightly and well enough, it will last centuries. Wood is so metaphorical, it was once living yet now rather than decaying as a corpse on my work bench, time will bring increasing strength and beauty to its form.
One of my fathers new colleagues, finding out that I have an interest in wood working, brought by some gorgeous Walnut boards the other day from his father’s farm. He explained that his father, a former shop teacher, couldn’t bear to throw away or burn the wood from the trees he cleared off of his land and that these particular pieces of Walnut had been cut in the 50’s from a tree that grew at his fathers childhood home. “Ohhhhhh!” My father and I exclaimed, not just at the poetic heritage of the wood but also because we knew that the incredible age of the tree and the decades that it had spent, milled and “resting” before making it’s way into my work shop, would add to its quality. Wood is humble, it is lustrous, it is sensuous, it has history and personality, it demands time and patience, steady hands, planning, care, problem solving, hope, and time. So, as I carefully unwrapped my delicate, 1/8 in thin book-matched, sitka spruce sound boards I felt simultaneously scared and empowered. I belong to these pieces of wood, I am their craftsman, despite my inexperience and inadequate skill I am theirs and they are mine. Suddenly the same paragraph in my instructional book that I have internally scoffed at through each of my readings made sense to me:
“You are about to breathe life into the wood you have selected to make your soundboard, so you need to develop an affinity with it. The closer the connection you make with the wood at this stage, the more energy and care you will put into the making of your guitar. Go slowly through the stages described and do not continue to the next step until you are absolutely satisfied with what you have done up to that point. Breathe deeply and often. Stay calm and relaxed, and, if possible, undisturbed throughout the process.” (Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar by Jonathan Kinkead, pg. 58)
Yet, last night’s process was not without lessons and frustrations. For instance, planing a board? Nooooooooooooooot as easy as Jesus makes it look in all of those early 90’s Jesus-as-strong-yet-tender-and-loving-carpenter illustrations. Apparently it is a skill you just have to learn over time, as you become more acutely aware of the grain of the wood against the angle of your blade, plus the hopefully even pressure of your hands as they drive the plane. Frustratingly, actually a little bit more than frustratingly, each of my strokes with the plane yielded an almost imperceptible (but definitely unacceptable) gentle curve to the supposed-to-be-completely-absolutely-PERFECTLY-straight edges of my soon-to-be joint. So, I gave up for the night, went to bed, lay awake in bed thinking about it, and have resolved to find a solution before I return to working on it later today.
Courage.
I’ll letcha know how it goes.
(above are pictures on my workbench, the clear template that I made and progress from last night)
