Friday, March 03, 2006

Sebastian Cabot

I think I have almost everything I need to begin work on my amp. This has never occured to me, but the amp chassis has to be painted first, before assembling and mounting everything. It's probably a good thing so that you aren't throwing paint around and risking getting some components sprayed, causing heat dissipation problems.

Here's another reason this may be a good thing. If painting and lettering the chassis was done after it was assembled, then a lot of homemade amps would have bare metal and labeled with a Sharpie. (I know I would have a hard part decorating, when all I wanted to do was hear it!)

So, my chassis got a good dose of primer and flat white paint this evening. I will try to share some pictures later. My goal is to try and lay out something that looks like this in India ink tomorrow:



I have never attempted to letter anything other than a sheet of paper, and my skills are a little rusty. But, maybe I can still be successful. I also wonder if I can do a good job sketching Mr. French with a rapidograph pen. (Afterward, the flat white background and the black lettering will be encased in a clear lacquer.)

We will see tomorrow.

...

In other news, I finally got my guitar back. Leo did a great job on the fretboard planing. I can tell that he had to partially plane over 3/4 of the fretboard. (You can tell what was planed by the color of the binding, the yellowish binding is bright white where it was planed down.) There was a pretty good dip from the 7th to 12th fret, and a hump at the 16th fret. It is perfectly smooth now.

The frets feel great. With new frets, and an even fretboard, the guitar is playing like brand new. Because the previous frets were almost worn to the board, the new frets even make the notes sing out more. It's a little amazing how much I tolerated.

The neck was a little sticky, so I spent some time on it with 000 and 0000 steel wool. I almost have no finish at all on most of the neck, which I prefer. With the steel wool, I can make the neck feel like glass.

--gh

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