Six impossible things before breakfast...

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast...

- Lewis Carroll

Over the weekend a remarkably atypical series of events occurred in the shop which has only led me to one conclusion --guitarmaking is good for your health. Depending on whose clinical trials you believe, a repeated daily intake of coffee (organic, fair trade, and roasted at home (as if there was any other way)): may protect against Parkinson's disease, seems to protect and fight against the development of Alzheimer's, may lower the risk of Diabetes, as well as all sorts of various other claims. Here is what I can tell you for sure about coffee --it's DELICIOUS. In fact we like coffee so much that we, without a doubt, see our reflections more in our mugs than we do in our mirrors. 

Just like clockwork at some magical point in the afternoon my brain decides it wants coffee. Maybe a more correct way of explaining this is that my brain decides it needs coffee. The kind of need that if ignored causes the brain to send signals to various vital bodily functions imploring them to initiate extortive maneuvers. 

"All right buddy don't be a hero, give me the coffee or the lymphatic system gets it." Naturally, cowering in fear a coffee must be consumed. I guess you could say we like coffee a lot. Which makes the happenings of Satuday afternoon just a little bit more than startling. 

Saturday morning Dave, Mike, and I started our new part time job. It's not exactly ideal that I need a part time job to sustain the early stages of my guitarmaking career but you have to do what you have to do. Our faithful readers can find a quantum of solace in the fact that we are not bussing tables, slinging drinks, or spending our cold winter nights lonely manning the till at some mom and pop depanneur... we are building electric guitars. There is something ironic about the fact that the first instrument coming out of our shop is not a classical guitar, it's not even  a steel string guitar, it's an electric guitar. Admittedly we are using a gorgeous pice of curly black walnut to cap an old growth Spanish cedar body and I haven't even begun to talk about how magnificently curly the maple neck is. It suffices to to say that it's quite curled.

The best part about working on this new project together is the collective energy. The synergy of a group of fellow guitarmakers and friends working together to build a musical instrument is really really great. So great in fact that we entirely missed our afternoon coffee and the really scary part (cue the theme to the 'Twilight Zone') was that we didn't even notice. Guitarmaking - one.   Chemical dependency - zero. We were all so electrified about finally starting to build an instrument (a well deserved diversion from building our shop) that our sheer enthusiasm overcame the sharp pangs of caffeine withdrawal. 

All kidding aside, it's great to be back building instruments (regardless of whether or not you have to plug them in) and we really want this project to be a collaborative affair. On Saturday afternoon we were excited to find out that Corin de Jonge was coming down for a visit. Corin is a fine juggler well on his way to star 'jester'dom' and a fantastic guitar builder in his own right. So what do a bunch of guitarmakers consider 'hanging out'? Would you be surprised if I said 'working in the shop'? 

On Sunday morning Corin lent a hand refining the curves of our new body shape as well as doing a bang up job making a template.

Corin working in front of one of our exceptionally long windows (mmm natural light)

Watch the blog for updates on the progression of the instrument and as to when this unique and first-class project will be available.