Thursday, April 17, 2008

Planting, painting, general nonsense

Good morning! (almost afternoon I suppose)
We're getting ready for a busy weekend of planting, painting, and some general yard work. Hurray! We've finally got a sign out front (pictures to come!) and should be doing some work on the upstairs part of the store when my parents come to town. It's been great porch sitting weather. I still haven't got over that there's grass growing out there! What a novelty after months of snow. Jake has great dreams of growing a pumpkin patch. I have great dreams of growing an herb garden. Hopefully we'll have both this year!

In other news... I 've got a little online shop up and running for The Wildwood Flower with craft items on Etsy:
Etsy
Buy Handmade
thewildwoodflower

More from us soon!
-Bonnie

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Zombie Guitar

Well, hello there again! I've just put up some more photos on Flickr of some repair work I'm doing on an 1890s parlor guitar and so I figured I'd put some here. First, the background...

I bought this hoping it would be an easy fix. Neck is perfectly straight, has good Victorian-era tuners, nicely proportioned body (think a small-size Martin or Larson parlor guitar), and wonderful ancient spruce for the top. Matches the grain very closely to my mandolin from the same time period, so I'm guessing that it might be Adirondack. Anyhow, that was all the good.

The bad was that the seller identified only "two tight hairline cracks" in the top and one big crack on the back. The back was no problem, I took it off, put it back together, and reglued the braces. The two "hairline cracks" must be the ones under the tailpiece and right down the center-seam of the top... those are okay. At this point I've glued and stabilized them. They're not going anywhere. So what was the bad? The soundhole had caved in at the top and the area around the soundhole was badly bellied-in. This left the neck at a five-degree angle pointing into the body and a massacred upper-bout top and structure underneath it. I decided that I was going to salvage the neck, sell the parts, and make a banjo-guitar with the neck... but then I went ahead and did the foolish thing and said "I'm gonna fix this!" So I am, and it's actually going okay. There's no doubt that I can in no way sell this piece, but it looks like it'll end up as a player anyhow!



Here's the broken end-block, missing part of the top, and broken-off brace.



Cutting away the old brace leavings... never fear! It'll turn out okay!



Bits and pieces... the brass tuners cleaned up nicely and now I have them all in working-order, too! Tailpiece is shiny and pitted at the same time. I might replace the bridge with a new one...



Cutting away the old top leavings that were still stuck to the underside of the fingerboard.



Almost done! Then to sand...



Clamping my "patch" in place. This will also remove the warp from the top of the soundboard when the glue is all dried. Getting there!



A little help from my cast-iron friend to glue these braces back to the back.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Come one, come all!

Good morning, chickadees! This is our new blog for the store. You will find exciting facts and true stories of our lives, right here! You will also find out about the things we make, the things we do, and sometimes even about the things we sell. And eat. We're eating cereal right now, Special K with bananas, while we watch the store.

It's a beautiful morning here, with light wind and a puffy-cloud sky. The river's flowing very fast out the window and the snow's melted enough to see the green moss on all the glacier rocks scattered everywhere around us. In the evening the deer will come to browse around the back of the house, but not yet. Terrapin (our katzen) is pounding on the door for a cuddle.

Anyhow, it's time to go back to being industrious. Bonnie's watching the shop all day today, a favor I'll exchange tomorrow, and so I have to make good use of my time! (I've been gluing an 1890s guitar back together from its ashes upstairs). Much more coming soon!

Don't forget to check out our new website:
www.thewildoodflower.com

Jake and Bonnie