I've Been Making a House (with lots of help)

That's right folks, I'm not dead, but I haven't posted in a long while. The biggest reason for that aside from the holidays was that in October I moved into a house and started renovating it. I'll have to get some before and after photos up, but it started out looking like a pack of wild dogs lived here with holes in the wall, nasty smells and trash all over the place, and a patchwork of half-assed and jury-rigged repairs spanning back at least a decade.

Started out by gutting the place out: carpet, old heaters, nasty linoleum and congolium tile, trash, filthy counters and cabinets, etc... and about $200 worth of scrap metal behind the house which paid for a new front door since the old one had a hole rotted in the bottom almost big enough for a cat to get through. Then it was on to drywall, cleaning, and since my old house's lease was up: sleeping in the gutted shell of the new place. Waking up every morning with a nose full of drywall dust and no heat turns out to be a good motivator for getting to work.

My dad, me, roommate Justin, several of my friends, and some of my dad's friends and associates helped straighten out wiring, replaced every receptical and switch in the house, added a bigger circuit breaker panel, dropped the ceiling in the kitchen and hall to make room for central AC among other things, replaced ratty and chilly old windows (though there's still one left right now), and painted just about every surface in the house but the slab.

We also cut down and hauled out two big sycamore trees and a really big oak that had roots sticking several inches above most of the front yard, had ruined the driveway, and were threatening to do the same to the slab of the house though luckily it hadn't already. We also put up a privacy fence on the side of the house where the neighbors are a little too rowdy to want much to do with.

I also got two sets of 45 watt solar panel kits from Harbor Freight during the holiday sales and snagged a couple of nice big batteries from work as a storage bank, it's just sitting on the roof mounted to a pair of 2x4s. It's been working quite nicely and I've had my laptop and phone running on solar power ever since without running the batteries down even when it was cloudy several days.

And to top it all off the next and hopefully last big projects now that the house is starting to feel more like a home are to put a new roof on (and increase the pitch as well as change some other stuff about it), enclose the carport as a garage/workshop so I can finally stop working on things out in the weather and not have to worry about my tools walking off or getting wet, and turn the back porch into a master bath with attached laundry closet. Oh yeah, and we have to paint the outside once that's done. Still lots more to come, but holy hell it's come a long way already. Once I've got my workshop done up I should be able to more comfortably work on stuff, so stay tuned!

I Made Metal Stick to Metal

I decided to give my new welder a go recently. It's a
small 110v flux-core wire welder and it's pretty handy for anything under 1/4". Anyway, after my dad giving me his old spare set of welding gloves and an old welding mask I struck some arcs and gave it a go.

A few years ago dad had me try welding on a small trailer that needed some work. The results were a "porcupine" of welding wire as he put it, so I figured I'd have to do better this time. After getting a feel for making a few beads on a piece of scrap and burning my name through a piece of thin sheet metal, I decided to try something more substantial. Taking a pile of steel scrap I had around, I fashioned it into an arm that moves at the elbow. While half-way through working on it my roommate ordered pizza and I had to go sign for the it. The delivery guy almost fell over when I walked up with the mask, welding jacket, and one glove still on.

I also made a small metal bracket from some political yard sign metal (the same as the fingers on the arm) for my room mate so his new air filter can bolt up properly and not wear holes int itself. it's pretty much just a rod with a loop on each end welded so a bold could go through.

Once I'd finished the arm and bracket I felt more confident with my welds not falling apart, so I gave a shot at making a work bench. It's made of some metal shipping crate frame that I held together with baling wire while I tacked it together. It's pretty self explanatory to look at it, and sits pretty solidly, but I wish I'd had a magnetic square, as the corners are nowhere near square. Ohh well, it'll still work nicely. The table top is just chipboard and I painted the whole thing so it won't rust or peel too badly. I'm probably going to make it so I can bolt my Skil-Saw to it and use it as a table saw. I'd also like to get a vice mounted to it as well. At the moment the whole thing is just holding up my

I Made a Really Big D20

While showing a friend of mine some of the things I've made recently he asked me if I could make a big D20 (a 20 sided die used in some tabletop RPG games). We tossed around a few ideas for it and it sounded pretty ambitious since I didn't know the angles I'd need. I got a couple pieces of poplar 1x6, cut them into 20 equilateral triangles, put did some test cuts with a table saw until I got the right angle to put on the inside edge, and then had all the pieces done.

To attach them together used masking tape to put together 3 sections, the top, bottom, and middle belt, and used wood glue to hold it together. While the glue was still wet I put the three sections together, then balanced a weight on top to press the pieces together for a tighter seam.

The numbers were printed out, cut and taped in place. Then I used a square tip screwdriver to punch them into the wood and painted each number with model paint. After three coats of wood stain it was all done. You can see photos of the build on this Flickr set.

I made a cooler usable again

Sometimes when I'm scooting around on the ugly scootling I come across things I can't pass up. A few days ago I found a large dirty, and broken Igloo cooler. My dad has a couple of these and they're great for long trips or parties. While I can use his when I need one, as I passed this one waiting for garbage pickup I decided I could use one for myself. It's probably one of the largest coolers Igloo makes, and with the lid trying to fall off, I loaded it onto the passenger seat, threw and arm over it and putted unsteadily back to the house, gathering more than a couple funny looks for having a cooler as long as the scooter itself with me.

Once I got it back to the house I cleaned it up some. Dried fish goo and dirt were caked inside and out so I scoured it with Comet after taking all the hardware off. Next was to find a way to fix the broken parts on it.

When I looked on Igloo's website they wanted 15 dollars for a "cooler repair kit". This includes a set of plastic hinges, clasps for the front, and some other odds and ends. The problem with these are the same as why this cooler was in the trash. They break reliably within a year or two since the hinging is just flexing plastic. I decided to use some chrome steel hinges for 99c a pack from the local hardware store. There was also the problem of keeping it closed but I decided to simply forgoe the clasps since the lid is heavy enough to hold itself shut mostly. The handle areas were cracked, and looked like they might not hold up too well under weight, so I used some 2 part epoxy and JB Weld (JB Quik actually) to reinforce those areas and to keep water out of the foam inside. I may have sealed in some sugar ants as well. Since the drain cap was MIA I went looking for a plug for the hole. A cork from a bottle of Hana Sake did the trick nicely. The last problem was the strap inside that keeps the lid from flopping back. That was an easy fix. Cut off the broken part and put a new hole in it. Good as new.

There were a couple things that I tried that didn't work like I wanted. I tried to use a window clasp where the normal clasp was, but the plastic is soft enough that a good pull would pop it open. I also tried to replace the strap inside with a piece of bike inner tube, but the rubber was too stretchy and didn't work.

After that, I stenciled on my name the lid since my dad's cooler is so similar to mine. Wouldn't want him to accidently lay claim to it. ;) I'm gonna take it out today with some friends to a dirt bike track and give it a good test.


Update 1:

Took the cooler out, it works as expected, except the handles were both on the virge of coming off the whole time. I replaced the screws with some bolts going clean through to the inside. It's not the prettiest solution, but I'd rather not have a heavy cooler fall on my toe again....

I made some cave paintings

Well, perhaps they aren't quite cave paintings, but a few weeks ago I was riding around on my scooter and noticed some graffiti tagged on a small bridge near my house. Ever since I was a little kid this bridge has had stupid things painted on and under it from white supremacist stuff to the usual crude pictures of wangs and cuss words a 12 year old who raided his dad's garage for a can of Krylon might get the urge to paint. It's always gotten on my nerves when I'd go by under the bridge and see all of that, and when I saw some of this on the top side of the bridge going by it sparked my interest in cleaning it all up some.

I started out just spraying white over the tag on the top of the bridge, but decided to use my day off to go ahead and paint over the junk under as well with some old paint I got free on craigslist. I loaded up the scooter and got to work white washing over phrases such as "yo daddy suck ass" and as I did so with a few different colors paredolia kicked in and I decided to make the blobbed over shapes in the paint into something (hopefully) more attractive.

I started out with one large splotch of blue that looked something like a big blue bird. I added detail to the head and came back to add the beak and whites of the eyes when I would switch paints. I also added a big tree next to it once I painted over something vertical next to it with brown.

There were seveal other things I made into paintings, including a night skyline that I'm happy with the results and detail of considering I was teetering on rocks the whole time, was using a 2" brush, and was only working with four colors. Even with all this though there were still many areas as you can see where all I did was basically paint over whatever offending remark was there. I did leave one original bit of paint that simply said "Hello"; under it I pained "HI" with a smiley face.

















The cool thing is now for the first time I have something more interesting to look at any time I ride under the bridge and even though it's still graffiti I think it's a huge step up from what was previously under there. Here's to hoping it'll either be left alone or improved upon and not just mindlessly tagged over. The real question with all of this is does all this painting make me an arteest yet?

I made a canoe float

A guy that works with my dad got hold of an old and very porous canoe a couple weeks ago. It looked like someone had dropped it off the back of a truck, which cracked, bent, and broke large holes all in the hull. The problem looked to have been made worse by someone who tried to fix the holes with a grinder rather than some sand paper. Some of the gaps in the fiberglass were as long as someone's arm and an inch or so wide, some were just big enough to see daylight through, and one was almost large enough to fit my head through. The tail end was tenuously held connected to the rest of the canoe with the aluminum along the top edge and hope. Unfortunately I lost the "before" pictures of the canoe, but as you can see below, the holes in the vessel would have ensured it went down in the water much faster than it went forward if you tried to take it out for a leisurely ride. The middle bracing support and the front seat were also missing in action, so replacements for those would have to be fashioned as well.

My dad, I, and his coworker started by covering the large holes with a slick black plastic that the fiberglass wouldn't stick to and the smaller ones with packing tape. We then cut some strips of fiberglass to size and mixed up some resin. It was a hot day, and fiberglass resin sets up fast when it's hot, so we had to work fast. We added to coats to the large holes on the outside, one coat on the small holes and inside, and generally coated anywhere that looked to be of questionable strength with more resin, which was most of the boat.

After all that had set up and hardened, we worked on the missing pieces, the middle beam and the front seat. we cut both out of wood, coating the middle beam in resin and fiberglassing the bottom of the seat to the boat. the whole thing looked almost seaworthy now.

I had to head to work before they were finished, but when I came back the next day, the canoe had been painted and apparently taken out. They said it worked as well as a new one. You wouldn't think that something that looked as much like a big piece of trash could be recovered like that so quickly. Very cool stuff

I made an arcade game cabinet

A few years ago I got into old arcade video games. They represented a time that I wasn't a part of which seemed to have it's own story with dimly lit caves full of kids and teenagers who were free to roam around and try their hand at besting rows of machines that would entertain and cast a cool light over their faces until the quarters were gone and their three initials had been etched into the game's record of heroes. It seemed (and still seems) a shame to me that these places of social video games are slowly fading away, and I wanted to have a part of that time. I looked into it and found that much like home video game systems like the NES, Sega Genesis, and Atari have been translated into programs that emulated their games for modern computers, arcade games have much the same thing going for them with a program called MAME (the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). I was able to not only play something similar to those original arcade games, but actually play the originals, their code and idiosyncrasies pulled straight from their original game boards and loaded for me to play on my PC, even down to having to press a button to "feed" the game a quarter.

For a while this was very interesting and fun, but it still wasn't the full experience of standing in front of a real arcade machine and mashing buttons and joysticks. I looked into MAME's community more and found that there were already many other people, maybe hundreds, who had the same want for a full arcade machine in their home that I did, and thanks to the Internet, they had gotten together to share stories of how they made it happen and what they did along the way. Some people had gotten old arcade games and fitted a computer to the original screen and joysticks; others had started from scratch and build their cabinets, ordered brand new controls to use in their machines. Some had used old keyboards and PC joysticks with a rat's nest of wires connecting everything while others had come up with or used very professional looking, very clean machines that were custom designed for their purpose. Many people had created huge four player behemoths that have every controller from every arcade game one could imagine while still others had created coffee table sized machines that were best suited to earlier, more simple games. I was hooked on the idea of having my own.

I poured over every instruction page, build log, and relevant site I could find, trying to figure out the best way for to go about bringing this idea to life. I slowly collected parts that I thought would be useful and saved my pennies for either buying a gutted/dead game or buying the materials to build my own. I happened upon a dealer at the local flea market who sells video games and used to work with arcade games. He had a few boxes of old controls which I bought, along with a marquee panel for Robotron 2084. Most of these had 20 years worth of grime, grunge, and cigarette burns from having spent as much time in arcade games and parts bins. I managed to salvage and clean enough controls to get a full set of control for 2 players. I still didn't have a cabinet to put them in though.

After a false start with someone on eBay selling me a cabinet for cheap, but refusing to ship it, I decided it would be best to build my own rather than wait to happen upon one locally. I decided to go with a design called LuSiD's Arcade Flashback. It's large, and gave plenty of room for the needed parts, as well as being fairly simple to construct. A friend of my dad who's a fantastic carpenter helped me construct the cabinet out of Melamine backed MDF. It's a type of particle board often used on counter tops, and was what many people used for their cabinets since it's got a nice smooth surface. The problem was that it's hard to work with. You have to pre-drill all holes and glue all screws and seams together or you risk the materials breaking apart. It also weighs a ton and has nice sharp edges, so any time it would slip it would cut me. With the help of my dad's friend these concerns were minimized and in the end the cabinet went together as planned, with a few additions such as a piano hinge on the control panel to make adding controls easier down the line and a slot for the marquee to slide into so that I could easily swap it later if I wanted to. I had construction photos for the cabinet, but they may be lost to the digital sands of time.

Now that I had all the major parts ready, I began putting things together. I cut a clear plexi cover for the control panel and mounted the controls, wiring only one side since I still wasn't sure how I was going to set up the second set. Then I scrapped together a computer from my parts bin and set the huge 19" monitor an uncle had given me in place only to find out the case was too large for my cabinet. I removed the plastic case over the screen and that made the clearance just right.

Once I got the cabinet up and running in a basic sense it sat unfinished for some time until I got the urge to work on it more. This time I took it apart, painted everything one cold morning, and then rewired the controls, this time hacking up a USB game pad to allow me to wire all the controls, though I left a few of the P2 buttons unfinished. I also added a large Donkey Kong decal to the side so I would have some side art rather than a blank black cabinet. For a marquee light I used whatever I had most available. At one time that was a nice florescent lamp, which was later repurposed, giving way to duct tape and a desk lamp, which I didn't like the idea of after a short while. I replaced that with a florescent tube powered by the driver circuit from a CFL bulb. This idea later became the idea I also used in the lightbox a friend and I made.

That was how the arcade cabinet usually went for a couple years. I'd work on it once in a while, slowly scrapping together better pieces and a better computer, but it would generally stay in some state of disrepair and general untidiness. At one point another uncle of mine, knowing I was working on this, brought me a very beat up, damaged, and barely working N.A.R.C. cabinet, from which I finally got a coin door to put in the cabinet as well as some other working parts. I'd snag a part from the computer to feed another project or the controls would snag a loose wire while playing and kill one or more buttons. Eventually I got tired of such things though and decided to fully finish it. I wired all the controls properly and cleaned up the rats nest that had developed beneath the control panel, made a bezel to go around the screen and shroud the less than clean paint job behind it, and set up MAME with a pack of several thousand games and made sure the settings allowed you to control as much of the system as possible with the arcade controls.

Everyone who saw or played with the cabinet liked it (especially when it was working properly), but since I'd had it a couple years now and I'd long since appeased my bug to have a full-sized arcade machine I started thinking about how much I needed the space the cabinet took more than I needed the cabinet. I also felt somewhat bad for having it and using it as little as I did since the time I first got it going.

I posted the machine on CraigsList, hoping to pass it along to someone who would get more use and fun out of it, and after letting it sit for about a month, a kid about the same age I was when I started looking into MAME offered me more than I'd ever put into the cabinet (not counting labor time of course). I was happy to see it move on to someone who would get some fun out of it, and it seemed like it was passing full circle since before the kid (I say kid, he wasn't more than 5 years younger than me) and his dad left, I heard them already talking about how big it was and trying to figure out how to find somewhere to put it; a discussion my dad and I had when he first saw how large the empty cabinet really was.

It was really an enjoyable project, and I really learned a lot about wood working, electronics, soldering, how things like video games were made in the past, and how computer interfacing could be done. I might get a taste to make a newer machine some day, but it would definitely be much smaller (something that could fit on a counter top) and likely be made of normal plywood. If anyone reading this would like more information about this machine or anything related to it's construction, please leave a comment. I'd love to be able to give back to the community that helped me make a piece of video game history come to life for me.

I made a light box (with help)

My buddy Daniel was wanting to make a light box for his girlfriend since she's quite the artist, but has until now lacked the ability to properly back light her drawings as she makes them. I'm not much of an artist in that regard so I'm not familiar with how back lighting helps one draw but apparently it does. So Daniel and I decided to make her a light box.

We roved the local Lowes for some materials: an oak 1x2, a sheet of thin plywood, a sheet of clear plexiglass, some hinges, and some small LED tap lights and small fluorescent lights from wally-world next door.

Though we were both very tired we managed to cut the wood and paint the clear plastic with a frosting spray to help diffuse the light, and assemble it all into a working (if dim) light box. He presented it to her the next day and she was very happy with it, but since we were tired while making it there were some rough edges and the spray on the top panel was somewhat splotchy. I picked up the light box about a week later and use an extra sheet of plexi we'd gotten and sprayed it on a flat concrete surface since the fact that the first sheet was sitting on top of a milk crate somehow left the impression of a milk crate as the spray dried, possibly due to heat differences in the sheet. I also sanded and stained the box, as well as putting some rubber feet on it.

I then went about making some more powerful lights. A while ago I used the driver board from a burnt out CFL bulb to power a normal fluorescent tube, and was quite pleased with how well it worked, so I'd been saving any CFLs that had burnt out around the house as well as a few tubes that I'd had for a while. I put two tubes together and hot glued them into the box; it was much better lit now, even though one tube was more purple than the othter X(.

In any event, the light box works well and looks good now, and though I'm not sure what the use of it is, I am sure there is one and it appears that Daniel's artistic girlfriend is getting use from this box with lights they call a light box.

I made a deal, a friend mad, and a scooter run

I troll around Craig's List pretty regularly. A few days ago I saw a listing for what looked like a Chinese scooter that had an orange and blue paint job. Here's the listing's body:

"I have a XING DUO scooter that is NOT RUNNING. I repeat NOT RUNNING. It ran great for about 6 months after I bought it used and then just stopped. Could be somthing really easy to fix, but I dont know. I dont have the time to deal with it. I took all the body plastic off and sold it. I have some of the original stuff that I took off when I first bought the scooter, but its not in the best shape. You can buy the fairings on ebay for about 100 bucks or so. EMAIL me if you are interested, and give me your BEST OFFER! I do mean Best offer, I just want to get rid of this thing!! Here are a few pictures......"



























I offered him less and got it. Once I had it I couldn't find any name for it's model or manufacturer on the scooter or the title. It turned out the paint job was a pretty heinous spray paint job and almost all the body panels and seat had broken parts. I was still happy with the purchase though since those are just cosmetic and the engine looked to be in good shape. I saw it didn't have any gas, and the battery was dead flat (not uncommon for inexpensive Chinese scooters and bikes). I started by taking the battery cover off only to find out that the negative battery cable had come off the connector to the battery, An easy fix and possibly why the scooter "just stopped working" for the previous owner.

After that I had to head to work, where after several hours of research and a tangle of companies, I found the most likely suspect for the manufacturer: TANK, model Classic 50. There are a few differences, but this looks like it's mostly the same. Schwinn and others also sold the same model under other names, but it looks like TANK is the original make.


Today I cleaned the scooter up, repainted some of the parts that had caught the ugly brunt of the spray paint, and tried to get it road worthy by fixing the body plastics as well as is prudent. I wound up epoxying a piece of plexiglass into the back fender and screwed another into the bottom of the seat to make them hold ogether better, as well as using plenty of epoxy on other pieces. After that, I reassembled the whole thing, bending warped frame pieces back into place and figuring out how to keep what's left of the body plastics together. It didn't look good, but it didn't look bad either, and it was all pretty sturdy.


I filled up the gas tank and decided to try and kick start the little blue and orange monster to life. Turn the key, hold the brake, turn trottle a little, kick, kick, kick, kick-kick, *sputter*, kick, *sputter-putter*, KICK KICK, *sputter-putter-cough-cough-broooooooommmmmm*. IT'S WORKING! The only think that was really wrong (other than having the ugly tree fall on it) turned out to be that loose battery cable. And the battery, and the speedometer, and the gas needle, and the odometer (hey, the horn still honks), but the ugly scootling was running and I took it on a few victory laps around the yard to get a feel for how it handled.

Next I took it down the road to the local hardware store (it's so nice when yours hasn't gone out of business yet) and picked up a few bolts that were missing. I had to spend several minutes kicking the scooter to get it to start again. The sun in front of the store was beaming down as if to laugh and delight in wanting me to kick until I passed out from heat stroke, but eventually it started up again. A new battery is a high priority now.

By now it was time for me to clean up some and head to work, where I found this site, specializing in parts for TANK's vehicles. They look like they have what I need, but I'm not sure so I sent them a few photos and asked if they could get me the side panels, back fender, and a seat. We'll see how that goes.

On the way to work though, and while I was working on the scooter, I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine who's very opinionated about motorcycles and scooters, and is of the distinct opinion that scooters are the scum of the earth. Thus my obtaining this scooter is a betrayal of his trust and I'll have to wait until I can break his feet-forward bigotry before I'm fully in his good graces again. C'este la vie. I just had to put it to him as being like a minibike that's street legal for him to give me a temporary stay of execution.

I'll update this post once I get word on the replacement parts, but for now you can see more photos of the ugly scootling on this Flickr set.

(EDIT: 5-27-08)

Over the last several days I've been working more one the Ugly Scootling. Here's an overview of what's gone on.

First the body: I cleaned up the body panels a little to scrape off the worst of the rough spots in the old paint and disassembled all the body panels and things attached to them so I could paint them without overspraying all over the scooter. I didn't bother getting too worked up about imperfections since there's no way I can get the body back to looking new without many hours of work and ordering new body panels. I filled in the large hole in the back fender with JB Weld. I didn't bother making it look too great since if I want to get the scooter looking like new I'll just order some new body panels. At the moment I'd rather spend any money I spend on it on repairing parts like the starter.

Speaking of the starter, I ordered a new one off of eBay last week and it came in today right as I was finishing up the cosmetic work. I bolted it on and it works fine. No more kick starting every time now! The arch of my right foot is happy for that. The only thing that concerns me is that from what I can gather the starters on these Chinese bikes are usually pretty short-lived. I'm wondering what I might be able to do to make sure this one doesn't kick the bucket as soon as it's replacement did....

I also got all of the lights working. The tail light bulb was blown (not even a trace of filament left in it), and the rest of the lights seem to be fine now.

I (re)made a guitar

Starting about 6 months ago, my nephew was getting into playing guitar and was showing some real promise and skill. He already had a couple, but really had his eye on a red Gibson SG. Being as I didn't have the 1000+ dollars to get him one for Christmas getting him one was out of the question until I traded an old motorcycle for a couple of guitars.

One of these was a very beat up and terribly modified Epiphone SG. It played pretty well (after an hour of tidying up ground loops and loose wires in the wiring cavity) but was still in terrible cosmetic and electrical shape. I read up a little and already had some experience working on guitars and figured that a custom painted and rebuilt guitar would be a nice gift and wouldn't be terribly hard. I was wrong.

I started by disassembling the whole thing down to it's base parts. I started a list of the problems with it.






Problems:
* Missing knob
* Ugly skull knobs
* Spray painted Zach Wyld bull's eye
* Flat black spray paint over entire rest of guitar
* Missing almost all pot/jack mounting hardware (washers, nuts, etc...)
* Chipped wood on back and under two knobs
* Grime and super glue stains on fretboard
* Roller nut attached by super glue
* Wiring (total rat nest)
* Stripped screws on a couple places
* Locking tuners missing top nuts

I could tell this thing would be a lot of work, but I also wanted to see if I could get it looking good, I wanted to give my nephew a nice axe, and I didn't have any money in it, so if I ruined it it wouldn't be too bad.

Next I needed to clean off the old paint. I thought the best way to do this would be with paint stripper. I liberally coated the back in paint stripper after a trip to the hardware store for supplies, but after getting through the top coat of spray paint, the factory candy apple red (damn! the color he wanted!) was too strong for the chemical to do much more than turn a little easier for me to pry loose from the wood than if it was dry. I moved on to trying to chip the paint off, since if the stock paint was in good condition I would be able to just restore that. That went out the window when the paint on the front had deep gouges where an exacto knife had been used to carve out some "sweet flames". I moved on to sandpaper.

60 grit sandpaper is a wonderful thing. Just a couple hours and what would be the start of Popeye-like forearm muscles later, I'd gotten the SG down to it's bare wood. I'd gotten the paint off the neck with the side of my trusty paint scraping knife. I was on a roll, but before I started spraying paint all willy-nilly I decided to do some research. The articles on ProjectGuitar.com are a wonderful resource for restoring and repairing guitars, but the more I read, the more I realized that with less than two weeks before Santa made his rounds to gorge himself on cookies there was no way I'd be able to finish in time. Instead, I gave my nephew the bare wood body, neck, and a sandwich bag of electronics and mounting hardware, and told him I was sorry it wasn't done, but I'd have it done before his birthday. He was ecstatic and excited to have me building him a guitar.

In the mean time I also had to get some parts. The SG came with some very nice EKG pickups, which just happened to be the very same ones a friend of mine was looking to put into an explorer he'd just gotten. I was wanting to go with less heavy sounding pickups for a broader range, and the stock explorer pickups were just about exactly what I was looking for. I traded the pickups out of his guitar and helped install the EKGs, then went to get some knobs and pickup bezels (probably not the right term) since the ones that came with the SG were terrible and beat up.

I then got back to the finish for the body. I'd discovered that the bridge mounting holes, which I'd assumed were molded into the body, were actually metal. They'd just been too covered in paint to tell. I sanded the body down to 200 grit sandpaper since the 60 grit left the body about as smooth as velcro. I then sprayed several coats of clear over that to seal the wood, leaving each coat at least one day to dry between. I wanted this to look as close to a professional paint job as spray paint from Lowes would get me. With each coat I sanded the body to help slowly smooth out imperfections. it was pretty much the same story with the color coat and clear coat. Hang body in garage, choke on paint fumes, wait a couple days, sand, repeat.

As the body got smoother and shinier I felt better and better about the decision to go with spray paint. Cut to two months later (and about 4 months of off and on time into this project) and I'd gotten ready to spray the second of many coats of clear coat on. As I sprayed, the clear stopped being clear. It turned into a milky white leaving the guitar looking like I'd ruined the paint somehow. I didn't know what had gone wrong. I'd done everything the same as before, the clearcoat was from the same can, and it wasn't too humid. I went to bed since it was late and I didn't know what else to do.



I came out the next day after class to inspect the damage and to my wonder, the guitar was a nice shiny red again. It turned out that the clear coat just behaved that way, so I added the last 7 or so coats of clear (WHAT A PAIN!) and got ready to start wet sanding. By this point my forearms had gotten tough enough that I felt like I had the wrist strength to bend steel. I guess pressing on something and doing who knows how many reps of back and forward for a few months will do that. Wet sanding is interesting, you don't feel like you're doing anything and progress is so slow you have no idea when it'll be done since "just a little more" could easily mean from 1-3 hours. Anyway, my nephew's birthday on St. Patrick's day was coming up quick, so I dedicated every spare minute I had to getting this guitar done before then. Wet sanding takes forever.

After I'd gotten the body to as near a perfectly smooth surface as I could, I used rubbing compound on it to bring it to a nice shine. I could finally see myself in it and see the work I'd done starting to look like a finished part of a guitar. It was about 4 days before people around the world would start upchucking green beer.

I mounted The parts I could, but there was still a problem with the roller nut, I had no way to make it stay or figure out how high to mount it. I cleared off all the super glue in about an hour, and swapped the tuning machines from my other guitar onto the SG's headstock and wired the electronics that night (it was the day before the party. I'd have to work on it some from work the next day before the party.





I wound up getting the last odds and ends finished, including a complete rewire since the one I'd done the previous night was totally wrong. Talk about cutting it close. I put the guitar in it's bag not even knowing if it worked and headed to present it. When I got to the party, I carried it in and told my nephew that I didn't get him anything other than the guitar for his birthday, but that since I'd already given him the guitar for Christmas, his birthday present was all the work, time, and brain cells I'd put into the guitar since then. It did wor and he loved it. People at the party could hardly believe him when he said I'd made it. I'm now known by his friends as "my uncle who made me the guitar". That kicks ass.
If I'd known how much work it would take to do this before starting would I have done it? Maybe not, but I think this way it's worth a lot more than a guitar I'd bought. I hope he gets many years of use and enjoyment out of it. You can see more photos from making this guitar on this Flickr set.