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Last weekend was a big one for me. It was my first time delivering an instrument to someone else. I hesitate to say I "sold" it to him. This one was built for a friend. I finished it myself, french polish. The build yielded a suitable result IMO, but the finish quality was like a good attempt for a first timer. My friend understood that up front, but he was still thrilled with it.

This friend of mine, Don, said he wanted me to build him something a lot like his dad's 30's 00-17. After receiving it, Don says he likes my copy better than the original.

Here he is playing it along with a mandolin player.



And here it is alone.



And this is Don playing it in a duet with another guy, who is playing my first guitar.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

Congrats Martin the guitar is beautiful and sounds fantastic!

Nice guitar Martin,
regards,
jack

Beautiful instruments! Great sound! Congratulations (I'm trying not to be too jealous....it's bad for one's karma)

Very cool and very nice!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Martin, I had a blast just listening to the videos!!! Great sound and both guitars are beautiful. I'll bet you did have a good time.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

great looking guitar ! I like the color of the top - did you tint it or use darker shellac ?

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

Great sounding guitars and some nice, hot pickin'. Yeah!

thanks everybody!

I used blonde shellac flakes dissolved in alcohol. I sealed it first with a 1 lb cut of shellac.

then for the color, I started by porefilling with mahogany tinted pore o pac. this darkened things some.

then i used transtint dyes diluted in distilled water. I had a red mahogany mixture and a brown mahogany mixture. both were not very strong. maybe 10-15 drops in a 1/2-3/4 cup of water?

I dipped a small piece of clean teeshirt in the mixture and rung it out. then i wiped it on the guitar. first, a few applications of red, then a few applications of brown. (I was trying to mimic the Martin procedure, even though I was doing it all wrong/different). doing it this way, allowed me to creep up on a shade. still, after a day or two of this, it wasn't look right and was still too light.

so, after it seemed the dye had dried thoroughly, I wiped on a light application of minwax dark walnut. then i started to FP.

here's an in-progress picture after a couple of the first sessions with shellac.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

Sounds great to me

I love a mahogany topped guitar.

My gosh! Not another Martin guitar build.

Whoops, I guess all your intruments are Martin.

Very nice job!

Philip

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aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

thanks, seems like you were joking, but I do know what you mean. in this case, my friend did ask me to build something like his dad's 30's 00-17. so what can I do? I'm a whore!

my #5 will be a Kasha inspired guitar. and the headstock is my avatar.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."