Official Luthiers Forum!

I had the sincere pleasure of traveling to the heart of Hoosier country in Indiana today to meet Joe White and to see my bro JJ.

The primary reason for this visit was to drop off one of my guitars and to have the honor of being Joe's very first client.  Joe has another guitar arriving tomorrow so this makes me his very first client for one of Joe's beautiful poly finishes!

The first order of the day though was to eat  So I asked Joe and JJ if they would meet me in Angola, Indiana at a Chinese place that my family would eat at once a month, every month - 45 years ago.  And the place was still there and so far we believe that they have restocked their food in the past 45 years too..........  It's funny how a dump that one has fond memories of can remain the very same dump nearly half a century later.......

Here is JJ giving us his undivided attention while we are waiting for our egg rolls......



And here is Joe and JJ appreciating the plastic plant and fake lobster art.......



After lunch we convoyed to Joe's finishing facility.  As many of you know when the poly thread was running last year Joe was asking more questions then any of us.  Since then Joe has been tooling up, practicing, studying poly finishes and is now open for business.

Joe's facility is a fairly new stand-alone building on Joe's property which BTW is one of the most beautiful settings that I have ever seen.  The property is teaming with ponds and wildlife and is as picturesque as can be.

Joe's facility is quite large and consists of three main rooms.  Here we see JJ and Joe discussing the presidential primaries....



Everything is spotless in Joe's shop and Joe has recently invested heavily in setting himself up to provide world-class poly finishes to us.

This is the largest and main room where Joe works on the finishes, rubbing them out, etc.



Here is the mother of all tool chests.  Joe is one of the few people that I have met who is actually neater then I am.........



Here is JJ examining one of Joe's air driven sanders.  What we can't see is JJ is thinking to himself that if that Hesh does not shut up I could sand his face off with this puppy......



And here is Joe explaining the abrasives that he uses and why.



This door leads from the main shop into the spray booth.



And here is Joe's spotless spray booth and if you will notice at the back of the room behind the sliding door is the exhaust fan.  The ceiling has fixtures to handle many, many guitars at once - Joe is set-up to provide this service in a very big way.







Back in the main shop I found JJ looking rather disgusted and Joe saying something about it was the egg rolls........



Here is the outside of Joe's shop.



More storage and the material that Joe uses to finish guitars.



This is the third room in Joe's shop, mainly storage and where the massive compressor lives.





Joe's shop is temperature and RH controlled with a very high degree of precision and again the place is spotless.

It was a GREAT day for me and I really enjoyed meeting Joe White and learning first hand that Joe is a great guy in all respects.  In a couple of weeks my guitar that I dropped off today will be complete and I will post more pictures then.

Many thanks to Joe for the facility tour and for being the cool guy that he is and many thanks to my bro JJ for yet another great day.

Thanks for looking!

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

Where are the overspray trap/filters? Where does it all go?

And Joe, do look into the 3M Paint Preparation System; it will cut your clean-up process by 80% and save a lot of solvent.

Cool, looks like you and JJ got the grand tour. Great pictures. Joe should do great work in such a nice shop!

Thanks Hesh!

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Honestly Hesh and JJ, The pleasure was all mine! It was great to hang out with you guys for the day and actually make a little saw dust too. (Oop, That reminds me Hesh, I need to go wipe down my drum sander!)

Filtering/traps?!??  Good eye Rick! Funny you would ask about the filtering but while we were in the basement thickness sanding some of JJ's maple, UPS dropped off an order from Commercial Filter Service (Ft Wayne, IN.) great service and helpful staff. I am trying out two different filters that they are offering for exhaust to see which I feel catches the most solids.The exhaust trap/filters internally will catch the largest solids. I am trying a polyester strand and a fiberglass strand and may even may even use both if I feel it's necessary. This filter area is 30"x30". Large enough for my small tubeaxial but I think it's always better to over filter ! A second stage (outside the booth) filters and traps any solids that the inner trap lets by before exit via the stack. Again overkill maybe? Nah.These filters are also known as "arrestors" I'm sure you're well aware of those.  I used the same folks to supply our filters at the auto body shop and I will use the same intake filters that we did there.

Thanks for the encouragement Bruce!  Again, it was a fun day and I look forward to meeting again soon.

JJ hasn't been assimilated by the Borg, has he?
(Sorry, just responding to the headset)

_________________
Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Thanks for the great day, Joe and Hesh! Hope to do it again soon!

_________________
JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Sweet shop!

It is good to have another finisher on hand also. Looks like Joe and I need to have a talk about doing some finishing work for me.

_________________
Reguards,

Ken H

Joe, I'll get the name and number for you of the filter supplier that Addam and I use.   We just upgraded to some very nice ones that really seem to cut down on the smell of nitro out in our parking lot.   The poly doesn't off gas nearly as much with so much less volatiles in it.

We have a wall of overspray traps in front of a plenum and then it exhausts with a 24" stack and a 2 hp fan up and out the roof.   We have fire sprinklers in the booth, in the plenum, and in the stack as per our local codes.

Joe, a word of warning: filter -before- the fan. Otherwise, by this time next year, your fan blades will be twice as thick, half as effective, and the entire stack will be coated heavily.

This ain't your father's Oldsmobile...

Oh, and nice digs, BTW!

Thanks Mario and Rick, Actually, thats what I meant by the (internally) reference. The small 30X30 opening will house the arrestors before the fan and then I am filtering again after the fan with a less dense filter to catch some of the stray solids. Maybe unnecessary? 

Joe,

It is nice to see a face to go with your emails! Hesh beat me by a day. Your setup looks amazing and I can't wait to see what you can do!

_________________
Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Nice digs! Looking forward to seeing some nice finishes!

_________________
Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

hey joe, whats your phone number?
I assume your looking for some clients.

Matt

Burton my friend our guitars will be roommates.....

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

Whoa! Mine will bring the mini fridge if yours can bring the turntable...

_________________
Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Sweet! Hesh, that Bluetooth in the 1st pic...how do you KNOW you had "undivided" attention, and shouldn't that be fake "robster" art? Nice shop and setup Joe! You're gonna be a popular guy on the OLF!

_________________
http://www.presnallguitars.com

[QUOTE=blegeyt]Whoa! Mine will bring the mini fridge if yours can bring the turntable...[/QUOTE]

Deal!

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

Joe, it looks like you are getting set-up to do world class finishes. Mario nailed it, impressive digs indeed! Good to see one of our very own OLF’ers providing finishing services.

Great pictures Hesh, many thanks for the pictorial. It looks like you managed to keep JJ in check for the day.

[QUOTE=L. Presnall] ...and shouldn't that be fake "robster" art? Nice shop and setup Joe! You're gonna be a popular guy on the OLF![/QUOTE]

Right you are, Rarry...we raughed so much about the fake robsters! And we only saw one cockroach the whole time we were there!

Joe's shop was an entirely different thing. I actually believe it is cleaner than Hesh's shop. It's brighter and neater than a lot of surgical suites I've visited and I know I'll feel proud to have Joe finish the 2 electrics that I'm building. Actually, Joe sprayed an acoustic with lacquer last winter and I was sold back then!

Joe is a man after my own heart. We were discussing the danger of plasticizers and silicones in negatively affecting finishes. He described the pains he used to take in eliminating all traces of Armorall before moving a car into his shop. He is a hostage of details and the pays the kind of attention that we would all like to know of any artisan we choose to finish our guitars.

...and he still thinks he will have time to build guitars!

_________________
JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Joe,
It is great to see you and put a face with a name and a guitar.
Nice looking shop. I will most definitely have you do some guitars for me.

_________________
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

[QUOTE=JJ Donohue]

...and he still thinks he will have time to build guitars! [/QUOTE]

Well, At least I know my thickness sander works!

Cleaner then Hesh's??????????? I thought that Wikipedia defined cleanliness by the photos of Hesh's shop....... I suppose that is what the edit feature is for on Wiki.....

Joe - Congrats on the great looking shop!

Best wishes on the adventure!!

_________________
Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

Thanks SteveS, look forward to working with you.

Steve, I think JJ is exagerating, I caught Hesh with his little white cotton gloves crawling around in the corner of my paint booth.

Anthony, I don't know who was the worst influence on who. Get JJ and Hesh together and just stand back,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,waaaaaaay back!

Larry, we caught JJ talking to himself several times, He tried to pass it off on the Blue but he didn't even have that thing turned on!

Again, Thanks fellas' keep an eye out for the progress.

Joe - It will be a few months before I am in need of your services... but will you have a website or list your contact information soon?

Steve

_________________
Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK