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Cut it's body in two and threw half away. Keeping half to hang on the wall as a reminder.


I've made about 10 acoustic guitars and so I thought I knew what I was doing. So I jumped into a walnut and cedar parlor guitar with no clear plan or check list. Made many small mistakes and a couple of big ones. I had sanded the TruOil finish back to bare wood twice and it was still looking bad. I had cut the sound hole too small to easily get my fat hand inside for bolting on the neck. I wasn't too happy with the binding.
But the biggest thing was that I had screwed up the upper bout angle and was having an ugly time getting the fingerboard plane anywhere near the top of the bridge.
All of these issues are fixable. But after I decided that I would be embarrassed to have this guitar ever go out into the public domain, I knew this guitar had to die.

An example of cutting your losses, I guess.

The Seattle Luthiers Group has an annual end of summer bon fire on the beach for guitars like this.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Ouch, Dan!
I did that once about 40 years ago...hung it on the wall too.

Sounds like a fitting end.


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I have a beautiful top with the rosette installed and sound hole cut out. Beautiful except that when I measured for the center of the soundhole I forgot I was measuring from the "1" and not the end of the ruler so it was an inch too far north.

I also keep it hanging in the shop as a reminder.

As you build more guitars you will find that your stupid mistakes don't vanish, they just become considerably more sophisticated.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Italian glassmakers make ornamental flasks with many colors of glass laid down in elaborate processes. When things go wrong they usually just throw the flask away, but sometimes it all goes so spectacularly wrong that they put the flask up on a shelf as a reminder. In Italian, the word for flask is "fiasco."

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Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

I had a router mishap on a Mesquite Tele neck headstock.
I clamped the heel into a vice and tugged and pulled and stomped on it but could not break the neck.
I reckoned Mesquite makes a strong neck.
Sometimes a mishap can lend useful information.
I don't route headstocks anymore and keep the neck as a reminder.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I like to repurpose old bodies. Here's our "air guitar" baffle to redirect the air conditioner flow. Have another partial body under my bench with sandpaper stuck to the side as a variable radius block - handy for sanding the bottoms of Fender nuts.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Thanks for the idea, David. I never thought of repurposing it.

Sometimes it's better to just get it out of mind. Good time of the year to do it too...

I thought that guitar hunting season recently ended.....

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea about my remarks fixing up and giving away guitars that can be fixed or saving them for an apprentice to learn with or even repurposing as useful items such as the directional air vent or variable radius sanding form are our go-to things to do with guitars that are toast. Several weeks ago Dave and I fixed up a donated beater for a homeless young man who's other guitar was sadly smashed as a result of living outside on the streets in the winter and hanging with other homeless folks who can at times be a bit unpredictable... He was thrilled to get it, sang us a song too "Human Ant Farm" and the guy was and is very talented. Sadly we heard Friday that he was taken to the ER for a drug overdose.... We remain pretty worried about our friend too....

My first guitar that I ever built sounded great, played well you know...., and looked like 40 miles of bad road. So one Sunday evening, the night before trash pick-up day, I positioned it next to my trash cans with the neck and head stock sticking out so that someone could see that it's a guitar and maybe take it if they wanted it. The next morning the guitar had been removed from the bag, checked-out, and then pitched back into my lawn. My garbage was gone.... Sometimes you can't even throw these things away.

Since then the beaters that I get that cannot be of any benefit to anyone are used to have some great fun. Shooting them in the back yard can be a good time especially with a 12 gauge and OO buck.... They explode dramatically and often sound the best that they ever have or will too... But my favorite was enlisting the assistance of my nephew and his beer truck on an airport tarmac.... Running over a guitar with a loaded beer truck at 30 mph was also a great time and is highly recommended.

Of course please observe all laws, be safe, and this message will self destruct in 30 minutes...

And Hans always has excellent photos in terms of composition, subject matter, and resolution - great photo Hans and it says it all!

Ouch, Dan. That's painful to look at. Your tops too, Haans.

I had to put three tops on one of mine to get it right. Never crossed my mind to take it to the bandsaw or a bonfire, though.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Hesh, that's hilarious about your first guitar. Dan, I was going to suggest making a planter out of it. Or a toy boat with a very curvy keel line. But, seriously, the idea of a variable radius sanding block is excellent.

That's funny. I just put top #3 on one of mine (finished binding it yesterday). Not sure there will be a 4th top if it isn't right this time

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Even Martin has rejects. I have a D-28 half body from a visit there in 1974 and for years I inspected that half body trying to find the defect. After a suitable time, probably a few years, I came to the conclusion their QC is so strict that I just simply could not find the defect. Then about 10 years later it dawned on me that the defect was in the other half... I felt silly but then just laughed about it and have ever since. I guess we can't always be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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David

David Falkner - Woodworking YouTube channel and Instagram
Romans 3:23

Pat[/quote]

That's funny. I just put top #3 on one of mine (finished binding it yesterday). Not sure there will be a 4th top if it isn't right this time [/quote]

Steve
I had put two tops on this one. That added to the hate that I was developing for this guitar.

Dare I hum the tune, "F-styles roasting on an open flame"?

It would have been worse if you'd come back and found two guitars on the lawn.

I had a cheap classical guitar that American Airlines killed back in the early 70s ... snapped the neck in two. I "repurposed" it as a bird house by nailing the body to a tree by what was left of the neck, and the birds thought that the sound hole made a dandy door.

Now, if I have an instrument that isn't worth selling, I give it to charity so they can sell it for whatever they think it's worth. But I make sure that it's at least playable.

All is fair in Luthierie & waste
It's part of the learning process.

I have many 1/2 guitars here.
I spray the interior with poly & put plants in them.
They hang on the shop walls.

Ovations I use for salads.

Mike

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Mike Collins

Congratulations!
I think what you did will be a reminder, for a long time, of how we learn much more from failure than success.
The ability to throw away a bunch of work and move on, is a good sign that you have the right character for guitar building, or any creative effort.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

I thought Ovations were supposed to be used for bird baths?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Haans, that picture would be a good album cover for Ozzy Osbourne's next solo effort, or if he does another Sabbath album it would work as well.

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."