I'm Alive!

Carving the inside of the back

I'm just going to come right out and say it: Building an archtop guitar is monotonous. Extremely, painfully, mind-numbingly monotonous. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my guitar making memory I remember talking about how much I loved the carving part of guitar making. That was when my idea of carving involved a few two-hour stints lovingly shaping a guitar neck. My perspective has changed a bit after more than SEVENTY hours of continuous carving.

The sides, almost ready for gluing

Okay, I'll admit that I'm exaggerating. Not about the number of hours, mind you, but about the continuous part. It's true I glued a couple tone bars in and worked on my sides. But the vast majority of my time over the past seven months has been spent carving.

Alas, it seems the monotony may soon come to an end. (If you've read my blog before, you've probably heard that phrase several times). But, with luck, I should be gluing my back and top to the sides within the next few weeks. Once that happens, things should become a little more interesting. And at that point, the process should become somewhat more familiar. There will definitely be differences from the process of building a flat top, but many of the steps will be much more familiar to me. And I'm looking forward to it.

I really don't know what else to say about it all. I love building an arch top. I've learned many new skills and, needless to say, I'm much better at carving than I was before. (Seven months of continuous carving will do that to a person). But I make no bones about it.

I'VE HAD ENOUGH! I'm definitely ready to move on. So I'll leave it at that...unless you want to hear about my blisters.