MountainHeart Guitars

What a frustrating day in the shop. I went to use my fancy spray gun and it mysteriously would not spray. Spent two hours cleaning it, trying again, replacing parts, trying again, all to no avail. Still have no idea what's the problem. Argh!!

If anyone else has knowledge of Apollo spray equipment and would be willing to help me puzzle this out, please let me know.

No work in the shop this week. Instead I'm enjoying a beautiful weekend in the north Georgia mountains for my wife's birthday. And tomorrow we go whitewater rafting on Chattooga's class IV rapids! Woot!

I've only been doing dull things in the shop lately, like building and putting up new shelving, which has not seemed picture-worthy.
And tomorrow I start with reflattening my workbench, then building a new shooting board and planing board. But, after that, I promise to post something more interesting! :-)

Major kudos to Steve, the owner of Woodcraft Atlanta store, and to Robert, the store manager there.
I was chatting with Robert about my disappointment with the WoodRiver planes, and he insisted I bring it in as he cannot stand to have a dissatisfied customer.
So, I brought in the plane, and even though I purchased it quite some time ago, WoodRiver still stood behind their product and offered to either replace it or give me credit toward another plane.
Many thanks to WoodCraft Atlanta! They have never let me down, and I truly appreciate having such good people nearby.

Here is a shot of my Veritas hand plane sole for comparison with the Wood River.
I've the Veritas in every way. Hand planing Nirvana. :-)

Why I won't buy another Wood River hand plane...
I never have been able to tune it like I'd like, and now I need a nice 90 degree angle between the side and the sole for the work I'm doing, and Wood River just doesn't have the care in craftsmanship to pay attention to such things. Notice the large gap when my square is butted up against the side. Sigh.

The back plates for the Fisherman's Guitar are now joined. I gave Dan lots of choices, and he wisely selected this beautiful flamed mahogany.

This is where ideas and current work on Daniel R. Darrow's guitar will appear. I've called it the fisherman's guitar because he requested a number of fly fishing themes. Should be really cool.

I got to chat for a moment with Shawn Mullins yesterday after he played a solo gig at the Decatur Arts Festival, and I was so star-struck I made a complete idiot out of myself. I wanted to talk guitars and mentioned I'm a luthier, then realized I didn't have any business cards on me, so I told him to look me up on FB, which I somehow forgot that I haven't updated with anything interesting in years!
Sigh. I kicked myself the rest of the day for my unpreparedness (is that a word?).
So, now I'm determined to use that experience as motivation to actually spend time editing and posting my work online -- something with which I've always struggled.

My goal is to have most of my tools hung on the wall soon (gotta clear some shelf space), so here is my first big project.