Monthly Archives: April 2014

Priming Guitar

Looks like I have more sanding to do.  I had put a couple of coats of sealer on and sanded it all down, but not good enough.

Once this dries, I’ll pull out the 320 and give it another sanding.  No need to go down to bare wood, but I will sand it and re-prime it until all the little defects disappear, before putting the color coats on.

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My Nemesis, The driveway

So, Ever since last year when we had frozen gravel dumped on the driveway in big uneven piles, I’ve had a hard time getting the driveway leveled off.  Bob, my 763g model Bobcat, has such a short wheel base that all it seems I do is to move the waves around.

Well, we got .14″ of rain last night, which for us is a significant amount.  It’s also lets me work on the driveway without the dust, and makes the gravel ‘loose’ so that I can work it appropriately.

So I took a big swing at it today and spent about 2.5 hours out there.  I’m sure the neighbors think I’m crazy, but driving bob is fun and this is probably my last shot at it until next fall, or if we get a random thunderstorm this summer.  The delivery trucks do kind of give the driveway a bit of a beating.

I think I moved the waves around a bit, But I might have gotten rid of a few, and I think I reduced the size of a couple.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

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Greenhouse Update

Just a little garden update.  Seedlings are doing quite well in the greenhouse.

Historically, June 15 was last frost date for the Reno Area.  The guy at the nursery is saying “Go ahead and plant”, but I think that’s just because he likes to sell new plants to people that roll the dice and plant early.

I’ve got a greenhouse, So I’m just going to keep repotting these guys and keeping them safe for at least another few weeks.

 

20140424-IMG_0748 Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Cukes and Zukes

20140424-IMG_0752 Some of my hot peppers.  Some carolina Reapers in there.

20140424-IMG_0750 Herbs.

20140424-IMG_0751 My koi and goldfish

Brewed up a Special Bitter Last night

Keg inventory is getting a little low, so decided to brew up a Special Bitter last night.

OG of 10.50, pale ale extract, some crystal malt, fuggles hops, and West Yorkshire 1469 yeast.  It’s always nice when you wake up in the morning to a nice active fermentation!

Oh, The beer on the left is a milk stout a buddy of mine made using my equipment last weekend.

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Bottled some of the Manifesto Mango and Spine bender today. I had kegged both of these beers and force carbonated them.  It gives me more control over the carbonation level, and makes the beers ready faster than using corn sugar to ‘naturally’ carbonate them.

Here you can see me using the filler and the capper.

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It took me a little while to get the hang of using the filler, so I had a ‘factory reject’ that needed to have some ‘quality control’ peformed on it.  Here’s a picture of it in the Nevada sunset.  I have to say, it’s delicious.  It’s strong, 10.5%abv, but you’d never know it.  Strong grapefuit notes, but the bitterness never overwhelms the flavor.

You can smell the mango on the initial taste, and it’s just a juicy tasting beer.

Cheers My friends!.

 

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Lonely Boy

This guy has been hanging around for a couple of weeks. Found him eating weeds in the front ‘yard’. Feel really sorry for him. There’s a herd of at least 20 horses hanging out about a mile south, but they just won’t let him join. He just seems to be really depressed. I went to escort him off the yard and he just moved around slow and gave me the once over. Poor guy.

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Double Neck – Paint Prep

Painting is hard for me.  I like instant gratification.  It takes everything I have to just not grab the can of paint and start spraying on on the bare wood.

But what I’ve read, and started to learn and get stuck into my thick head is that the quality of the finished product really relys on the prep work you do before you ever take the cap of the can of paint.

So here are the parts with all the old finish stripped and cleaned off.  I’ve sanded them up to 320 grit and have wiped them off with lacquer thinner and naptha.  Since I literally hosed the body off, I’m going to let every thing dry out for a little while before  I move to the next step.

The next step will be to put a seal coat (or 2) of lacquer on the parts, let that dry, and sand those back on up to 320 again, just to make sure the wood is sealed and properly prepared for painting.

This is killing me. It’s going to take days and I’d much rather be putting the electronics together.

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Double Neck Guitar Project

So a buddy of mine got this guitar for cheap off of ebay.  It’s an inexpensive chinese guitar, probably a kit put together by somebody here in the states.  The hardware on it is ‘ok’, but the pickups really needed replacing.  So I bought it off him and we came up with a plan for rewiring it using some new dragonfire screamer pickups and push pull pots so I could do the humbucker coil tap mod.

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I’ll be doing away with the tone knobs, and basically each knob will control one pickup.  The switches will still do the front/both/bridge and top/both/bottom neck selections.

Since I was going to do that much work, I decided I might as well just go full bore and repaint it as well.  Not a fan of the plain white paint job on it.

Here’s a couple of pics I took before I remove everything from the guitar.

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And here we go, stripping the paint off the body and the headstocks.

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Stay tuned, More to come this weekend.