It’s been a productive season in my shop, which I’ll get to, but I’m going to go back to Autumn and work my way to the present.
Last Fall while doing my daily CL scan I came across an ad for a couple of Honduran Mahogany boards for sale locally. I looked and moved on, it looked like beautiful material but I only use domestics, and it was priced more then I thought it should be.. A few days later I mentioned it to my wife Liz, and she said I should buy it, so I looked a little closer, hemmed & hawed, and finally decided to. The gentleman selling it has been building a boat using the Mahogany for parts of the craft. The wood for sale was surplus and I believe part of a purge. He’d had the wood for years and had bought it from someone who’d had for a long time, not sure exactly how long it’s been around, but a while.
The boat is a thing of beauty, fine craftsmanship, I stand in awe of it. As I mentioned that I only use domestic wood, I suppose I should say that I use mostly domestic now.. Not being an absolutist I succumbed to the old Mahogany. It is beautiful material and have made, or at the moment, have two guitars (Weissenborns) being made from it.
Another update/improvement in my shop is the addition of a new drum sander, a Supermax 16/32. I’ve been using a shop made drum/surface sander for almost ten years, and have sanded a lot of wood with it. It’s worked well but with a few challenges while using it. Without a self feed mechanism the wood needs to be pushed through manually, if you stop the flow anytime the drum will dig into the wood, and if you let go of the material it shoots out the back of the sander, which aren’t terrible problems, you just learn how to manage. Also, the drum has hook & loop (velcro) on it to hold the abrasive on the drum, occasionally it catches and causes a startling release of the sandpaper in a violent heap, an unwelcome surprise which always had me on edge while using it.
The new sander is amazing, it has mostly surpassed my expectations, and am glad to have it. There’s a short learning curve which was easy and my oh my, sanding is a breeze. After getting the height and feed speed adjusted, just put the wood in and stroll around to the back to collect it, very low stress. I think the lack of stress from using this machine has added at least a few days to my life!
I wasn’t sure what to do with my old sander, I am somewhat sentimentally attached to it, but realized that it works very well for leveling the back of headstocks, something that wouldn’t be as easy with the new tool. So I found a spot for it behind my shop (covered). I’m not worried about it rusting since it’s made of wood.
I haven’t gotten to my current projects, but will in an another post shortly.
Hampel Guitars 