Carving Maple

     I have finished the outside of the top plate and started the outside of the back.  The back is maple and it is very hard to carve.  You can see in the picture what my hand looks like after several hours of carving.  I've included a picture of the shavings on the shop floor so you can see how much material has to be removed.  I've also included a picture of the finger plane, which I do most of the carving with.  That and a chisel are the weapons of choice.
     I haven't had a great deal of time to work on this guitar.  My real job is getting in the way.  I've had the busiest last couple of months in years.  I'm booked up through April.  That's a good sign the economy is picking up, but I miss having the time to make these guitars.
      After talking to my friend, who I'm building this commission for, he decided he didn't want the top I'm making because of the sap line in it.  So, when I get his deposit I'll order more wood.  My plan now is to make two guitars at the same time.  They'll both be 16" bouts with mounted pickups, but I'm going to make one with f holes and one without.  The one without will have a rear access panel that can be removed to put in a sound post.  Violins and cellos have sound posts.  It is a dowel that fits under the bridge and connects the two plates together.  The idea being that when you play with a lot of volume it evens everything out.  Instead of braces in these two guitars, I'm going to carve the braces into the wood and leave the middle thicker than normal.  This is to compensate for the mounted pickup, which makes the guitar's voice more electric and less acoustic.  He also wants a short scale, 24", fretboard.  I think I'll put a 25" on the other, but I haven't made up my mind yet.
         I've been doing a lot of walking lately.  In the cold and in the dark.  It seems to be good for my soul.  I've tried to stay present and not let my mind wander.  Sometimes I'll focus on one sense.  I may try and just listen.  I can hear the peepers and the creek, the cars on the road, my feet on the gravel, the mocking birds and robins,  the wind in my ears, my breathing, and even my heart beat.  The world is full of life.  Here's something from the Katha Upanishad.

Know the Self as the lord of the chariot,
The body as the chariot itself,
The discriminating intellect as the charioteer,
And the mind as the reins.
The senses, say the wise, are the horses;
Selfish desires are the roads they travel.
When the Self is confused with the body,
Mind and senses, they point out, he seems
To enjoy pleasure and suffer sorrow.

When a person lacks discrimination
And his mind is undisciplined, the senses
Run hither and thither like wild horses.
But they obey the rein like trained horses
When one has discrimination and has made the mind one-pointed.

Carving the Top Plate

   I was able to get a lot of the top plate carved and sanded today.  I'll have the outside finished in another 4 or 5 hours.  While I was carving with the violin plane I hit a vein of dried sap.  When I finally got it down to size, I found that it has a definite imperfection in the grain.  I emailed my friend who is commissioning this piece and asked him if it would be acceptable or not.  I haven't heard back yet.  Some people are very particular about imperfections, but to me they add to the character of the wood.  Either way I'll use this top for a guitar now, or later.  Things are going a lot smoother this time around, but I still may have to start again making a new top plate.  Here are some pictures.  You have to envision an f hole cutting through the middle of the blemish.

Here's a little passage from the Tao.

Thirty spokes join one hub.
The wheel's use comes from emptiness.

Clay is fired to make a pot.
The pot's use comes from emptiness.

Windows and doors are cut to make a room.
The room's use comes from emptiness.

Therefore,
          Having leads to profit,
           Not having leads to use.
             

Holding Cradle

    Today I thought I would start carving the plates.  I have the 16 inch top and back plates already glued and cut out.  I did that about a year ago.  I bought three sets of tops, backs, and sides and went ahead and joined them all at the same time.  So I thought I would start today, but I forgot that making a 16 inch archtop is different than a 17 inch.  Consequently, I had to make a holding cradle and two clamping cauls.  The holding cradle is what I put the plates in when I carve them.  It gives me something to clamp to the bench and hold on to when I'm using the violin plane and the chisels.  The clamping cauls will be used to join the back and sides to the top plate.  I have included pictures.  The cradle has the white laminate on the top of it.  I've also included pictures of the spruce top and maple back, so you can see where it all starts.  I've got to play tomorrow night at Gaudalupe's if it doesn't snow, but I should be able to start carving Thursday.

      Here is one of my favorite poems.  It was written by Stanley Kunitz who wrote poetry until he was 100 years old.  If you click on the link you can listen to him read this wonderful piece called Touch Me.

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
                           and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Starting Again

    I went to see some old and dear friends this past weekend.  We went to see Orrin Evans with a group called Tar Baby.  It was in Durham at a small private club.  The show was excellent.  It was the kind of jazz that I'm starting to love.  I don't confess to understand it, but there is something freeing about it.  The compositions are written and structured, but the solos are open to a great deal of interpretation.  Sometimes, and always when Oliver Lake was soloing, it was free form; from the Ornet Coleman school of thinking.  Sometimes Orrin would play out, and sometimes almost old school bebop.  Shaking his head with a big smile like Ray Charles.  Eric Revis was very charismatic and did most of the speaking.  His bass playing was very sold and funky and his compositions were my favorites.  I was disappointed that Nasheet Waits wasn't there, as he was on the billing.  But the drummer that played was excellent.  I have come along way playing jazz, but I see how much more there is.  What I play seems difficult to some, but I understand it.  Those that I would like to play with on the local scene, I understand, but am a year or more behind the curve.  But this music I saw this weekend was beyond my understanding.  I would try, if I could, to sit in with them, but I don't have a reference point of where to begin. I love the mystery behind what they're doing.  Maybe to fully understand it would make it mundane.
      While I was there I went to a very upscale music store.  The kind that locks the door and you have to knock to be let in.  They had a special room of acoustic guitars.  Two walls of flat tops and one wall of archtops.  I was able to play a used $15000 Buscarino.  It was perfect!  Not a flaw.  Working with Brad Nickerson I've seen perfection first hand.  I realize I still have a long way to go.  There is no substitute for 30 plus years of experience.  But I will say that Buscarino's guitar looked better than mine and played as well, but I think my last two guitars sounded better.  Of course that's my biased opinion.  Eventually I'll begin to make them as cosmetically perfect as they should be, but then they won't be as cheap as they are now.
      Having said all that, I have a new commission.  So, tomorrow I'll start working on the next guitar.  This one looks to be a 16 inch.  The details haven't been worked out yet, but I'll post them and pictures as I find out.
      Thanks for listening and here is another Rumi poem to give you insight and hope.

There are guides
who can show you the way.
Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.

Muhammed said, do not theorize
about essence.  All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Do not claim them.  Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.

Taking a Break

     I'm taking a little time off before I start the next guitar.  Maybe a week or so.  I had Michael's guitar in for a set up Friday.  I adjusted the truss rod, filed a few frets, and made a knob for his volume control.  I had to cut the stem off the volume pot to make a low profile knob.  I think it turned out nicely.
      I've seen two movies worth noting in the last couple weeks.  They are both movies that speak of life as we get older.  The first is out on video.  It is Robot and Frank.  A story set in the near future that deals with what it's like to begin to lose memory.  It asks the question, "What is family and what are real friendships?"  The other movie Donna and I went to see yesterday.  We are celebrating our 30th anniversary this year, so we went to Asheville to eat and see this movie.  It is Amour.   It's a French language film that is up for best picture at the Academy Awards.  It is a devastatingly beautiful picture.  It is one of the most heart wrenching, horrible things I have ever sat through, and will go into my top ten list of best movies.  It is a very slow, quiet film.  You can hear the bombs going off in the theatre next door and the people in the rows in front and back quietly weeping.  It is a story of two retired music teachers and the gradual deterioration of one of them.  There is almost no music in it, except for the occasional, beautiful, solo piano piece, which is always cut short, almost immediately.   I don't recommend the picture for everyone, but for those of us who've been together for decades, I think you should see it.  And for those of you that wonder what love is all about, this is it.  It's as close as I've seen to being a physical demonstration of I Corinthians 13.
       The prayer for the day comes from one of my favorite books.  I read it every year at Christmas time.  Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.  Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on the stone!"

Test Drive

       Yesterday was a crazy, long day.  I had to work in Asheville at a jewelry store.  It is in that new little village they built off of I 26 where the new Biltmore theaters are at.  We had a very complicated, carpet installation to do and ended up working until 5:00.  I had to be at City Lights Cafe, in Sylva, ready to play by 7:00.  I made it home by 6:15 and Donna told me our son, Lukas, had totaled his car that afternoon.  That's right, I don't have a cell phone.  They cost too much.  Anyway, he was fine.  Just a little sore, thank God.  I left home and got to the gig about five minutes before we started.  Needless to say I was exhausted.  I had decided I would test out the new guitar and see if it played and sounded good.  It took me a few tunes to get my focus, and then the sound of the instrument caught my attention.  The sound is very large and rich.  It has a darkness to it like Fall.  The way you feel when the summer air first turns slightly cool and the humidity is gone and you know a change is coming.  It seems to love to sing sad songs.  Don't get me wrong, we played plenty of fast swing tunes, and it's voice was wonderful, but I can hear this guitar in a year as an instrument that has a voice to sing ballads.  What I mean by that is, it takes a year or so before the guitar opens up and becomes what it will be.  And to play a ballad properly you need an instrument that will sing; like a voice.  That's why a sax, or a piano is such a good choice for a lead instrument.  I think this instrument is just as good.
           Having said all that, there's a buzz on the G string on the fifth fret that I need to fix.  I could raise the action and be done with it, but I love the way it plays, so I'll file some frets and fix it.  Maybe tomorrow.  Chris, you better come get this instrument before I fall in love and decide to keep it.

            Here is the prayer for the day.  This is another prayer I have spent months meditating on.  If you spend time with a prayer, or poem, it becomes something else.  It becomes a part of you, or you become a part of it, or you become a part of the person who wrote it, or they become a part of you, or perhaps you catch a glimpse of what we're really all a part of.

This morning, as I kindle the fire on my hearth,
      I pray that the flame of God's love y burn in
      my heart and in the hearts of all I meet today.

I pray that no evil or malice,
      no hatred or fear, may smother the flame.

I pray that indifference and apathy, contempts and pride,
       may not pour like cold water on the fire.

Instead, may the spark of God's love
        light the love in my heart,
        that it may burn brightly through the day.

And may I warm those who are lonely,
         whose hearts are cold and lifeless,
          so that all may know the comfort of God's love.

from The Ortha Nan Gaidheal

Happy Valentines Day

     It is finished!  I spent the day Saturday sanding the guitar with 1200 grit sandpaper, which is like sanding with a rag.  It took me all day to sand and polish it.  My neighbor was putting decking boards on his new deck and finished up about the same time I did.  It is amazing how long the sanding and polishing process takes.  I bought some foam pads for my drill and used them to put on the three different polishing compounds.  I think it turned out better than what I could do by hand.
      The evenings this week were spent fitting the pickup to the finger rest and then wiring the pickup to the volume control and jack.  I always forget how to do that and it takes me longer than it should.  Yesterday I cut the hole for the jack and installed the pickup.  Today I made a volume knob and set the action.  I hope to play it tomorrow night at City Lights Cafe for their Valentines weekend dinner.  I thought that would be a good way to make sure everything is working properly and the action is set comfortably.

       Here is the prayer for the day.  Another thought by Rumi.

There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.

Finished the broken Martin

      Well I fixed the Martin and got it back to the owner today.  The pictures will show how bad it was. There were two cracks that ran from the bottom all the way to the bridge.  The top was loose from the end pin all the way to the waste on the cut away side.  One cross brace was broken in half and loose all the way past where it crosses the other brace.  I glued the top cracks in stages and pulled them tight with the mop string I use to hold the binding on the guitars when I make them.  I also had to pull the sides in to align them with the top when I re -glued it.  I had to make a clamp to hold the brace in place inside while the glue dried.  It's very tedious working on the inside of a guitar.  You can't see what you've done until you pull your hand out.  Then you have to have a good light and a mirror.  It takes a lot of patience.  When I finished all the cracks I made a bone saddle for it and strung it up.  After adjusting the saddle I got the action just right.  I plugged it in only to find that the Fishman system didn't work.  I took the strings back off and took the jack out of the bottom.  I had to re- solder the connections and that fixed it.  So, this turned out to be a nice guitar, for something that was found in the dumpster.

       The prayer for today is one that I've spent quite a bit of time with.  When I first started doing passage meditation I started with this prayer and probably spent everyday for several months on it.  It feels like a part of me now.  It's by Saint Francis of Assisi.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

More Prayers

   I just got back from a wonderful evening of jazz at JJ's with Tyler Kittle on sax, Joe Fowler on bass, and Michael Collings playing one of my guitars.  Check it out some time.  It is the first Friday of every month with a different jazz configuration each time.  And you can sit in with them on the second set if you like.  Tomorrow I start on a broken down Martin that I need to fix for a customer.  I'll try to post some pictures so you can see what I'm up against.  Here is the prayer for the day.  One of my favorite Bruce Cockburn tunes.  Definitely a prayer from the heart.

Heavy northern autumn sky
Mist-hung forest -- Dark spruce, bright maple --
And the great lake rolling forever to the narrow gray beach

I look west along the red road of the frail sun
Where it hovers between shelf of cloud and spiky trees, 
Receding shore;

The world is full of seasons; of anguish, of laughter
And it comes to mind to write you this:

Nothing is sure
Nothing is pure
And no matter who we think we are
Everyone gets his chance to be nothing

Love's supposed to heal, but it breaks my heart to feel
The pain in your voice --
But you know, it's all going somewhere
And I would crush my heart and throw it in the street
If I could pay for your choice

Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for?

We're the insect life of paradise:
Crawl across leaf or among towering blades of grass
Glimpse only sometimes the amazing breadth of heaven

You're as loved as you were
Before the strangeness swept through
Our bodies, our houses, our streets --
When we could speak without codes
And light swirled around like
Wind-blown petals,
Our feet

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light
And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it
I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache
Under a loose board in the floor
And I blow across it and I send it to you
Against those moments when
The darkness blows under your door

Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for? 

Prayers

       I finished the wash coats on the guitar on Monday.  Now it will hang for two weeks and I'll polish it.  It should be ready by Valentines Day.  I've been thinking a lot about prayer lately and I thought I would print some of my favorite prayers by some of my favorite saints and sinners.  I'll try to do one a day until I run out.  Some of these are from well known saints, some are from obscure singer-song writers, and others are from mystics of other cultures.  I would welcome your own favorite prayers if you would like to add them to the comment section, or send them to me in an email and I'll add them myself.   This first one is from a character, played by Jimmy Stewart, in a movie called Shenandoah.

Lord, we cleared this land.  We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it.  We cooked the harvest.  It wouldn't be here; we wouldn't be eating it if we hadn't done it all ourselves.  We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway for the food we're about to eat.  Amen.

Clear coats are done

    I finished the build coats on the guitar yesterday.  It was still a little cold, but I heated the lacquer up, in a pot of water on the stove.  It's looking very nice.  I'll wait until maybe Wednesday and then sand it flat.  It's supposed to be nice again on Thursday, or Friday, in which case, I can give it one or two more thin coats to melt in the sandpaper scratches.  Then I'll let it hang for a few weeks and polish it.  After that, it's wiring the pickup and fixing it to the finger rest, drilling the hole for the jack, and putting it together.  Here are some pictures.  I'm sorry about the quality.  I took them in the sun with the wind blowing the guitar around.  The color looks a little more yellow than it really is.  Here is another Rumi poem, which I love.

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered like atoms?

Who comes to a spring thirsty

and sees the moon reflected in it?

Who like Jacob, blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or, like Moses, goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there is a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the Prophet and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere.
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there is a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he is wealthy.

But do not be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanations,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams, the teacher, the sun.
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you have grown,
lifting.

     A word about the character Shams in the poem.  He was Rumi's spiritual mentor and good friend.

                                                                                                                                  

Waiting

    I've spent most of this week waiting for good weather.  Last Friday I sprayed the color on.  The top is a bright sunburst of mostly fall colors.  Amber base and red/mahogany highlights.  Then I sprayed the back and sides with just a touch of amber to bring out the wood grain.  The contrast between the top, and the back and sides is very striking.  Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday I got about seven clear coats on.  Tomorrow I have to go to Asheville in the morning and pick up the case and the pickup.  When I get back I'm hoping it will be warm enough to spray several more.  When the clear coats are finished I'll have to let the guitar hang for several days and then I'll sand it flat with 320 sand paper.  Then I'll have to wait for good weather again, so I can give it a few light coats to melt in the scratches from the sanding.  After that it will have to hang for several weeks before I wet sand and polish it.  I also finished the fixtures (tail piece, bridge, and finger rest) with epoxy.  Now I just have to polish them and they'll be ready.  I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.
     For anyone who is interested and lives in the area, I'll be playing some instrumental jazz standards with Dave Molin at City Lights Cafe on Friday February 15th for a Valentines dinner.  We'll start around 7:00.  We also play every Sunday from 12:00 to 2:00 for their Sunday brunch and the first Wednesday of the month at Guadalupe Cafe at 6:30.  You can see and hear a couple of the guitars I've made.
     I found an amazing book at the used book store last week.  It's called, "The Zen of Seeing"  by Frederick Franck.  He was truly a kindred spirit.  He taught a way of seeing deeply by drawing.  It is a discipline and not a hobby and has nothing to do with whether you are a good artist, or the outcome of the drawing.  Here is a quote from the book, " I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle: the branching of a tree, the structure of a dandelion's seed puff.  "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels," says Walt Whitman.  I discover that among The Ten Thousand Things there is no ordinary thing.  All that is, is worthy of being seen, of being drawn."  I started the drawing process, which you do with out looking at the paper.  The drawing wasn't good, but the experience was greatly uplifting.  You never realize the details in something until you try to draw it.
      I'll leave you with another quote from the book.  I have had so many of these experiences he talks about.  Especially when I was young and had time to see and listen.
       "The first intimations of Zen, of the opening up of the eye, of the revelation of The Ten Thousand Things, come early in life.  Everyone must be able to recall revelations similar to mine.  I have no monopoly.
          On a dark afternoon - I was ten or eleven - I was walking on a country road, on my left a patch of curly kale, on my right some yellow brussels sprouts.  I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky I saw the slow approach of a snowstorm.  I stood still.  Some flakes were now falling around my feet.  A few melted as they hit the ground.  Others stayed intact.  Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound.  I stood transfixed, listening... and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees, that what is outside happens in me, that outside and inside are unseparated.
          It is the inexpressible, and the inexpressible is the only thing that is worthwhile expressing."

Hakuin  a great artist and sage of the seventeenth century wrote this poem.  "How I would like people to hear... the sound of the snow falling through the deepening night..."

       

Spraying

  What a beautiful day!  It was almost 65 today on the 10th of January.  I think God is looking out for me.  I had the day off and good weather, so I sprayed a wash coat and two build coats of lacquer on the guitar.  The wet shine makes the grain pop out and look beautiful.  Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll spray the color on the top.  Chris has given me the go ahead to do a sunburst on the top with natural back and sides.  I'll have to scuff sand the whole guitar first and then mask off the binding with some pin stripe tape.   Then I'll be ready to spray.  If the weather cooperates, I should be able to get all the spraying done by Monday.  Then it will have to sit for a few weeks before I sand and polish it.
    Here is an interesting quote from Coleman Barks, a poet and teacher from Athens Ga., "For this open-air sanctuary that a lot of us live in, without buildings, or doctrine, or clergy, without silsila (lineage), or hierarchy, in an experiment to live not so much without religion as in friendship with all three hundred of them, and all literatures as well.  It is a brave try for openness and fresh inspiration."

Barbara Brown Taylor

   I was telling a friend about this wonderful book I read several years ago called "Leaving Church," by Barbara Brown Taylor.  I picked it up again today to try and find a quote that I love.  It describes the community of people that I have come to love and be a part of.
    "We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by are inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.  Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.
        This wilderness experience sets up a real dilemma for some of us, since we know how much we owe to the traditions that shaped us.  We would not be who we are without them, and we continue to draw real sustenance from them,but insofar as those same traditions discourage us from being with one another, we cannot go home again.  In one way or another, every one of us has gotten the message that God made us different that we might know one another, and that how we treat one another is the best expression of our beliefs."

Fasting

     You know, I never really understood the reason for fasting.  I've had it explained to me and I've tried it several times.   As I recall, it made me hungry and cold.
     When you carve a stringed instrument,  you take away more and more material.  You tap on it and listen to it.  As you use the violin plane you can hear the tone change and the voice begin to take shape.  I remember when I made my first guitar I was carving the inside of the top plate, which no one will ever see.  I was close to being finished when Brad got out the clamp light and turned the lights off.  The shadows from the light show all your imperfections,  but the light also shows how thin you have carved the instrument.  I could see my hand through it!  It kind of scared me.  What if it was too thin and cracked, or I carved all the way through?  But when I put it together, this empty space, these thin walls, this material that couldn't hold light, held sound so beautifully.
       I hope you're not tired of Rumi.  How could you be?

There is a hidden sweetness in the stomachs emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less.

If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music.

If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting,

every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy

makes you run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier and cry like the reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secret with the reed pen.

When you are full of food and drink

Satan sits where your spirit should,

an ugly metal statue in place of the Kaaba.

When you fast, good habits gather like friends

who want to help.  Fasting is Solomon's ring.

Do not give it to some illusion and lose your power,

but even if you have, if you have lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing

out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.

Expect to see it when you fast, this table

spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. 

Now I Can Rest

      Before Christmas I struggled with this guitar.  I had put the frets on and dressed them only to find out that the neck had such bad back bow in it that I couldn't pull it forward.  I found out that a common problem is, gluing the fretboard on the neck dead flat.  Sometimes when the glue dries (because you are dealing with two different woods, ebony and maple) it can cause back bow.  This is such a common problem that Paul Reed Smith began glueing his fretboards on with epoxy, which doesn't have the water in it that tight bond does.  This would be fine assuming you never have to take it off again.  I like to keep all my options open.  Anyway, I had to heat up the neck until the glue softened and then use a caul and some clamps to pull it forward.  Now the neck has just a little relief in it, which is just right.  Consequently, I had to take all the frets back off and refret the whole guitar.  I finally got the strings on Christmas eve.  I came close to breaking it into little pieces, setting it on fire, and scattering the ashes  as I ran naked through the neihborhood laughing, "I've killed it!"   But I took a few days off for the holidays and came to my senses.
      I had a few buzzes I had to track down and fix.  Then I made the finger rest and decided to try to make a knob for the volume control.  I actually made two of them.  One out of koa and one out of some streaked ebony.  The koa knob is the one in the picture.  Bare in mind that the koa, and or the ebony, will be much darker after I put an epoxy finish on them.
       Today I finished dressing the frets and made the heel cap for the neck, and the truss rod cover.  The strings are on and I love it.  It plays like a dream and has the most acoustic presence of any guitar I've made so far.  I can't wait to hear it amplified.  Now, all that is left to do is to sand it down and spray it.
        Chris wanted a dark color, but I'm afraid that would hide the beautiful binding, so I think I have a compromise, which I haven't talked to him about yet.  He doesn't want a sunburst, so I thought I would do a walnut, or mahogany shaded finish on the front, that goes from darker on the outside edges to lighter in the middle.  Like a sunburst, only not as drastic and all the same color.  And then do the back and sides natural, with just a hint of honey blonde.  I almost wrote horny blonde, which would take on a totally different meaning.   I got this idea from looking at the Ribbecke Hafling.  I like the way you can have color on the guitar, but still see the dark binding.  It will be much harder and time consuming to spray, but everything else has been an effort, so why should this be any easier?
         Here are some pictures and my new meditation poem.  It comes from a book of Rumi poems translated by Coleman Barks, which Donna got me for Christmas.  If you are not familiar with Rumi, just go out and buy anything Coleman Barks has translated.  It is food for the spirit.
       

           Do not go anywhere without me.

Let nothing happen in the sky without me,

or on the ground, in this world or in that world,

without my being in its happening.

Vision, see nothing I don't see.

Language, say nothing.  The way the night

knows itself with the moon, be that with me.

Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am.

I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,

in the arc of your mallet when you work.

When you visit friends,

when you go up on the roof by yourself at night.

There is nothing worse

than to walk out along the street without you.

I don't know where I'm going.

You are the road and the knower of roads,

more than maps, more than love.