Bottom's Up Leap Day Gig

Once again, thanks to our supportive friends we brought the Bottom's Up Lounge to capacity. It was a rollicking good time. I ended up playing in all three sets because the Road Rockets needed a bass player (Jake was in Chicago). The Neil Young cover band F*!#In' Up was super fun! And GDH was a blast too. Thanks to Rob for the pics.

The Road Rockets:


Rob on the skins:

C-dogs rockin' it!

Anthony and Dave laying down a solid foundation for F*!#In' Up
Shane and his trusty tele:
Joe and his trusty rawk stains
After a good setup the (fake) Tele Deluxe played amazingly well:

Adam buys me the best t-shirts:
Awarded best in Show:

Rob even took some video of us playing Built to Spill's "The Plan":

My Jazzmaster Project

My birthday gift from my parents this year was money to buy a neck for my as-of-yet-unnamed guitar project.



Thanks to the tutelage and encouragement of More Cowbell from ShortScale.org I decided to attempt the blocks and binding thing. Here are some pics from the process.

M.C. sent me the measurements of the blocks on his Fender Coronado. I measured and taped off the appropriate sizes:


I borrowed a Dremel from my uncle and bought a router attachment off eBay (5 bucks!) to do this:



Used that saw in front to cut the mother of pearl I eBayed and sanded them down to (for the most part) straight sides:


Slopped some plastic wood in and squished the MOP down:




This is before any sanding is done. You can see the raised edges at the bottoms of most of the blocks. Before grinding:
Grinding, then sanding with 220, 320, 600, 800 and 1500 grit. After that I stained the plastic wood with walnut stain (yellow marker above)

It's definitely not perfect but I'm happy with how it turned out. Here is the final product:

Next up is saving up money for the electronics, wiring it all up to the pickguard, then waiting for the appropriate weather to paint. Yeah!