vibramute's guitar is coming along as well. We had an experimental project last year that really slowed us down. We tried to hire a second finisher to help handle the workload and he turned out to be a...well, he wasn't as proficient as we were lead to believe. Then our primary finish man goofed, spraying polyurethane over waterbased paint that the other guy was using, unbeknownst to us, when trying to fix a lot of his mistakes after we relieved him. So we had a lot of finish problems to work out, with many guitars actually having to be sanded back down to the wood.
In the meantime, I have actually been working very hard on finish experiments (and pickup orders) while dad has been trying to complete the guitar orders. We've worked out a catalyzed nitrocellulose system that works perfect with our dyes (we used StewMac's dyes years ago, then switched to TransTint. Now we're using an OEM product out of Sacramento that we purchase in bulk.) So I'm proud to say that our tests have come out looking pretty dang sharp and vibramute's guitar will be the first finish to be completed personally by us, using the new finish materials. Actually, this will be the first finish that we'll have personally done ourselves in about 3 years. I'm trying to email photo updates more often now - I finally joined the 20th century and got a smart phone w/ 4G and it so much easier to snap a quick photo and email it directly from my phone than having to fool with the computer. Of course, my DSLR takes better photos, but what the heck?
We'll be completing some more guitars very soon, including vibramute's. I hope to have something to show by July. In fact, we are hoping to have all of orders completed before August since I will be going back to college. Dad will be taking over pretty much every aspect of the business. Turnaround times on guitar orders will probably increase, as he only plans to take on a few builds here and there.
