The twins were a hit.......

Christmas has come and gone now and we spent the holiday in Pennsylvania with my parents. We had a great time and it is always wonderful to be with family for Christmas. The twins were both given to my daughters, and they were very surprised. The expression on their faces as well as the smiles was the best gift I could receive. It was fun hearing my playing daughter play them. I always hear my guitars when I play them, but rarely do I get to hear them from the other side of the sound hole. I have to say, I was blown away by the bass, volume, and clarity of both of these guitars. The scalloped braced one as I mentioned earlier has more bass than the parabolic but they both sound amazing. I got to hear the them compared to the inexpensive dreadnought my oldest daughter has and there really is no comparison. It is like comparing a '75 Chevy Vega to a '07 Caddy. Night and day. What really surprised me was the richness of the bass on these two guitars in comparison. You would think that a dreadnought, even an inexpensive one would out-bass an 000 but not here. Both of these guitars have a deep boomy bass that isn't muddy sounding. When I get a chance I will have my daughter sit down and play something on both of them so I can record it and compare the differences. The bottom line, I am absolutely thrilled with the volume, tone, and clean sound of both guitars. My big gift was a new Ridgid laminate trimmer that I can use as a dedicated binding router. I need to make a base for it but I am excited to give it a try on my next guitar.

UPDATE: My daughter was kind enough to post a video of her playing the red guitar and singing. Although the video is not the greatest quality as it was taken using a digital camera, you can get a bit of an idea of how it sounds. Here is the link.

Last week I decided to make an end of the year purchase of a couple of shop items. I ordered a Jet air cleaner with electrostatic filter, and a Grizzly 6" jointer. I have been wanting to get the air cleaner for a while and Amazon had a good deal on one with free shipping. I couldn't pass it up. Grizzly had a $30 off sale on the jointer so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on that too. The jointer arrived yesterday afternoon, and after a bunch of heavy lifting I was able to get it up into my second floor shop....... by myself! Fortunately it was in pieces so the heaviest part was the jointer table which was somewhere around 100 lbs. The rest of the pieces were under 50 lbs each. I got it all assembled and I did some test cuts with it. It really works well however the motor seems to not be running right so I will be contacting Grizzly about a replacement motor. It doesn't seem to want to start correctly, it kind of surges until it gets up to speed. It isn't the belt slipping but it is the motor itself cutting in and out. Hopefully they will be good about replacing it.

Today I spent some time in the shop building a Troji. I got some plans off of a post in the OLF so it was a pretty easy build. I didn't take many pictures of the assembly but I will post what I did get pictures of.

Here is the new jointer. I still need to do the dust collection, but that didn't stop me from trying it out!

I moved my bench sander to a spot where I can work around it easily. I moved my drill press around the corner to make room.

Here is one side of the Troji after I attached it to the base.

This picture is for people who are wanting to build one using the same plans, only I did a different kind of nut attachment. This allows full force to both push and pull on the nut. The original plan had a T nut on the back which can get pushed out if the troji gets squeezed.

Here it is assembled. I still need to pick up some foam to pad the cradle area, and I need to finish sand the edges but other than that it is done. I might give it a coat of poly just to protect the wood.

Here is the inside. The side on the left is hinged and the other side is stationary. Turning the crank closes and opens it to allow for the body to be installed. Tighten the crank and it will hold the body securely on edge so the sides can be worked on.