Thanks

It's interesting that the more experiences you gain in life, be it your job, your relationships, your hobbies, the biggest constant is that elements are going to change. Usually it is an incremental shift, perhaps a skill you practice over an over you suddenly realize you can do it better and more easily, or the way you stand with your feet in the sand and watch the waves wash over them until you realize the water has moved the sand around your feet until you are no longer standing on top of the earth. Whatever it is, things shift and move forward. It seems I am at one of those points when I look down and see that my feet have been completely enveloped into the sand when I have done nothing but stand still.

This Thanksgiving, things felt different. So different. In order to help quell my anxiety with the missing people in my life, the new routines, I have been clinging onto past traditions that I love and that I can't let go of no matter how old I get. I'll always have my Granny's potato salad, even though I am the one making it now. I will be sure to slice the can shaped cranberry sauce into slices on a glass plate even though I don't particularly like it. I will always make the stuffing out of the box even though I am a skilled enough cook to make something from scratch. That is just how it will always be no matter what happens in between the holidays. This year, I summoned all the family I could find, my dad expressed interest in deep frying a turkey, we enhanced our Thanksgiving day traditions with prizes, and most importantly, I insisted we attend the annual Thanksgiving dinner held the Saturday prior to the holiday at the Rugby Rescue Squad.

Last year my dad got a ragtag band together to play as they had so many years past on the old Rescue Squad stage. The green astroturf stretching over its surface has worn over the years, the 'No Dancing' sign has been removed, though everyone still observes it, and the chairs and microphones might have been a bit more rickety, but getting to sit up there with him was one of the biggest highlights of my year. Of course, he had his regulars, the people who knew what they were doing: Gerald on mandolin and Helen on fiddle, but he also invited a couple of excited musicians who maybe weren't as well versed in their instrument's language; me on my #52 ukulele (the one that matches my dad's old guitar), and our family friend Gary Davis on the bass. (He usually plays guitar but helped round out our quintet with a nice steady beat). A memory from that day I hold quite dear is getting to sit between my dad and Gerald, Gerald telling me which chords were coming next, and simply feeling special, sitting up there on the stage where, growing up, I had aways watched from the sidelines. If you had told me that day that our quintet would only be a trio just a year later I wouldn't have believed you.

Rugby Rescue Squad Thanksgiving last year. Helen White, Wayne Henderson, Gary Davis, me, Gerald Anderson

We obviously didn't play for the Rescue Squad gathering this year. But I still insisted on going down to the gray metal building where all the emergency vehicles had been driven from their cozy garage and in their place sat rows of tables and chairs. Just like it was then I was 5. When I was 13. When I was 33. That's the thing about Rugby, and these dinners especially. Whether they are the same people from my youth, or others who have taken over the same roles, there are still the guy always in his 60s, taking the donations for dinner, grandmother aged ladies serving the potluck food everyone has brought and squished onto the long cafeteria counter, younger members of the community selling raffle tickets for the Henry shotgun door prize, the two or three young children choosing names from the bucket of tickets. The same people I have seen for years are always there, and while I probably don't agree much with their politics, things like that never really matter then. They'd still do anything for me and I them simply because they are my community. The loss of my family members this year has felt profound, but I think it was a healing experience for me as well as my dad to go join in our Rugby community of characters, maybe not in as big a way as last year, but just to sit among them and listen to the gossip and the new band, and eat the same traditional dishes mounded onto my plate that I couldn't forget the taste of if I tried.

Following the Squad dinner, I took it upon myself to host the biggest Thanksgiving our little family could muster at my dad's house. My husband's family drove up, my mom drove down, my cousins stopped by to catch up, and a few friends who weren't planning to travel for the holiday joined our party as well. I wasn't sure how my dad would feel given he had lost his partner just a month prior, but I think he enjoyed the distraction, offering to fry a turkey like he used to when I was a teenager, though that brought a twinge of sadness as we reminisced on how Gerald always came by on Thanksgiving day to fry a turkey or two for his family dinner as well. This year the frying process was just how it always was, the fryer not quite working, the men arguing out in the yard on how to fix it, trying to rig up some method to keep it going long enough to kill all the salmonella. Our turkey shoot was one for the books, with all three of our non (blood related) family members winning the prizes my dad made for the occasion. Our friend Sam won the first choice of prizes right off the bat. Though, if we were truly playing fair, my dad's first 'practice' shot had buckshot hitting almost exactly on the X drawn on his paper plate target. While the cutting boards he made were beautiful, everyone was especially hoping to win the little maple box with a tiny pearl and abalone fox I inlaid on it. When two plates were too close to call, we decided to give them both prizes only to find out they were owned by Frank and Barb Kruesi, respectively, neither of whom had shot many shotguns before.....I am still pretty skeptical of their collective win.

Measuring is serious business around here.

😑

The holiday was fun despite feeling the loss of our friend and my dad's partner of so many years. While things are shifting, some traditions of the holiday simply can't be quelled. If holiday recounting isn't really your thing, here is the latest in the guitar world:

It seems the sand around my feet is shifting not only in my personal life, but maybe in my instrument building world as well. I have noticed lately that people are calling me for interviews, focusing on my use of sustainable wood or how I work as a female luthier, and not stopping to mention my dad until I do. I am teaching inlay classes alone, I am doing demonstrations by myself, answering all of the questions  asked of me because I know the answers from experiences I have gone through, not just from regurgitating what I have been told or what I have heard my dad say. It is an odd feeling, thinking I might be good and knowledgeable at something, and I am excited to feel competent enough share it with other people who also believe I am competent at what I do.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad asked for my help. That role was an odd shoe for me to fill, seeing as he is always helping me, never the other way around, not really. Anything I have helped him with he is usually perfectly capable of doing, but I just happen to be able to step up in the moment. This time, because he is short a partner, there was no one else who could have done the job of taking him to address a medical issue. The nature of the procedure required him to stay at my house in Asheville for several days. I was worried that he wouldn't have a nice time or that he would feel severely uncomfortable out of his element. Luckily it seemed as though he didn't hate his time with me in my space. We fell into a similar routine as we do at his house. I woke up early and work, he stayed up late. I showed him how to watch Andy Griffith and the Beverly Hillbillies on our 'newfangled' TV, and he worked in my shop with my cheap, simple tools until he felt like stopping. He didn't bring anything to work on, so I let him make braces for me, glue ribbons and kerfing around my guitar rims, and fit the top and back onto my guitar while I worked on two ukuleles. I feel a bit guilty that one of my clients is essentially getting a Henderson guitar with my name on it, but working provided a sense of normalcy and ease to his visit so oh well, we both win. I ended up enjoying his time at my house with me quite a bit and for that time we had I am extremely thankful.

Getting free guitar help :-)

The guitar he worked with me on was completed right around Thanksgiving and I flew it up to surprise its new owner in Washington, DC last weekend. I enjoyed visiting with David and his family very much, learning more about the wedding of his son, the tree on the fingerboard symbolizing the tree under which he will be married this summer. David didn't seem too terribly sad about his collaboration guitar, and now perhaps after knowing how important and special the experience was for me it will make his guitar that much more enjoyable to play and love.

I enjoyed talking about how much David's wife Cheryl (my coconspirator who bought the instrument for David's birthday unbeknownst to him) enjoyed cooking and baking in her cozy, inviting, well loved kitchen. A passion we share. Experiences like these add exponential joy to my job and reminds me how thankful I am to be able to share something I love to do so much.

I wish you and your family the happiest of holiday seasons and hopefully I will get around to writing you a Christmas story before the end of the year! What would you like to hear about next? Guitar work, stories from my dad's childhood, stories from my youth? Please comment and let me know what you want to read about!

Dress Up

Another post that is too many months late. As usual, I'm sorry about that. I have been waiting for something exciting or at least happy to happen so I have something fun to write to you about but the last few months have been...less than ideal. I don't really want to focus on those events though, as there are always positives that can help outweigh the hefty hits my family has been dealt lately. Halloween is tomorrow, so it got me thinking. Perhaps I could tell you a story about Halloweens past, my dad's little known but actual superstitions, Shirleen's memories of bobbing for apples as a girl. But I decided to tell you a little bit about just me this time.

In kindergarten, our class visited the fire station. My class packed our little bodies into a tan trailer decked out to look like a living room and bedroom. The trailer was outfitted to simulate a fire emergency so we could see how smoke behaves and learn how to evacuate were we to experience such a thing at our own house.  I remember thinking, while I was stopping dropping and rolling along with my classmates, 'well if I were a firewoman this wouldn't happen at my house.' I then reasoned that if I were a police officer, no one would burgle my home. If I were a doctor, perhaps myself, and no one I knew, would get sick and die. I decided that a doctor would be the most useful profession to pursue. I mean since I already learned how to stop drop and roll, how hard could it be apprehending a burglar? Plus they make alarms for those other two scenarios.

For that Halloween, and the subsequent ones following, I dressed up as a neurosurgeon. My mom procured adult sized scrubs for me from UNC Hospital where she was currently in school. I proudly donned my surgery smock, mask, and sterile green gloves and ventured out to trick or treat in my neighborhood. When my interest didn't wane over the years and I continued to ask for the surgery smock on October 31st. my mom took me to UNC's brain lab to see a human brain. (I remember I was eight years old, but also I have a record of that day in my third grade journal I recently discovered in a tub of my school work my mom has saved for me.) I remember the brain to be folded into dense gray tissue filled with crevices, not a squishy, malleable mess you might expect given the many horror movie interpretations. As I grew, I kept thinking that is what I'd like to do, see what's in there, fix what's wrong. In high school, dissections in biology was my favorite time, my lab partners happily letting me do the worst (best?) of the exploration of the frog, shark, fetal pig. Their lab breaktime turned to concern when I went on, meticulously removing layers of matter in order to locate a shark's brain.

Sitting across from a friend at a downtown bagel shop watching her shaky fingers pull her bagel into pieces, I had a terrible urge to help her. I didn't understand why her hands were so shaky. Then I started noticing other people's hands as they focused on a task. What was wrong with everyone? Thinking back on the examples I was provided as a child of people working with their hands, all the jack-o-lanterns that were ceremoniously passed to my dad's expertise, watching his hands when he slowly and carefully shaved wood from a guitar neck. My mom's incredible watercolors and pencil drawings, watching her deft hands create and mold creative beautiful splints for her patients to recover in. They were as steady as mine so I never thought anything of it. After observing more carefully, I realized, perhaps the odd person was it me? Maybe my hands were the different ones, not those of my friends. I watch in terror each year as Nick carves his jack-o-lantern and I always regret handing him a knife, but to be fair, I cut myself with things significantly more often than he does...

In college, I worked in the biology lab cleaning and setting up for various lab experiments, pouring plates of agar for students to test various bacteria, mixing chemicals under the fume hood, running the autoclave to disinfect instruments. Oh also, one of my jobs was to feed the Madagascar hissing cockroaches, who's cages lined an entire wall of one of the prep rooms in NC State's biology building. They actually do hiss especially if they are annoyed you haven't fed them yet. Thinking back, I believe working in the lab was absolutely the highlight of my freshman year. Several times, when there were extra animals from a lab, say a student show up and the animal would have been wasted, my supervisor would allow me to do the dissection in my down time at work. I would take samples from various tissue, making slides to see what the cells looked like under the microscope. What fond memories....There is a little Halloween creepy for you.

Cut to now. I'm not a neurosurgeon. I didn't attend medical school. After switching my major from biochemistry, and earning a psychology degree with a biology minor (where my favorite class was neuropsychology, PS) I chose to take the LSAT instead of the MCAT. Fearing the extensive math section and that I wouldn't have time to draw out my equations in multi colored pens as I always had in all of my classes leading up to this test, I worried it wouldn't go too well. And harboring a strong love for the environment and enjoying writing led me in a different, seemingly easier, direction.

The point of that little history lesson is that things still seem to have worked out how they should. I don't get to dissect any animals or body parts, but I do get to use my hands and creativity to solve problems every day. My patients aren't necessarily alive, but a lot of times I feel that I am constructing a living being when I do my work. Often my tasks are tedious and difficult, and take a little bit of extra thinking. Like math, the socratic method of teaching and thinking quickly to spit out an answer is not my strong suit so I feel quite lucky to have stumbled into this job.

What does all of this have to do with guitars, other than to give you a little glimpse as to why I am here you ask? Good question. I will try to keep the rambling in check and give a quick anecdotal example. The other day I had to figure out how to cut a slot head peg head using my brand new milling machine. In my own shop. By myself. Without no one standing nearby to be sure I was setting things up correctly and cutting the right angles in the correct spots. The crux with a task like this is that at this point in the build process everything on the guitar is mostly finished. The guitar body is made, the inlays are inlaid, the fingerboard is glued onto the neck, the neck is fitted to the body and shaped to fit the owner's hand. There is little room for mistakes; in case of mishap, the only option is starting the neck over from a rough mahogany block.

Obviously I didn't want to make a brand new neck for my almost finished guitar so I knew I had to figure out how to set up my machine just so; set my router bit to the appropriate depth to keep the slots even and straight; drill the tuner holes exactly the same on each side of the peg head; file and whittle the edges of the slots to match each other; sand the slots smooth and clean. Though it took extra time, I decided to make a dummy peg head with the same dimensions as my guitar peg head. I practiced all of my measurements and set up on the prototype and tried them out. The results weren't as perfect as I would have liked, but I learned what I needed to adjust for the real thing.

When I was young and would ask my dad to help me make something in the shop on my visits on weekends, one thing that sticks is how long it took. I remember feeling frustrated because he would take AGES to actually do the thing I asked. I stood by and watched as he set everything up, eyeballing the placement of the fence on the table saw, then dissatisfied, scooting it a millimeter or so one way or another, patiently running through the entire project before ever cutting or gluing anything. I know now that he was teaching me how to truly, wholly make something.

The choices you make in life don't guarantee a certain outcome, but after awhile you can sit back and see where you've been and how you're shaped as a person because of those choices. I'm not a lawyer and I don't get to be a doctor. I don't get to know what it is like to fix a body and make someone better. But I feel like I have come as close to those feelings and actions as I will. After trying a different path I was still led back to working with my steady hands, seeing what is inside, and fixing what I am able. I learned from someone far more skilled than I, but now I can do similar work by myself; meticulously and with great care. Testing options and taking extra time to practice before just jumping in thinking I know what will happen. Now I have the knowledge and tools to be sure. And hopefully, as I keep working at this, I will be able to pass that part on to others wanting to learn. Not just the skills of guitar building themselves, but the artistry, passion, work and patience that goes into them.

Gerald

It is always so surprising to me when I go to write you a story and find out that it has been months since I have posted anything. In my mind I have been talking to you all along, which might mean I have a mental illness, but know that I am thinking of you and have all the intentions to write you a little something. It doesn't hurt to remind me if you're missing the stories. I never know who actually reads this anyway, or if I am just talking to myself. In the case of this entry, that would be alright.

This time I want to tell you a little bit about my Uncle Gerald. Before you think, wait, she has an uncle named Gerald? I understand he isn't actually my uncle by blood, but as soon as I was old enough to address him as anything, he was Uncle Gerald. I have always known him as such and that title was buttressed by my Granny's treatment of him as a son, and dad's treatment of him as a brother, and vice versa. He started out after college working as my mom's intern helping her enforce the newly enacted Clean Water Act at the Virginia Water Control Board. He would do her bidding and wade through polluted, dank coal mine runoff streams to collect water samples for her. Through her, he met my dad and has been working alongside him since. 43 years have passed since then, and I don't get paid enough to write you the whole history. I'll warn you now, I don't think I want to share any of my parent's stories in this post because, while it will be a far less entertaining entry for you, it is important to me that these stories are just mine.

On Thursday I got a call I never dreamed I'd get at this stage in either of our lives. My friend Spencer, who I consider the closest thing I have to a brother, and who Gerald treated as a surrogate son, told me Uncle Gerald had passed away. I don't want to go into the details of that day as it was extremely painful for me and I am sure all of my Rugby family so reliving won't be necessary for this story.  I use the term family because it best defines the circle of people who have come together in this tiny part of Southwest Virginia, in some of our cases due to DNA, but more likely just because we have found something beautiful and sacred here. Now I see, we have attached ourselves to each other and this community as tightly as hydrogen bonds with oxygen. I have always thought it was because of my dad, but I am sure now that is not entirely true. While my dad may be the atoms in the formula, Gerald provided the covalence.

Sitting here, I am at a bit of a loss for a specific incident or some humorous anecdote we shared that would help explain why this person is so special to so many of us. The memories that are running through my mind like a ticker tape are all banal, mundane situations that nobody would find special but me, and only in hindsight. As I grew up and would visit my dad on weekends ands school breaks, Gerald was always there but never stood directly in front of me, never demanding my attention or trying to win my affections as so many people hoping to please my dad would do. Where my dad has always been a pivotal star in the movie of my life, Gerald was always there in a supporting role. I didn't realize how perfect that term 'supporting' was until these recent events.

Every year during my dad's Christmas party which typically falls on or very near my birthday, usually as I retreated to the comfort of my room after feeling overwhelmed with the crowd, Gerald would quietly hand me a neatly wrapped gift and tell me happy birthday and Merry Christmas. I am sure my dad wanted to spend time with me on my birthday as well, but he was usually heavily surrounded by party goers so it was a rare occurrence I even saw him. (Same as Father's Day as his festival always falls on that Saturday.) Gerald's gifts to me were usually movies he liked, so if you ever wondered where my love of 90s adventure/disaster movies comes from, thank Gerald. (Men In Black, Independence Day, Jurassic Park to name a few have always held a special place in my heart, not necessarily earned simply due to their content...) My most prized bestowal was a VHS copy of the newly released weather thriller, Twister, which to this day keeps me company in my shop on more occasions than is normal for any human being. I always think of Uncle Gerald as I am cueing it up on my Amazon streaming list. I wish I had told him that.

Growing up, whether I was interested or not, my presence wanted by anyone else or not, I was always made to feel included in anything Gerald had going on. During his annual Easter Egg hunt, where he gently hinted at the location of the golden egg (finding it is a big deal) as I poked through the grass and searched under eaves, or letting me bet on a car during his NASCAR parties even though I didn't have money to buy in, or dealing me into my dad's occasional Tonk games where I was an annoyance to everyone else sitting around the table, and more recently, setting up a business account with Sherwin Williams for me so I can get half priced guitar finish, texting me throughout a trip he is on with my dad so I know he is safe and having a good time, and quietly buying my lunch or dinner at Sarah's where my dad and I would often meet him for a meal. It is no secret he loves gambling, so I will tell you this little story. About a year ago, he nonchalantly bought everyone at our table a lottery ticket, the kind I used to scratch at Vivian's store. That gesture shouldn't have mattered as much as it did, but those old feelings of excitement and the anticipation of good luck flowed in as he slid me a dime and I scratched away the top layer of the card. I anxiously waited for a proclamation of victory from my dad, Gerald, or Allison, all still diligently scratching too. When we were finished we went around the able taking stock of our winnings. Whomever won bought more tickets with their cash prizes and we continued buying and scratching more tickets until we ran out of winning tickets. He never asked for his money back. After the fun of that first time, I bought the tickets the next time and we kept playing like that the last few times I was up working and my dad and I met him for a low key dinner. Those little experiences that maybe shouldn't have mattered so much and aren't outwardly special brought me so much joy. I wish I had told him that.

Stories like mine are not the exception. Reading over people's notes posted on social media and listening to so many friends gathered for his final farewell it was evident that my memories, perhaps not exactly the same, are inherently shared.  Gerald's kindness has radiated through my life, and I think a lot of others, like a low and constant hum you can barely hear; gently reminding us that we are loved and that we matter. I know very few people who give so whole heartedly without any expectation of reciprocation. I am so appreciative of the kindness he has shown me where in the other supporting players in my life there has been far less.  I wish I had told him that.

The past few days I have asked myself and others, what are we going to do? Like a mantra, over and over again. Seriously, what [some expletives Gerald wouldn't use] are we going to do? Who will take care of me? My safety net, the one put in place by my parents when I was born and has grown as more people have come to stand behind me ready to catch me if I take a tumble is extremely important to me, but still, I think I have taken it for granted. I know as we age that net that ebbs and flows, and is meant to shrink as we take over holding that net for someone else, but with this loss, I feel my net has been significantly torn. Not just a little unraveling, I mean a giant hole has been ripped into its middle and I am not sure if it can be repaired.

I don't want to go too far into detail about the funeral other than to say I have never felt more proud of Spencer for delivering the most beautiful and perfect eulogy I am so sure Gerald would be proud of and seeing all of his friends humbly rise and walk on stage to play their Anderson instruments in a final farewell song. But I will say this, every face I saw there was someone I have known for many years. Some who have paid me little attention, and I them along the way, and some who are the closest friends I have. So many of us stood together in support of one another's personal and collective loss. Collected all together, we saw the good in each other that Gerald would have seen. To me, we all seemed a little bit nicer and happier to see each other and I am pretty sure that might be because we all aspire to be the kind human our friend was. Also, I think we all learned a hard lesson from losing someone so unexpectedly who we might not have realized was so deeply entangled with us all. Here is what I learned, so take it to heart: Don't forget to tell your people how you feel about them, it is important.

Late that evening, I sat outside the shop door, under a warm blanket of stars with my dad and several of his friends; no, correction: our friends, feeling like they truly didn't mind me being there when usually I feel like my presence might be taking something from their enjoyment of visiting with my dad. We shot some Roman candles, picked ripe full blackberries off the vine winding its way up the side of the shop wall, chatted about the events of the day. After a while, nothing was left to say so we all sat contentedly together just watching the sky. A bright shooting star raced low across the horizon. I wonder if we were all thinking it was something special and significant, or if that was just me.

Following the burial, after several days of mental and physical anxiety and discomfort, I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I truly don't know if I have felt something so powerful in my body before and I don't really want to admit it to you, but I have to in order to make my final point. That mantra that I can't stop hearing, the 'What are we going to do? No, really. How can this be ok?' has quelled. People I don't spend much time with have come and sat down to chat so we can learn about each other, my dad's and Gerald's good friends have told me that if I ever need anything, please don't hesitate to call they would be happy to help with anything. Spencer promised to text me regular updates of my dad's trips. I asked our friend Greg to take care of my dad as I ducked into my car to drive home and he promised he would, whole heartedly knowing the size of the shoes he is attempting to fill. One of us won't be able to do it alone, but I think all of us together can. 

Today I know that we will be ok, because of all the people who are already stepping in to help repair my net.

Sunbursting

Someone asked me to explain how I do sunbursts, so I thought I would just go ahead and tell you all about it because maybe someone else wants to know too! I have always loved color, shading, drawing, creating something beautiful, so perhaps sunbursts were always in my future. Some of my earliest memories with crayons and colored pencil is that I figured out that you could change the shade based on how hard you pressed. I found could add depth and movement to the thick black lines of Cinderella's dress printed on the page of my coloring book if I faded the lines into ruffles. Looking over at the other kids struggling to stay inside the lines with their fat markers I had a feeling maybe drawing was something I could be good at. So think that is the first thing necessary for a good sunburst: the ability to see and appreciate colors and how they work together, and to shade them out evenly.

As I started this post, out of curiosity, I asked my dad how he started doing sunbursts, not having anyone to teach him. I expected him to say that he rubbed stain on like Lloyd Loar did for Gibson, but his response was, "You know, I did my first sunburst with a torch." ...Um, what? Some days he just says or does things you aren't quite expecting and you're left bewildered. Like once, Nick and I were making a bourbon cake and I had bought Old Crow bourbon because it was on the bottom shelf at the liquor store and I figured that was the baking stuff. My dad walked into the kitchen and says, "Old Crow, that was your Uncle Max's favorite bourbon." He then walked over to the counter, took a shot of the bourbon and walked back out of the kitchen. Or another time I was sending a set of wood through the thickness sander, and he said, "Well, that will probably turn out really nice. Or it'll blow up." And then he promptly walked away leaving me standing next to the sander wondering if I would benefit from a helmet. They come out of nowhere, so as I said, I wasn't expecting, "Oh I took a blowtorch to it."

So of course, I imagined my dad burning up his newly whittled mandolin and, of course, ending up putting on a beautiful burst with it. Normal people can't do what he does, I don't think. He said had seen a cabinet maker use the technique on plywood cabinets, making them look darker and thereby fancier than what they are and thought perhaps he could use it for shading. He said it actually worked beautifully color wise until he noticed the back seam of the mandolin separating due to the heat, and then realized that ivoroid, the binding we use, is extremely flammable so bringing a flame near a bound mandolin would likely send it up in smoke. He told me he rubbed on stain like Lloyd Loar after that. He also said he used to make his own stain by scavenging walnuts from Granny's fields and boiling their hulls. Apparently it makes a perfectly colored brown stain.

If you are rubbing your stain for your sunburst, it is suggested to do the lighter color first and work toward the darker color, but if you are spraying the dark stain comes first. So I will explain how I do it, but this in no way means it is 'the way' to do it. I am sure other folks have better, smarter methods. As I say in my inlay classes, I am showing you my techniques because it is what works for me, but as we have learned with the blow torch, there are no wrong answers (or are there in that case?) so whatever works best for you is what you should do.

The very first step to a good sunburst is to make sure you've sanded out all of the scratches in the wood. Seriously, all of them. If there are minuscule scratches left in the wood when you spray water based stain, the stain highlights them like the Vegas strip.  That part takes almost forever. I like to check for them in small quadrants within a surface and only focus on sanding each area before I move on to the next one so I am sure to clear every scratch left from heavier sandpaper. I do that until I can't find any more, then I wet the wood to raise the grain, let it dry and sand it again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Hm. I wonder why my shoulders hurt? I bet it's all that yoga. Anyway...

When all is sanded to my liking, I do a three part stain with the spray gun, first with stained water then with stained finish. I begin with the darkest color. I add enough stain to a couple of tablespoons of water and adjust the gun to spray the width of spray I prefer. After the gun is adjusted to my liking, not too heavy-it will bounce off of the binding and cause excess stain to ruin the color distribution, too little and you'll be sitting there for ten years, I start going over the edges. When the outside of the burst is dark enough, I will add a second color if that is what I am going for. Sometimes I add some reddish stain, such as with the Nick Lucas I did yesterday, sometimes I won't, like the light burst I just did on the paw print guitar. Then I go over the entire surface with the lighter, yellow color. When that has dried, I do the same thing with a finish coat. I prefer doing the water stain first because I think it adds a lot more depth to the burst and I can increase shading that way, but using the finish after the water based stain adds more opaque color around the outer edge. I spray the entire burst with the golden center color. Finally I spray a clear coat over the finished burst for good measure. After that has dried I scrape the binding and clean up the edges/purfling. That's it! Except for yesterday.

Starting out with some water based stain.

Started out fun....

I have never felt so defeated and bad at my job than I did yesterday. Usually bursts are one of my favorite things, though they are stressful and difficult to do, I typically enjoy the challenge and had expected to get this one done in a couple of hours tops so I was hoping I could get to finish work before the end of the day. I figured I would get done early so the guitar would have more time to dry before I sanded and buffed out the finish. But nope.

First off, I got started only to find my favorite stain, medium brown, was empty even though every time I come up to work in his shop, I ask my dad what materials are running low so I can be sure to bring or order them before I get to the middle of nowhere Rugby and we are out. Since there were three bottles sitting there he didn't think to tell me to order more, but as I went to fill my spray gun, each bottle had about half a drop in them and a scant amount in the other brown hues I use. I guess had I been resourceful I would have gone outside and scavenged for some walnuts...But I hadn't heard that story yet so luckily my friend Spencer had some that he sent to the shop just as I was trying to eek the last minidrop from our last bottle.

Less fun...

The water based spray worked pretty well, but when I had finished, thinking 'maybe just one more little touch right over here', the gun spat an extra uninvited blob or two of brown stain right in the middle of the finished guitar. That happened a few times which means I either didn't have the air adjusted just right, or it was in the mood to be an a******. Either way, it happened again and again, and the only way to fix said blobs is to sand them out. But how can you sand that out without also sanding the other stain you want to still remain on the guitar you ask? Practice and messing and maybe just sanding the whole thing off if you must because the more you tweak it the harder it becomes to correct it without visible consequences. After adjusting the gun, sanding, adjusting, testing, adjusting, sanding, and a little more testing, I finally got the burst how I wanted it only to have the same thing happen with the finish coat.


When I sprayed the bottom end of the Nick Lucas (where my short arms can't quite reach) I ended up with a big black overspray all over the finally beautiful top. So more sanding, spraying, adjusting, tweaking, spraying. At one point the messing got so intense that I ended up sanding the entire burst off the back and starting fresh. I had to bring in the big guns, 220 sand paper, to get everything off. As a warning, that water based stain really gets in there but I simply couldn't leave it so dark. I believe that even though bursts are wonderful they should enhance rather than cover the instrument because the beautiful flamed maple (or spruce, or whatever is being used) deserves to shine through.

As badly as I wanted to just stop, put everything down, and go inside and lay down with the lights off I had to keep going until it was finished, correctly. Mostly because I didn't want this task to beat me, but also because I didn't want the rumors that my dad does my work to be true. He knew I was having trouble with the job and I know that when he came home from his gig and saw a half done disaster he would take pity on me and probably work on it for me and I would wake up to a pristine work of beauty hanging in the spray room. As much as I appreciate Santa Wayne, I want to be able to fix problems myself, figure it out, take that blow torch to a beautiful curly piece of maple and find out it might not be the best idea for myself. (Pretty sure I already know that one but I hear torching purple heart makes it crazy purple and I definitely considered it when I was finishing that purple heart ukulele...just saying.)

Even though I hated not being able to do well on the first try, maybe messing up is what makes life interesting. One of my favorite teachers said once about a less than stellar kayaking trip we were on that we should really appreciate these things that are going wrong because we won't remember the trips that go well, but we will be telling stories about this trip for years so we might as well enjoy the ride. As usual, he was right and I often think about Ol' Guessepe making the literal worst pizza I have ever had at a random restaurant on Deer Key, Florida. Despite the difficulty, last night I was able to go to sleep happy that I had dealt with the issues myself, corrected my mistakes, no matter how long it took (I started spraying the burst at 1pm, finally hung it to dry at 8:30pm) and even though I might have stumbled a bit getting there, I made something beautiful that someone else will get to enjoy and love for years to come.