Silent? Kind of. Idle? Hardly.

In just the blink of an eye, a few weeks have lapsed since I have updated the ol’ blog here.  The good news is that my lack of long-form writing is due to a lot of real-life stuff going on.  There’s a lot of work stuff going on and a few less than great personal things going on, but I’d rather spend this time to focus on the new, fun, and exciting stuff that is happening.

For those of you not currently tuned in to my Facebook page and my Flickr page, I have been making solid progress on finishing my Dad’s ukulele.  The French Polishing is turning out to be both fun and relaxing.  It is a technique that will take some time to master, but I feel like my progress has been good for a first-timer.  I even got noticed by Breedlove Guitars on Twitter!  Because a lot of this work is happening in the garage, I tend to be posting progress on this project more in mobile photos and status updates, but I’ll probably do a wrap-up once it’s all complete.

Since that project is nearing completion (if I’m lucky, it’ll get done in the next week or so) I went ahead and ordered my StewMac dreadnought guitar kit and a small luthier’s shop worth of tools!  My main concern at ordering the stuff for this project so late in the summer is that I’m going to run out of nice weather to finish the project this year.  I may have to actually (gasp) get up early on the weekends if I’m going to have enough hours in the shop to actually complete it before winter hits, or I’m going to have to invest in a space heater and some shop lights for my garage.

But regardless of the weather conditions, I am excited about this project.  I’m confident that I’ve educated myself sufficiently by reading books and the Internet to get this kit built, and the lessons learned on Dad’s ukulele give me confidence in the finishing and binding processes.  So now it’s just time to execute!  More soon!