Those of you that have been keeping up with me on social media may understand that while I have been relatively silent on the blogging front I have actually been quite busy.  Between work on my Dad’ ukulele project (almost done with the finishing!), the demands of parenting, and my day job are adding up to not much free time to plunk away at the keyboard.

Things at the office have been carrying on to a crescendo in recent months, with responsibilities mounting and actual empowerment waning.  I’m struggling to find a perspective where I actually feel valued right now.  Instead of moping (beyond the obvious exception on Friday afternoon) I have taken to educating myself in such a way to ensure that I don’t end up “motivating” people in this same way.  I’ve been reading up on how to inspire people in the same fashion that Winston Churchill did, and various leadership blogs.  My current situation may be less-than-ideal, however I will win the day with patience and self-improvement.

All of that unpleasantness aside, I am finding ways to relax.  My in-laws visited and my father-in-law and I had a nice bonding experience while cleaning my garage.  He had some great ideas about getting more utility and space out of my workshop set-up, and I’m happy to say that we got a lot accomplished.  He says that next year he’ll come back and help me wire more outlets and shop lights out there so I can get even more use out of it.

That’s all for now, hopefully it won’t be weeks between updates from here on out.

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!

Wow, it seems that my personal blogging has taken a back seat to actually doing things!  Since the last time I blogged:

• Had two great karate classes, each taught by a different sandan in our organization.
• Had a whirlwind summit at work, which was very intense but productive.  I was essentially the only engineering person there to represent our team, with some support from a few others during that time.  Felt pretty awesome, but stressful.
• Had a great concert experience at Red Rocks, where we met Train and had second row seats to a concert that opened with Gavin DeGraw, then Maroon 5, then Train.  REALLY fun, more on this later.
• Watched my buddy Paul Ballew take a cross-rank exam for his Shodan in Shotokan.  He did a great job, and will find out the results soon.

Now that we’re all caught up, hopefully I can get back to blogging.  I want to do a full post for our Train concert experience soon.  Aside from that, you’ll get my usual ramblings… but for now I’m heading to bed!

I’ve had a strange variety of songs stuck in my head this week.  Since I have no other clever blog topics today that I feel like writing about, I will enumerate these songs so they might get lodged in your head instead of mine.

• “Life By The Drop” by Stevie Ray Vaughan (learning how to play this one too!)
• “Blame It On Me” by Barenaked Ladies (my anthem upon leaving work today)
• “Yellow” by Coldplay (I got Spotify this week, they were advertised on their main page and it got me remembering this song.)
• “You Are A Tourist” by Death Cab for Cutie (been shopping for a Fender Coronado II like Ben Gibbard plays in the music video, always makes me listen to this song.)

That’s all I’ve got tonight, maybe I’ll get inspired after karate tomorrow night to post something more meaningful.  But then again, maybe not.

Tonight, the duty fell to me to teach class since Sensei Tarrant and Brian are both out on vacation.  The class started as just Paul and I, but shortly after three other Shodans arrived.  I decided to structure the class very simply: I would take them through our Shodan exam one set of combinations at a time.  After a few combinations, we’d stop and do five kata starting with Heian Nidan.  After those five reps of the same kata, we’d go back to basic techniques and alternated the rest of the Heian kata in.

We made it through five reps of each Heian kata, and five reps of Bassai Dai.  We also made it through the Shodan syllabus, and everyone was sweating hard.  The class was collaborative, me pointing out regional fine point differences and we would try a few of these in each kata and discuss the merits of each.  The guys had some fun, one of them had an “a-ha!” moment which I felt good about.  Next class it’s going to be all about the Tekki kata and jyu-ippon sparring if I get to teach again.

It was fun to teach and rewarding to have some of the Shodans get some value out of the class… plus it helped sharpen PB for his upcoming Shodan cross-rank exam.  More soon!

Spit coating is the initial step to putting on a French Polish finish.  I started the process on my Dad’s ukulele today, after doing a test sample just to get the feel for how shellac goes on to an instrument.  For this process, I just used some folded over cheesecloth and a little elbow grease to put on three initial coats (called spit coats) to provide a base for the French Polish finish.  One important point that I found was to do the bindings and purflings first, then cover the “field” (or large areas of wood) second using long vertical swipes along the grain.  The reason for this is to prevent the cocobolo wood coloring from bleeding over into the lighter wood of the body.  The alcohol that dissolves the shellac can pick up some of the coloration of the wood as it is applied, and if you have anywhere with white or different colored wood you can transfer this color to other parts of the instrument.  This looks bad, so should be avoided.

Some interesting things about applying a shellac finish:

• It’s sticky, but dries to the touch almost immediately.
• High-strength alcohol (in my case Everclear) works to both clean up the pipettes and my fingers after applying the finish.
• The wood looks 3D almost immediately, and it seems this only heightens as the shellac gets applied further because the finish will refract more light.
• Natural wood binding is where it’s at… looks GOOD already.

Now I just have to order some pumice powder and I’ll be ready to fill the pores and grain.  Once that process is complete, it’ll be time to do the 30 (or so) bodying sessions to build up the finish.  Good times!

Dad’s ukulele is ready for finishing!  All I had to do today was unclamp the fretboard and do some final sanding on the neck.  The masking tape on the bridge covers the area where the bridge will be attached, and this is done after the finishing is complete.  I just got done ordering around $100 in supplies to do the finishing (the cheesecloth I wanted just came in economy size) and once that arrives I will be ready to begin.  I might do some testing on the kit that I messed up, so I can figure out how to apply the sealing coats of finish properly.

That’s all for now!

It’s the Fourth of July again!  Mine started off with a decadent session of sleeping in, followed by some reheated pizza for lunch.  After some tummy time with Eve, I headed out to the workshop to get two of my projects further underway.  As you can see from the first photo, I got the fretboard installed on my Dad’s ukulele… it’s finally starting to look like an instrument!  The attaching of the neck went well, I just did some spot sanding and the gluing of the fretboard today.  Tomorrow I have to so some measurements and taping of the bridge location and the uke will be ready for French Polish!

The second photo is of the mobile base for my band saw.  I got to practice some long dormant erector-set skills in assembling the wheeled base.  The orange feet control the castors, if they are flipped up (as in the photo) the castors flip out and the base rests on some leveling feet.  When flipped down, the base can roll on all four wheels which will allow me to store the thing when not in use.  It was fun to put together, I got to use my ratchet set, and now the stand is ready for the saw to be bolted to it.  Hopefully some of my strapping friends will come over and help me put it in position in the near future.

The rest of the evening is going to be spent grilling.  This holiday invariably reminds me of fireworks at my great-aunt’s house, or pool parties and my aunt’s house.  My grandpa used to grill for the pool parties, and both he and my aunt are gone now… so between working in my shop and grilling on the grill that my aunt gave me, I’m remembering them today.  I’d best get out there and get to cookin’!  Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Tonight was D&D night, our first one in two months.  We opted to play in the living room tonight, which was a welcome change of pace.  We didn’t get a ton of gaming done, but we did have a really good Easter-style potluck… ham, au-gratin potatoes with our normal D&D fare for dessert.  It was really nice to get to hang out with our friends again, the next one is only two weeks away!

Not much else to report today… I intended to get some garage work done but we had some errands that needed completed before the holiday so those took priority.  Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the garage after Church and we’re set to get together with the Walton’s at some point, so that will be fun as well.

More soon!

Saturday was my day to relax, so Tasha watched Eve while I worked on Dad’s ukulele.  I succeeded in getting the front binding on and filled.  Most of the afternoon was spent sanding and scraping and there’s still more to go.  I created a Facebook album to chronicle the progress, it is coming along well!  There were a few imperfections in the binding but I think I’ve got them covered, and I wrapped up progress on Saturday by wiping down the ukulele to get a sense of what it will look like when finished, and it is going to look nice.

Today was Tasha’s day to relax, so I spent most of the day on baby duty.  I fed her, and then decided that Teddy, Eve and I deserved a walk.  I loaded up the stroller and leashed the dog and we went on the normal route that Teddy and I take.  Teddy had a tendency to run off into the grass which made me jerk the stroller around, so he spent quite a bit of the walk being in various degrees of trouble.  Luckily, Eve didn’t mind and was conked out asleep in the first quarter of the walk.

When I got back, I played some guitar while Eve napped.  She’s been fussy, then charming, then fussy again and this has been the way the evening has played out.  Now she’s napping, thankfully.  Not much else to report, aside from my vacation time being approved so I get a little extension to the long 4th of July weekend!  Hoo-ray!