Workshop: The Things You Don't See

This week has been absurdly-busy so far (as it usually is in summer), so I haven't been posting as much as I'd like or even getting photos in. I get emails (from time to time) from people who are interested in (possibly) learning the trade and wondering what the day-to-day experience is. It can be quite varied -- and a lot of it is not entirely full of glorious old '30s and '40s prize instruments like the blog might suggest.

When you work on instruments and live in a community, there's a social contract that one has to fulfill to help people out if you can -- because you should and because one should want to, as I do. I'm clearly busy-enough and have a backlog large enough that I don't need to do this work and could turn the work away in favor of just concentrating on nice gear. I remember being that teenager and younger guy needing service on my instruments and never being able to get it done by anyone who cared enough to do it well, though -- to deal with the rough edges and make things work. It's why I started working on stuff in the first place.

So -- this week I started jotting-down the shop-work I've done that won't make it to the blog (I've omitted the stuff that will show-up on blog posts this Sat/Sun), just to see what creeps around the edges of the "bigger" work. By the end of the week, I forget about almost all the minor work I did save for what makes it to the net, so it feels like it never existed until I'm going-over invoices at tax-time.

Here's what went on "extra" only in the last three days...

Tuesday:

• insurance valuations for 6 guitars and a violin
• setup, restring, and adjustments for 2 violins
• setup for two acoustic guitars
• wiring solve for an electric guitar and setup

Wednesday:

• light fretwork, restring, setups on 4 acoustic guitars
• new tuners and setups on 2 electric guitars
• setup on 1 electric guitar, setup on 1 acoustic guitar
• lefty-ization (bridge fill/recut, new saddle, setup) of 1 acoustic guitar
• setup for a ukulele

Thursday:

• setup of a fractional violin
• insurance valuations for 2 guitars
• neck reset, seam work on an acoustic guitar
• fret level/dress and setup for an acoustic guitar
• Bigsby install on a more-recent Les Paul
• fussing with undersaddle pickup balance for a newer guitar
• rewiring the harness on a funky electric guitar
• bridge reglue on an acoustic guitar
• pickup adjustments and repairs to an electric mandolin