Guitar Show!!!

Each year we have a guitar show featuring professional musicians performing with the instruments students have constructed during the school year. This is an amazing day seeing the students beaming with pride as they display their work.

This year the guitar show will be Thursday May 8th from 3-5pm on the Red Wing campus. The show is open to the public & free so if you're in the area and want to listen to some outstanding musicians playing new handmade instruments please join us!

Jason's Acoustic

Here are a few pictures from the first part of the acoustic construction class and the slope-shoulder dreadnought style acoustic guitar that I am in the process of getting ready to finish. This is a shot of shaping the top X-Braces on the guitar top:


Bent sides with kerfing, blocks, and side braces installed:


Gluing the top on:


An inside of the guitar with the top glued on showing the braces:


Gluing the neck on:


Shaping the neck:


The nearly finished guitar ready for finish sanding and fretting:

Jason's Electric

Here is the electric that I've been building. This shows the neck in early construction stages, with only the trussrod intalled and fingerboard glued on. The body has been shaped and cannot be worked further until the neck gets closer to completion:


The headstock has been cut out and thicknessed and the neck has been routed flush to the fingerboard. The guitar is almost ready to have the neck pocket routed in the body:

Jason's Archtop

And here are a couple of photos of my archtop in progress. This is a shot of the assembled rib structure in the mold:


And the archtop back:

An Introduction

My name is Jason and I am a current student in the guitar repair and construction program for the '07-'08 school year. I am contributing to this blog to give anyone who reads it an idea of what it's like to be a student in the program, including some of the really cool things that we do here, what classes are like, and how much work is involved. Right now, I am taking all three of the construction courses offered, which are flat top acoustic guitar construction, archtop guitar construction, and electric guitar construction. This is a lot of work, but there is also no other way that I'd prefer to spend my time.

Throughout the month of January and February, I completed the first part of the acoustic construction class and was in class for about 48-49 hours per week total including the electric archtop construction, but it has dropped down to about 40 hours per week now. I still have electric and archtop construction a few days a week, but I am currently enrolled in finish work and repairs class until the beginning of May when the acoustic will get finished. Both classes will give me some good skills to be able to get a nice looking finish on the acoustic itself.
I may have written more than you care to read here, check out my blog entry's to see each of the instruments I'm making.

Advanced Finishing

The year is going by so fast before we know it Advanced Finishing class will begin. I created this class through the customized training division at Southeast Technical. During the regular finishing class in spring students learn the fundamentals of fine wood finishing.

For our guitars we use nitrocellulose lacquer and traditional paste wood fillers. Generally we have the final 2 weeks of the semester to apply the finishes and with the number of instruments being sprayed, using color on the acoustics isn't an option.

With Advanced Finishing however students can create custom colors and use different coloring, filling & spraying techniques to take what's in their mind and put it to use on their electric guitar or archtop instrument.

We also do several different project boards using urethane and polyester finishes and spray bronzing powders used for "gold top" finishes or "candy apple red" colors made popular in the 50's and 60's.

I believe most guitar makers will tell you the finish is one of the most challenging aspects to get "right" and buffing to a high gloss certainly presents its own set of challenges. By the half way point of Advanced Finishing the acoustic guitars have had the necessary time to cure and are ready to be buffed which completes the process of taking raw wood, cutting, planing, scraping & shaping them into musical instruments and gives the look and feel customers expect.

As a graduate of the program in 1994 it has been an honor to come back and teach starting in 2000 and being a part in how the program has grown. We have an all new facility from the labs, power tool room, finishing area and spray booth. Being able to see the students go from the first day of school through to completing their first instrument never gets old for me. Seeing the process unfold and their creations take shape is inspiring and this class has given me ideas for finishes on my instruments!


(Below) This student chose a spalted maple cap and their idea was to give it the look of coming out of a swamp. He could picture it in his head and I was part of teaching him what finishing materials to use and how it can be applied but this was his creation and when it was completed he told me "It's exactly how I saw it in my head!".



Here (left pic) a student hand applies the color to his f-style mandolin he built in the archtop construction course and then the (right pic) clear coats have been sprayed:



This 50's inspired finish was done spraying the color with pigment based toners to get a super cool retro look on a classic design. Left to right: The guitar body sealed, the first stage of coloring, the final burst, and fully assembled. (Subtle color differences in the pictures are from different light sources when pictures were taken)



This is a classic "Lake Placid Blue" that inspired the finish for a recent guitar I built. Here the student did a phenomenal job of using bronzing powders added to lacquer to achieve this very challenging finish. For an added "pop" he applied the color over a white primer. Here in Minnesoooota this is a "Lake Pepin Blue" finish.



Stay tuned for pictures from Advanced Finishing 2008. I can't wait to see what the students have in mind for this years batch of excellent instruments.

The blog debuts...

Welcome to the guitar program blog! This winter we've begun work on creating a website for the musical instrument repair programs at Southeast Technical in Red Wing, Minnesota. The guitar, violin and band instrument repair programs already enjoy a great reputation and draw students from all over America (and even some international students). As the guitar program blog develops we hope to tell our story beyond the scope of the new website.

We're approaching the midway point of the the Spring Semester 2008. In the fall our students learned many of the techniques and skills necessary to maintain & repair guitars and other fretted instruments - such as making nuts, saddles, bridges, performing neck re-sets and fret jobs as well as wiring electric guitars. Now in spring they are applying those skills (and gaining new skills) to build an acoustic guitar from scratch!

Come back soon to see how work in the guitar repair and construction is progressing.