Start of Week 5

It's week four and things are starting to pick up for the second year guitar students. In archtop class, we've all been running around trying to get our ribs bent and glued to our head/tail/waist blocks--whether mandolin, archtop guitar, or violin!

As tools class comes to an end and the first year students start their new schedule, we start our adjusted schedule with Fridays off. With advanced finish work now only on Wednesday nights, we look forward to finishing (no, not that kind, we've already sprayed them!) our first project: a goldtop finish. Another thing
we're working on is buffing project boards and practicing our burn-ins and
 grain-lines.

In our CAD and CNC classes we have finally gotten through our intro workbook and are excited to starting mapping out our future guitars from paper to the Rhino. We also look forward to using the data we have learned about this past month and putting it into a CNC machine to cut out templates and molds.

-Luke

Hit the Ground Running...

After years of preparations, and even more years of planning, Southeast Technical's Guitar Development and Production program is finally underway.

The year really seems to focus on improving skills we developed previously. Whether Advanced Finish Work, Arch top class, Cad and CNC for Guitar, or Advanced Inlay class, we're all sure to be kept on our toes.

Here are a few pictures of the Cad program: Rhinoceros 4.0. In this program we've been learning to draw both 2-d and 3-d objects, all leading up to the process of digitally blueprinting the guitars we all will be building come this spring semester.

In Archtop class, we have the choice to build either a hollow-body archtop, a mandolin, or a violin. We are in the process of making and gluing our end and top blocks to our molds. Next week we'll start scraping our sides to thickness.

Advanced Finish Work is sure to be a very interesting class. We will be mixing and spraying new finish techniques. One example is using UV light to cure a conversion finish. Along with that we will be spraying a gold-top finish, as well as our own sunburst finishes!

All in all, the program seems packed with cutting-edge classes and is sure to turn at least a few heads.

-Luke