sketchbook piccys

modifying my tele

I've been meaning to make some modifications to my telecaster for a while - I wanted to make a metal scratch plate and veneer the top, and I just got round to starting over the last couple of days. Terrible photos are due to the fact I couldn't find my camera under the pile of stuff I dislodged to do this and so had to take quick snaps as I went along.

I used a zebrano veneer for the body, and stained the rear a much darker brown/black to contrast.

I still have quite a lot of work to do - I want to varnish the whole thing (oil finishing wasn't working for me) and polish the aluminium to a mirror finish...I might also apply a veneer to the headstock to match.

new batch of cyanotypes

Myself and Kim have been going bonkers with cyanotypes the last few weeks, getting things ready for World Book Day. Here is a little something I cooked up quickly - its a diagram of a Lithium Atom. I wanted to make something along the lines of that old atomic symbol, and it seems to me that it is based on Lithium - with it's three electrons. Maybe I'm wrong. But there you go. I have been terrible at updating the old bloggy recently, hopefully there will be much, much more to come in the next few weeks!

back to sketching

Feels like I haven't really drawn anything in a fair while - been building stuff! Started drawing a lot more in the last few weeks, trying to come up with some half decent ideas for screen printing and cyanotyping. Been testing out the cyanotype prints today, still dialing in the right exposures - fluctuates hugely depending on the type/thickness of paper etc. Bit frustrating and progress is slow but I'll get there in the end. Hopefully will have something to show within the next few days and I can get back to using my blog more regularly! 

Second Guitar Build

I wanted to keep the finish on this guitar simple - I just put on a few coats of danish oil and then some wax polish. 

I had to use Ambrose's workshop to finish the headstock - everything I had lying around at home wasn't able to cut it effectively (as evidenced by the hack marks).

I didn't want to cut a straight up tele style headstock - I quite liked the strat style headstock on the deluxe tele, and the design I came up with was sort of in between the two. Not sure if I'm 100% settled on it, might have another go at it at some point in the future...

My first guitar kit build

I was pretty excited this year to get a couple of guitar making kits for crimbo! Been thinking of making a guitar for a while, and one of my favourite styles of all time is the SG. In my mind I imagined a dark brown sunburst finish...

After a couple of coats of stain. The wood strangely didn't take the stain in the beautifully uniform fashion I had hoped it would. Perhaps with a more expensive block it would work better? I couldn't quite build up the layered depth of colour I needed for a sunburst.

Quite nice grain on the headstock - definitely wanted to keep that!

I didn't take any pics whilst figuring out the wiring - and it was all over in a relatively short period of time, much to my surprise. Worked out a lot simpler than I had anticipated.

...what I ended up with was a vague kind of worn sunburst, which I actually quite like, luckily! Took me the better part of two days of sanding, staining, oil coating and waxing to get to this stage. 

I'm intending to potentially swap out a few bits of hardware, cut a custom headstock inlay and do a few other bits and pieces. Will post any further developments!

Avengers Assembled!

Making Iron Man

Been very quiet on the blog front for a while, busy with lots of stuff and didn't want to unveil this one until I knew I'd get it done! Was a real rush in the end and the finish was super shoddy but the overall effect worked alright - although the costume fell apart pretty much constantly throughout the night! Got to say a huge thanks to everyone who kept me in one piece and helped repair with piles of duct tape!

all pieces started as pepakura files nabbed off the rpf forum - printed and hot glued together.

The paper constructions were then covered with resin and strengthened with fibreglass - I didn't take any photos at this stage as I had to work quickly before the resin could gel, and that was annoying enough on it's own!

Ideally, the whole thing would have been covered with auto body filler too, but I barely had time to do this for the helmet alone. Would take forever to make this up to scratch! It's a process of sanding, filling, then sanding again, and filling. Then sanding. And filling.

I made the arc reactor out of pound shop bits and bobs, as well as a few things bought off of ebay and the like.

I soldered on bits of copper wire to make it look a tad more like the movie version. Kind of.

 

And skip ahead to completion! As I said, shoddy as hell but overall ended up looking alright.

dodo skull

got really bored, drew a calavera style dodo skull.