Day 1

Today I started my Senior Project. I started the day off by discussing with Tom what I hope to accomplish over the next two weeks. We went over my goals and activities and talked about how to achieve them. Then, we started designing a guitar. We thought out our different options, and narrowed down my choices. Some were broad, for example, domestic woods or local woods. Some were more specific, such as the type of bridge or binding. While a few choices are open, most of the choices regarding size, shape, wood types, neck and fingerboard shapes, and scale length have been made. Tom is going to teach me how to draw up the plans later. Another component of the project is learning about alternative tonewoods and the individual tone of a certain woods. Tom believes that white pine would actually be a viable tonewood if it didn't have the resins and pitches in it. We decided to experiment getting pitch out of the pine by boiling it. Today we went and gathered materials for boiling the guitar tops. This was no small feat, as the tops are 20 inches long and 10 inches wide the solution we came up with was a 20 gallon metal trash can. As you can imagine, bringing 20 gallons of water to a boil is not the job for a torch or hot plate, so we also had to borrow a large propane burner. Upon filling the trash can, we found the can leaked, and had to spend the last few minutes of the day epoxying the seams of the trash can to stop any leaking. The epoxy will set over night, and we will be all set to continue the experiment tomorrow.