Luke and I spent Saturday making a cigar box guitar. I got a subscription to MAKE magazine for Christmas from my parents and from Katy (so now I have a two-year subscription! Thanks!), and the first issue I received featured a project for making a cigar box guitar. It even has instructions for adding a pickup to make it an electric guitar! Since guitars are one of Luke's favorite things, I knew that we'd have to give it a try.
The tobacconist downtown didn't have any spare boxes, so we got a little wooden craft box at Hobby Lobby. We got most of the hardware at Ace and the oak 1x2 for the neck at Home Depot. We did some other fun stuff on Saturday afternoon, so we really got started on the project on Saturday evening.
I told him that, when it was done, he'd have to take extra good care of it, and not leave it lying around, drop it on the floor, etc. All he wanted to know was "will I still be able to rock out?"
We generally had a great time with making the guitar, with Luke helping all the way. It was hard for him to leave the guitar along long enough for the epoxy to set, but he did it. We did have some rough moments toward the end when I was afraid that the hardware I bought was a little too big for it to all fit together. I had tried to warn Luke about that kind of thing in advance, telling him that not everything you make turns out right the first time, and filling him in on Dad's Law: it isn't much of a project unless you have to go to the hardware store twice.
But it was already a bit past Luke's bedtime when I told him that I thought we might have to wait another day to get different screws and washers, and he didn't take the news well. "No! Don't say that," he said, on the verge of tears. "You are a bad daddy!" Luckily, I didn't lose my temper with him, but reminded him that I had told him this might happen, and that I was doing my best. He calmed down, I tried again with the stuff we already had, and we made it work.
As the photos show, he was thrilled with the end result--it really plays, and sounds pretty good, though not too loud. Later, as we put the finishing touches on, Luke said "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said you are a bad daddy. I didn't mean it."
I put the photos on Flickr, and submitted a few them to the MAKE photo pool, which meant that little thumbnails of the guitar and Luke rocking out were on the front page of the MAKE blog for a while on Sunday night and Monday morning. Which is why some of those photos have been viewed hundreds of times. Then, on Monday evening, MAKE blogged our photoset, sending even more people to our photos. I only wish they had put the photo of Luke on the blog, instead of the photo of the guitar.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Sunday, March 05, 2006
New photos on Flickr
We uploaded a small batch of photos to Flickr. Check back later today, as I forgot to upload at least one that I can think of.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)