Life as experienced by Kyle Abbott.
Well, It’s time to start the tuning pegs. This might be a little difficult because I’m not too good at making circles in general. In wood or on paper, I think it tends to be a little lopsided. Of course, If I screw up, it won’t be so bad ’cause it’s easier to make another one of those than a whole neck, body or headpiece.
Alright! Around 5:00 (about 24 hours since I glued it) I opened the clamp and undid the bungee cords and inspected the neck. It came out really nice! I’m glad I double checked yesterday before letting it set overnight to dry ’cause I saw that the bungee cord was too loose (’cause I used three. two to hook on the orange clamp to the other bungee cord around the hole in the Tenjin.) and therefor the tenjin didn’t fully rest flush on the Sao. So, I took off a clamp and connected the two together which really got it tight (you can see the picture on yesterdays post). Anyway, it glued properly.
Next and hopefully the final woodworking part of the Shamisen project is the tuning pegs!
Well, After getting it level, flush and straight, it was time to glue it together! Gluing the Tenjin to the Sao was much easier than gluing the Dou together. When I glued the Dou, I had to get it extremely tight by using wedges, dowels and rope. With this gluing, I just used bungee cord and a big clamp. Problem solved!
Boy, I haven’t made a Shamisen Blog post in a while! That because the last thing I did after making the Tenjin has been cutting out the hole for the neck to fit into it. That took a bit of time because those mortise and tenon holes really have to be flush. I’ve also been doing other stuff so it’s not like I’ve been doing it all week (like I was before). Anyway, After chiseling away wittle bitty pieces, I got it nice ‘n flush. Oh,
I cut my finger again!
For some reason, I’m not sure how it started, but we got in our closets (well, drawers, I keep my clothes in drawers. I keep my dress [dress meaning dress clothes meaning Armani suit from the thrift store) and gi in the closet.
Anyway, if you’ve been reading the Kyle’s Blog religiously, you’d know that even though I have a drawerfull of shirts and a drawerfull of pants, I only wear half of each. I only wear one kind of shirt and I have five pairs of that same shirt (it fits so good and they were selling out so I had to stock up) and four pairs of the same pants. I have other clothes but I like to keep to tradition. Oh, I also have this one modded (to fit my shape) vest. This combination is what I choose to call: The Kyle Abbott’s Uniform. It can be accessorized with a watch (which I don’t usually ever wear) or sunglasses (which I wear but if you want to be like me, they have to be wrap-around).
In any case, for years, I’ve been wanting to combine my shirts and pants into one drawer but if I did that, I’d have to stack some clothes on each other which I don’t like (’cause I’ll never wear whatever is on the bottom ’cause I can’t wear what I can’t see!). Well, I’ve finally decided to put all of my uniform pants and shirts into one drawer and put my other clothes in another drawer (for emergencies)
My shirt part of the uniform is really wearing down. All 5 of ‘em. Fortunately, it couldn’t have come at a better time, the new Karate shirts that are being formed might be the new shirt in my uniform. If that’s the case, I’lll will be selling all of my old stock on my soon to be “Kyle Abbott’s Web Pit-Stop Store”
This is pretty fun!