Guitar # 002 The Cutting Board.
A number of years back, while rummaging around in my mother-in-laws basement, I came across a big peace of wood of unknown origin and type. Lots of stains, cut, and dings. "What's this?" I say to my wife. "It's my dads old cutting board. He butchered meat using it." She said to me. I said, "He wont be needing this anymore." You see, he had passed away a few years before this.
I gave it the rough eye ball inspection and guesstimated it's got enough wood
in it to carve past the cuts and make a guitar body. I took it home and
started carving. At that point I still didn't have a good place to work
and the wood lingered for a few more years. But a few more years wouldn't
hurt it.
When I finally got to joining the neck and refining the shape (read, carving away the cuts) my wife stopped me, saying, "you have to leave some cuts in that guitar. If you take out all the cuts, how would anyone know it was my dads? Besides, you can't ever sell that guitar because it was my dads cutting board!"
Ok, Some cuts stay! I left some small meat cutting marks on the back. Diana considers this guitar hers now even though she does not play. I consider all the electric guitars I make with a similar outline as the Cutting Board model guitars.
This guitar's outline shape is inspired by my old Toledo, but in this case, the top and back are carved and the guitar is fairly thin. It is relatively light for a solid body. The neck is made of a quarter inch strip of Bocote down the middle, hard maple on each side, a one sixteenth inch strip of ebony beyond that, and the body wings made from the old cutting board are in fact Birch..