Tools of the trade

Here's the body before starting the aging process. It has been sprayed but not polished. Normally we would take extreme care and attention and several hours to acheive a perfect gloss.

In this case I just threw it on the bench and set about it with some nearby tools! The picture was supplied by Gavin to give me an idea how much aging was required.

Sandpaper was used for wearing the finish. 30 yrs of dents and bashes were carefully added including some serious gouge marks . I have to admit it was a lot of fun but painfull at the same time......

Only one way to get an authentic cigarrete burn. It is normally between the E and A tuners but Gavin wanted a Custom 'burn'.

more......................

.... the back of the neck and 'Case bites'

Steeping in Etching fluid aged the hardware. The only problem was working out how long to leave them in for. About 48hrs did the trick.

More sanding, dinks and dents.

We learned a few more words like this....dings....bishes, boshes....bashes...mashes...and smashes

scrapes and scratches

Relic'ing a guitar turns out to be quite labour intensive. It took quite a while to make it look natural and not just a new guitar that has been dropped.

It's certainly worth all the hard work just to see the obvious glee it gave Gavin. Who wants a new guitar when you can have a RELIC!

Willem ready to oil

Obviously there is not time for this sort of thing in the normal 5 days. Tony will return on the next course to continue with this one.

In this case Liberon finishing oil is applied to the finely sanded guitar. What a great job Willem.....nice inlays.

Here's Mark demonstrating the 'string tension simulator' to Hans.

It bends the neck as if it were strung up to pitch making fret dressing more accurate.

Some instruments, like this bass, just have something nice about them. It is just a standard really..... Mahogany neck and body with an Ebony fingerboard but it definately has the x factor.

Doug

The photo doesn't really do it justice but that is a stunning piece of wood. The gold hardware really sets it off.

Rock on Doug!

William has just discovered hi fathers fence at home in Brazil is made from purple heart! Not for long we think...

Body shot showing bass trem (!!!)

When Tom first asked me if he could make this I did think he was a bit mad.... but aren't we all? Started on the Nov course this guitar took 8 days (3 days longer than normal) mainly because it was a thru neck design but also because of the trem.

Yes it really does have a trem and no it really doesn't have any frets.....Crazy man.....anyone want a cheese sandwich?

Judging by the reaction I think it's pass standard.

3.....Go Paul......

Dunc came to finish what he had started in Nov. What a stunner.it turned out to be. The Paduak body really came up gorgeous. Highly figured flame maple neck,Gold Wilkinson trem and hardware made this guitar a touch of class.

What can you say? Absolutely fantastic - top job Paul. Great sounding acoustic built from scratch in 15 days over 3 courses.

After we finished the guitars we retired to the house for a photo op. Duncan had to leave for his long drive home. There's Nick right in the middle with his custom selfmade B1.

That's Carol on the left admiring our handy work.

Our Film Being Shown

Thanks to the Hub for asking us to be involved in this - it was a real honour.

Thats us in the middle column 4th from the bottom!

Now Showing in the foyer - Our new timelapse film. It shows the entire process of building a guitar by hand in 20 mins.

The guitar we put on display was the 'Lion Rampant' custom archtop(a clue) on loan from Alex - cheers for that.

It was just about the only left hander at the show (another clue)

It's the one in the middle...........

Gordon was the patron of the exhibition - it was all his idea so thanks to him. He played a few tunes in a room full of guitarmakers - no pressure there then......We all listened intently for buzzes and rattles etc

Adam Brown

Excellent progress from Paul....He has been before. In between building his guitars he also took a cabinet makers course which has obviously helped a lot. His guitar has mahogany back and sides with a sitka spruce soundboard, the binding is snakewood.

A very decent chap indeed and a very decent guitar too. Adam chose a piece of amazaque for the cap which really came up lovely.

Thanks to Marcel for writing this amazing article. I hope they are saying nice things. We have many visitors from Holland so our reputation is growing!

Paul bends his sides

Pauls back for more. Last time he made a carved top set neck solid body electric. This time it's to start his mahogany acoustic. As they take longer he will be on the next 2 courses and should finish in Dec.

What a goergeous piece of wood. We cannot wait to see this one finished. Lewis has a plan to inlay a butterfly into the fretboard so we will include some pics of that when the time comes.

BYO Boys

As if they hadn't got enough to do we roped them into helping us to erect the new windmill tower. Very exciting. More on this to follow......

We just took delivery of 6 new solar panels. That will give us another 1.3kw on a sunny day. The plan is to build a solar tracker to mount them onto. More to follow........

Dave Inlays his headstock

Welcome back Dave -it's like you've never been away! We've lost count of how many days Dave has been working on his Archtop masterpeice. He is inlaying a Japanese symbol with a long forgotten deep meaning. More on Dave Next time........

Joe, Dave Bajic, and Adam. Three more stunners and we all survived to tell the tale....just.

During

You can see the interest we attracted. People are fascinated to see the guitar emerge from raw wood into a guitar before their eyes.

That's Bills Mill in the background helping to keep the batteries charged up.Thanks Bill for lending it to us and doing such a great job of PR on our behalf.

Also Thanks Jamie for helping out.

Not forgetting Billy and Fionna for everything.

'I used normal tools and techniques - the only difference was the power source (and the view!)

I wanted to to build the guitar totally using wind and sun power just to find out if it was possible. I had done some calculations and was fairly confident but you never know.....As it turned out I hardly put a dent in the batteries! This experience is really what convinced me it was possible to run the whole workshop this way.

Thanks to the organisers of the famous Wickerman Festival for inviting us to their fantastic festival.

Also special thanks to KT Tunstall and all the other acts for signing the guitar.

The highlight of the whole event was when they raffled the guitar on the mainstage and Mark and Carol were invited up to pick the winning ticket. 'It was the biggest stage i've ever held a guitar on and maybe next time they'll let me plug it in!

Brian Steele Rocks!

Here you can see him tuning for setting up his Explorer style set neck guitar. Very nice guitar. Very rock n roll. Brian also plays gypsy jazz so he's allowed to rock out occasionally. A nicer bloke you couldn't meet.

Left to right: Rock radio DJ Tom Russell, Bruce Falconer(BYO 228) of Elixir Strings, Rebekah - rock radio winner, and Mark.

We all did our best cool rock radio pose.... obviously I think the guitar comes off best! Apart from rebekah of course.....

Nearly there Dave!

Kenny Gluing the top plate

Kenny got his course place for a birthday present...not bad eh? He has opted to make a parlour style acoustic with rosewood back and sides. Here you can see him ready to join his cedar top plate. By the end of the five days he had bent his side, installed his rosette and braced his top amongst many other things. He will be back on the next two day course.

In five days Neil built this 4 string thru body bass from scratch. The bass has a spalted maple cap, EMG pickups and preamp combined with a 'Ghost' acoustic bridge system. This entailed many long hours in the workshop mostly working till 11pm or later to get the job done. Actually Neil stayed an extra morning to make some final set up adjustments as there was just not enough time on the last day. You can see by his face that he likes it and it certainly sounded amazing.

Bailey Guitars on the Elixir stand!

Some Dude

We decided against going to the show this year and are putting the money into helping to acheive our solar powered workshop instead. Thankfully Bruce from Elixir asked if he could borrow a couple of guitars for their stand.Of course we said yes! We think Elixir are the best strings in the world so it's great to be asked by them.

Cheers Bruce!!

Here's a dude trying out our 'B1'. We had a lot of good feedback about the Bailey's at the show. It was fantastic to be able to have a presence there without actually having to go. This was made possible by a good friend of ours John Lockett who transported and collected the instruments for us.

Cheers John!

Jade Gallagher is a very up and coming singer songwriter and a great guitar player. She was booked to demo at the Elixir stand. In between sets she tried our 'B1' and became instantly attached to it. She loved the way it played and sounded so much that she got her manager to contact us about it........After several phone calls ..we made a deal.

Cheers Jade & Guy !

Jade is now formally part of the Bailey Guitar Experience extended family, and we are really proud to welcome her. There are already a few women out there using a Bailey but one more is only a bonus epecially when it's someone with Jade's calibre.She is planning to extend her current acoustic set to include some electric tracks... Check her out. We think we'll all be seeing alot more of her..

Everyone hard at work

Scott gluing on the soundboard

Scott is doing very well. When the top is glued all he will have to do is bind the body before starting work on his neck which will be 3 piece laminate black american walnut.

More on Scot and Brian's guitar in the near future!

We were all on our best behaviour when David turned up. I think really he wanted to do the course himself but there was only one place. He came to help choose the wood and design at the start then had to go back to work.

This course will be continued in July.

Solar Kettle

Bill's Windmill

Mark had a spare 10 mins recently and built this out of scrap. It's an old satellite dish covered with reflective mylar supplied by Duffy after a clearout of his shed. On a sunny day it will boil water in about 10 mins! Put the kettle on then...........

We are currently trying to aquire a 1.2kw solartracking pv array...... watch this space........

Unfortunately we are now down to 3 chickens after one popped its clogs during the last course.

It just keeled over. We reckon it was old age.

Farewell Wilma you will be remembered.

No we didn't eat it.

(Carol was quite upset but Dot, Freda & Wanda carried on eating... ah well..)

Work in progress.....

Pad and Mike carve their necks

Patrick, Mike and Paul were all making set neck electric guitars. We were joined for a couple of days by Scot who is making a Maccaferri style guitar (not pictured - next time!).

3 brand new instruments fresh from the Bailey workshop.

Thanks to everyone involved - great people soup and guitars!

Electrics

Archtops& Acoustics

The acoustic and Archtop side of the stand - Thanks to Chris Pritchet (CA008) for demoing the archtop for half a morning - sorry no pic! Also thanks to Paul Cairns (CA007)and Alex Munro (CJA001) for lending us their guitars for display.