Zouk in progress video

In this little video, you can see the progress being made with Adrian’s zouk.

Slight Detour

 What a great Father’s Day present; craft beer for a craftsman, along with an artisan card. Clearly Amanda and I bought our son up to appreciate the finer things in life! It’s also so reassuring to know that there are people out there, like ourselves, putting their heart and soul into their products.

Those of you, who have known me for a while, will know of my love for two-wheeled things. I was thrilled to find this bike……

it’s a Pavemaster made by the Trusty Manufacturing Co. built probably in the early 1960’s. This is going to be a nice little restoration project for me and eventually Jacob’s first proper bike! It will be stripped down to the last nut and bolt and re-built, so it will be in full working order but still with the patina of age. Watch this space.

Let’s start on the ‘Zouk!

With the polish on David’s mandolin being left to harden, work has started in earnest on Adrian’s bouzouki. This will be Adrian’s 3^rd instrument; someone coming back for another instrument is, to me, the finest compliment that I could have. In fact looking at my current waiting list, out of the next ten instruments, five are for returning clients; for which Amanda and I am extremely grateful.

The neck blank is pretty much complete. As the neck will be long and slender (660mm scale length with 17 frets clear of the body!) I decided to make it from maple- it’s laminated with black and mahogany lines; this will complement Adrian’s other two instruments. Carbon fibre also adds stiffness and additionally there is a dual action truss-rod.

The back and sides are Indian rosewood. Back in the late 1970’s when I was at the London College of Furniture, four of us, Bill, Maz, Walter and myself, decided to buy some rosewood- not so easy in those days. Off we went to an importer’s yard somewhere near the docks- this was when London Docklands was synonymous with ships and the import and export of actual physical goods and not banking and electronic trading ! We bought a number of huge boards and struggled back to college on the tube. After a gift of a bottle of whiskey to one of the technicians we managed to get our wood re-sawn into usable sized pieces! Well then, this rosewood back and sides is my last remaining set!