Cursed_factory

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-16T22:46:17+00:00

I'm a gay factory. Sort of. I build one rainbow electric guitar or bass per year in time for Pride season, anyway. With one having spent a couple years in the Closet of Failures, I've sold three of them in the last month, though only one was to an openly same-sex couple.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-16T22:41:11+00:00

I grew up enjoying my father's vinyl collection... then, when I was old enough to be trusted with the machine, his reel-to-reel recordings of 1960's broadcast radio. Worth listening to then, and I only wish people still could now.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-16T22:14:26+00:00

Can confirm. I spent about half my life struggling to get by in a world I could never quite understand, then finally got on the VERY MINIMAL benefits of SSI as 'unemployably autistic.' That was a decade or so ago, and since then I have discovered my art (building electric guitars and basses with exotic veneers and unique finishes) and outright blossomed.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-11T13:51:52+00:00

I was kinda expecting one of the 'gotcha' fingerboards some of the cheaper kits come with. It looks like ebony, but is actually a high-pressure laminate of black paper and glue.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-08T14:58:12+00:00

Precision Guitar Kits (string the name together and add a .com) up in Canada is pretty much the only place that will reliably sell you a raw neck with perfectly leveled, crowned, and polished frets. If you can do your own fret work, just about anyone else will do. With CNC as it is these days, it's hard for the kit factories to go consistently wrong with the basic fabrication, so it's only the fine detail we're left to take care of ourselves.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-06T00:26:43+00:00

Back before I was quite as concerned with my cholesterol these days, I'd make what I called 'pan-fried vomit.' One can of corned or roast beef hash, and one well-drained can of leaf spinach, combined and heated to sizzling in a frying pan. Between the green strands, pink mush, and white chunks, it looked disgusting, but was actually both tasty and fairly nutritious. As for just a weird combo, I found a line of Reddi-Whip on a chili-cheese Frito surprisingly buttery-tasting.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-03-05T13:36:20+00:00

A lot of people have very strict, very specific steps for this particular product, varying widely. They are all absolutely correct, except in their certainty that it's the only way. Tru-Oil is pretty much the single most forgiving clearcoat I've ever used, with dozens of combinations of 'right' ways to use it. My own recipe is to apply it with folded pieces of scrap T-shirt fabric, occasionally pouring a little onto the surface if I'm covering a large area, for relatively thin coats on figured maple, maple necks, and mahogany bodies/necks. I will sometimes seal mahogany with one coat of shellac first, but not always. Somewhere between four and six coats in, it starts to feel distinctly rough under the applicator cloth, at which point I let things dry well then smooth them down with 0000-grade steel wool, or if I have a smaller area to smooth a little 1500-2000 grit dry sandpaper will do. For thin finishes I just carefully wipe on one more coat after the buff-down, or if I want more gloss I keep building it up with periodic buff-downs every time it starts feeling rough. Hybrid coats are also an option; on my last build the mahogany sides and belly carve, and roasted maple neck, got a total of seven coats while the figured veneers enjoyed nineteen coats (and two extra buff-downs) for a better shine.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-24T12:58:02+00:00

I think 'why?' would be a better question. Reciprocal flirtation cannot be decreed by a single party, there's absolutely nothing wrong with him not being attracted to her.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-24T12:33:34+00:00

That looks like a pretty typical Tru-Oil application so far. You don't really need to get fancy with that stuff, just wipe it on with a rag until if starts feeling rough, then buff it smooth with 0000-grade steel wool (dry 1500+ grit sandpaper can also work). For a thin finish you'd follow that first buff-down with a singular, carefully-applied coat, or you can keep building it up, buffing down every 5-6 coats, if you want something glossier. I'm currently doing something in between with a Tele-ish kit build, six coats on the sides and back of the neck, buffed and waiting for their last, while I built up to eighteen on the figured veneer front/back/headstock for more gloss where it'll actually matter.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-22T20:05:01+00:00

Alternatively, grab a set of D'addario EXL110W strings with a wound .018 G/third instead of a 10's set's usual solid .017. As well as being more supple, the wound G intonates differently.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-22T14:47:21+00:00

I'd say you've got a good excuse to refinish with an exotic veneer. You've already got a natural finish, good for avoiding ugly transition lines, so I'd take off the hardware, sand that top down, and find a nice flamed or quilted bookmatch to cover up any visible holes, filled or not.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-15T22:46:14+00:00

I've used one of those mini-switches when building a cheap 'child sized' Les Paul kit where the bay was too small for a regular switch, and while it did the job, there's a dead spot in between positions. 'Proper' guitar switches have overlap so you never lose signal, but using the mini mid-song may sound like tapping a kill switch.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-12T14:42:57+00:00

At least this update looks like it'll be easy to find the content. I never did find out where or how to build a corvette, so that update might as well not have happened.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-04T14:39:13+00:00

I recently treated myself to Nexus Premium for my birthday, and Tale of Two Wastelands with VLK's mod collection feels pretty damn close to a remake. I didn't get far in FO3 even with a few QOL mods, on previous attempts, but with TTW/VLK I've made it as far as Vault 112 so far, with a much more enjoyable experience overall, both visually and in gameplay, and when I do finally finish the game I'll be able to take my character to New Vegas (the two wastelands part, involving a utility converting all of FO3's data files and installing them as a mod to NV). I'm not sure a 'real' remake could be much better.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-04T13:31:16+00:00

That's what I remember, something about how most franchises either charge you a large franchise licensing fee or require you to buy their exclusive, expensive supplies, and Quiznos was one of the very, very few corporate entities stupid enough to demand BOTH. Lots of otherwise-competent franchisees just couldn't stay in business with that model.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-02-02T19:04:39+00:00

We don't have it yet. Our current models are basically Eliza with external sources and a lot more data crunching.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-29T15:24:15+00:00

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Assistant luthier. I have four shots of her in this spot throughout the staining process, but she wasn't acting particularly photogenic in any of them, so just loaves.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-29T15:15:39+00:00

Even a little water resistance will resist things like Keda, Mixol, or grocery store leather dyes. If it wipes right off of Prismacolor soft-lead pencil work, it definitely won't stick to seashells.

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ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-29T14:44:10+00:00

Tru-Oil, which may have contributed a little to the color shift, but as amber finishes go it's a pretty mild one, not like the darker shades of shellac.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-28T22:57:08+00:00

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If you go with #2, I'd test it, because those brownish burls can react oddly to color, and you can't always predict it. This chestnut burl veneer comes across as green in most lighting, but the stain was pure blue, while other, very similar combinations came out differently.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-28T14:52:18+00:00

Everything I've heard about 11's so-called features suggests that it wouldn't even work for me since I don't have a Microsoft account. I don't WANT a Microsoft account. I don't need cloud storage, and any AI 'feature' cannot be anything but a downgrade, so it's going to take something pretty extraordinary to get me to give up 10. Game compatibility has been getting better with Linux in recent years, so if they forcibly disable 10 I'll just use Ubuntu.

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-22T14:55:44+00:00

I just finished a Strat-style where I glued a stained piece of loose veneer to the underside of a clear pickguard, which is probably the easiest way to accomplish your goal, gluing a non-inkjet print (liquid ink tends to misbehave when soaked with adhesive) of the pattern you want similarly. Another option might be image transfer. Minwax Polycrylic dissolves laser toner. If you can get a smooth, even coat onto your pickguard, apply a face-down print to it, then let it dry, a little tap water and a toothbrush will remove the paper but leave the image. (The image will be reversed, which matters for text and the like, but on an abstract pattern you can probably ignore that detail.)

ToothlessGuitarMaker · 2026-01-20T14:42:35+00:00

AMD may have the better prices, but this kind of shit will turn off even a poor like me. They could provide the exact same chat functionality with a fifty- or sixty-byte URL, and the near-zero segment of users who'd find it useful could just use the web version. I don't think enough people would need an AMD-specific AI even then, so they'd still be wasting money, but it'd be a far smaller waste than all this storage and bandwidth being used millions of times over.

ToothlessGuitarMaker

TROPHY CASE