Help for Heroes
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- Wood selection
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- Routing the Neck Profile
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- Routing the Inlay Slots
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- Inlays are completed
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- Cutting out the Body
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- Sanding the Body
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- Carving the Body
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- Test Assembly
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- Tim Jones BYO-338
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- Black Stain is Applied
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- The Black is sanded back
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- Step 1 complete
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- Red is applied over the black
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- The Burst and topcoats are applied
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- Ready for final hand polish
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- Ready for Strings
BYO338 Tim Jones 28/5/13
Tim was a soldier on active duty in Afghanistan when he was very seriously injured in an accident and almost died. He was immediately flown home and woke up in a British hospital. Thanks to this rapid response, the efforts of the doctors and nurses plus the miracle of modern medicine, his life was saved and after nearly a year of rehabilitation he was up and about looking for something different to get his head into. Before joining up he was a gigging musician and he had always had a notion to build a guitar…
That is how Tim came to be on our Build Your own Custom Guitar course last year as part of his rehab and re-training, partly funded by the Help for Heroes programme – this scheme helps soldiers to build on old skills and find new ones- and Tim chose guitar making and plans to create his own workshop in the wilds of East Anglia. Before he came here we discussed what he wanted to learn, as well as his physical needs – not everyone that comes to the Bailey workshop has the same physical abilities but we try hard to create a space and way of working that works for everyone.
He knew what he needed to learn and so together we worked out the best course for him, and the best build. That included some spraying lessons – although not enough to spray his own BYO guitar . He built an SG style electric with 3 Bareknuckle pickups, a Bigsby Trem and a flame maple carve top
Guitar building, re-training and recovering fitness are all a slow process, but seem to work well together – Tim is one of the smiliest and positive people we have had here
Whatever our students do in the “real world” gets left at the door …. whatever age, background, experience and job… in the workshop we are all the same…joined by a love of music and the smell of wood
Those of you who have already built know how demanding it can be sometimes – both physically and mentally – but its also a great escape from everything outside…. many of the people that come here have stressful and pressured jobs and tell us that building a guitar is the only time they can truly shut everything else out. For one builder it starts as soon as he gets in the car!
In Tim’s own words:
“..its been EPIC…I will be back..”
Like him, we were very glad he was here.