The Bareknuckle Boys

June BYO – Bareknuckle Boys

Jun 30th

Posted by Mark in Build Your Own

A handsome bunch…..( of guitars)

The Bareknuckle Boys

The Bareknuckle Boys

Left to right: Dan, Neil, (me), Sam and Chris. These four all work for Bareknuckle Pickups and came to build their own guitars…….That’s me in the middle…….I run the course……..of course…….I’m thinking maybe about having a haircut……….one day………..and smiling on photographs.

It was a real pleasure to have this lot all building their guitars together. Not all courses are as much fun as this one. All I can say is that it must be a great place to work. Kind of reminded me of the old days back at Patrick Eggle.

You can see how different they all are (the guitars as well!)

That is what we are really good at here – giving people what they want is what we pride ourselves on.

The course was paid for by Tim (the boss!) as part of their development training so big thanks for that – You have a great crew there.

Bareknuckle pickups – hand made in the UK. Cool.


Testing the projector

North West Guitar Show

May 17th

Posted by Mark in Build Your Own

Before the show opened I went round and took some pics……

Oops…forgot to take any pics while the show was actually open. Oh well you can see how we set up our stand anyway. We had the entire basement floor this time which was fantastic. We had enough space to set up a mini cinema to show our film.

Theron is Joes dad. They came along to sign up on the BYO course and did a bit of playing for us to demo the guitars. Cheers for that folks!


One more panel to go

Solar Tracker

Apr 27th

Posted by Mark in Other News

Nearly there……

This is our dual axis solar tracker. We made it ourselves in the Bailey workshop. Billy has a mig welder so he took care of sticking it all together. It should enable our panels to generate 30-50% more than a fixed system so it is well worth the considerable effort it took to build.

The electronics came from Red Rok Energy. It works by using LED’s as light sensors to tell the ‘satelite dish’ motors which way to turn. The electronics also feature a parking facility so that the tracker parks to the east at night ready for the sunrise. It is all powered by a 12v battery which of course is charged by a small solar panel.

The LED’s and circuitry is housed in a weather dome – I used a jam jar for this because it was all I could find but it could really do with something a bit better……..I have asked Carol to keep an eye out for a glass dome in the charity shops……..


Ready to 'relic'

The Relic

Apr 20th

Posted by Mark in Custom guitars

A brand new custom Bailey 30 years old!

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 achieve 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 slammed the case on it a few times….. I have to admit it was a lot of fun but painful at the same time……

Only one way to get an authentic cigarette burn. It is normally between the E and A tuners but Gavin wanted a custom ‘burn’.

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 like a new guitar that has been dropped. It was 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!


Tony's Dragon

April 09 BYO

Apr 15th

Posted by Mark in Build Your Own

Tony begins the ‘Dragon’. Willem, Hans, and Fred arrive from Holland to build their first guitars.

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

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. Just wait till it gets the knobs on….


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