How about this giant fan for winter lacquer spraying?

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

How much are you spraying ? Is there a furnace in the basement or anything with a pilot light ?

[Joe Madia Valentino Guitars]

Hi Ian, thanks for the response. I do have a water heater with a pilot light somewhere in there. Would be pretty far away from what I’m doing though.

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

Risky. How risky, I do not know.

[Corey Williams Noank Guitar Repair]

I’m not an expert but if you can get a different setup and avoid the rattle cans it may help. The propellant is another layer of nasty chemical. The rattlers, from my limited experience, also have a low solid content and it feels like you need a million coats to build.

[Joe Madia Valentino Guitars]

I do need to take the jump into figuring out a better setup. I think I keep holding off because I add up everything I need to do it “right” (sprayer, filters, fans, temperature control, humidity control, etc) and the cost seems prohibitive at the moment.

[Corey Williams Noank Guitar Repair]

Man, I am with you on that one. I am setting up a shop for myself and make little purchases along the way. One thing that has helped me make sense of purchases is imaging using the space and what customers will expect of me over the next six months-year. I just do tiny finish things so I am setting up a small fan mounted in plywood that I can pull in and out of the window. Some things that may help decide is thinking about how many guitars you want to spray a year, how much shop space do you want to dedicate to finish work.

There used to be a fantastic guitar builder local to me in CT named Dale Fairbanks who built in a two car garage in Hartford. He was able to spray in a small space but was nervous about drawing attention to himself and was spraying at night…. looked stressful. There is another buddy of mine, Mark Campellone, in Providence who builds archtops. His work flow was interesting. He had a small room in his shop setup for spraying and would build in batches and store stuff in that room while not spraying, complete a batch and then empty the spray room for use.

If you can visit some folks who are doing what you aspire and it may fall into place. Spraying at home is a pain though, no ways around it. Let me know where you land!

[Rick Liftig luthier wannabe… slowly gettinthere]

Re: Dale Fairbanks’ garage – I’ll add that’s a really valid concern. My town (Dale’s former town) has a well-deserved reputation for crotchety neighbors who like to complain. Many municipalities have strict rules concerning home businesses. In fact, Adam Buchwald of Circle Strings\Allied Luthiery (and Dale’s compatriot at Iris Guitars) finally had to move out of one house in Burlington, Vermont because of a very nasty neighbor, even though he had covered all of the bases with the city.

So a word to the wise – be careful out there!

[Corey Williams Noank Guitar Repair]

Hey Rick! You are in Hartford? I live over in Noank/Mystic. I did hear of Adam’s troubles as I was prepping to start my business. Getting zoned for a business in a historic district was not easy! I hope I do not have to deal with them again….

I met Dale and he left for VT pretty soon after. I wish he was still local, it was inspiring to check out his shop/guitars.

[Rick Liftig luthier wannabe… slowly gettinthere]

Hey Corey – I also need to get up to Burlington. I got to know Dale and his family pretty well when they lived here. I have a beautiful Fairbanks F35 that he built from salvaged mahogany. I wish my playing could match the guitars quality!

And I agree, I wish he was still local too. But he has a growing family and the Iris gig made a lot of sense. There’s a nice article about him in Acoustic Guitar Magazine this month.

The story about my guitar can be found here: https://rolls.bublup.com/view/b8cdd061-fc88-493a-a487-7ff5f5f112fc

rolls.bublup.com

The Fox

A dying friend found a piece of a mahogany tabletop and passed it on. This is the story of how it became a guitar.