I could be free most evenings, althoughThursday is the electronics night. Not sure if that makes Thursday a bad night to plan another group on or not!
Guitar Building and Maintenance Group
I’m really interested in this!
I’m really busy as well but I’ll try to be regular! 
There’s a whole load of different tasks involved in this. Could it be that much of the gluing/clamping can be done in the clean room – it’s dusty work that needs to be kept in the woodshop.
I think my book on building an acoustic guitar might be in the bookshelf in the social area: it’s got a good approach to to essential and ‘nice to have’ tools IIRC.
Cheers @tomnewsom! It’s now “official” 
@Dermot Exactly what I was thinking. Your book sounds like it’ll be very handy to have around, thanks!
Yep, probably a good idea not to have it on the same night as the electronics group, though there could sometimes be a fair bit of crossover with them re. wiring, soldering, etc.
Is anything happening with this group? I’m still interested! Chatted with @Howard about making guitars on Thursday. I just strung(?!) my guitar, I’d never done it before. It was quite an unpleasant experience at first but I persevered! I have a terrible tendency towards perfectionism and it wasn’t neat enough for me… I also read about 5 different ways to string a guitar and became rather frustrated! I have a feeling the strings are not very well strung. I would love to meet others doing guitar related stuff to learn more! Here’s an image of my first stringing attempt 
Yes! I’ve been away so haven’t managed to organise our first meeting yet.
How about Tuesdays? Apart from the odd social and members evenings, it’s a fairly free day in the calendar.
And your first stringing attempt is good! I remember reading tonnes of ways to do it when I first tried, too, and I’ve settled on what I think is a fairly good way of doing it. I’ll show you in our first meeting.
You probably know this, but just in case you don’t: don’t forget to stretch your new strings! They tend to slacken off a bit as they get used to being under tension, and so if you stretch them after putting them on (carefully, of course) the tuning should be more stable.
@luthiers: Apologies for the lack of contact recently, have been out of the country. What do you all think to meeting on Tuesday evenings? Say 7:30pm? Hopefully this will give people enough time to get to the space after work.
Is it too short notice for everyone to do this Tuesday (30th May)?
I can do tues evening.
Maybe this group should be about musical instruments generally as I know there are people
interested in other instruments. I will be making a hammered dulcimer as well as modified guitars. I had a guitar shop for about 5 years and have probably worked on at least 1000 guitars, lutes, ukuleles etc. and one or two violins, flutes and pianos.And cellos…
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Well out of those, only the flute doesn’t have strings! I’d definitely be open to the idea of making it more of a general musical instrument group, but at the moment it’s basically anything with strings, like I mentioned in my original post:
It would be good for the group to encompass all instruments associated with luthiery (acoustic/classical guitars, electric guitars, cigar-box guitars, violins/violas and their ilk, mandolins, etc.). There are a lot of shared techniques and skills between these instruments.
How does that sound?
I didn’t know about the stretching! I will do that thanks!
I did like @Howard idea about a musical instrument group in general. I think the only issue would be if it gets too big or people don’t have the knowledge to help each other out on various projects. I mentioned on Thursday that my actual love is of the drumkit and percussion instruments. Howard pointed out that I could probably make something drum related too. I don’t see why we couldn’t talk about other instruments if it took our fancy? Either way I’ll be pleased to join in. Tuesday works for me! I probably won’t be able to join every week but hopefully biweekly at least!
Definitely. My first instrument is the drums, too, not much of a guitar player at all! I chose not to build drums mainly for space reasons (and bending wood seems to need more specialist equipment than a bandsaw and a few chisels!)
I’m not against @Howard’s idea at all - after all, this group isn’t mine, it’s everyone’s; I’m not going to disallow anything as I’d like everyone to have an equal say. Let’s just roll with it (Howard’s idea) and see where it takes us?
Personally, I’m all about building guitars so that’s what I’ll be focusing on, but I’d love to help out with anything music-related really.
@Howard, @tala703, @luthiers, and anyone else that wants to join:
First meeting of this group will be 7:30pm on Tues 30th May. Look forward to seeing you there!
Hey @luthiers, just rescued this from a skip. Have no idea about guitars, but if anyone wants it for a project, you’re more than welcome to it.
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Oooh yes please
@hannahintech Awesome. It’s yours. I’ve got some photographic equipment to drop down too. Should hopefully be able to do it Monday. If so, I’ll leave it somewhere with a note on and you can grab it when you guys meet up on Tuesday evening.
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