Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all, I thought I should introduce myself and finally make a post with a pic or two of the guitars I have finished. My name is Tony and well...you can guess where I live.
A couple of recent posts have pushed me to finally start posting.
Here are some pics of my second kit guitar:
First the specs:
Kenneth Michael Guitars(KMG) Dreadnought
Black Walnut back and sides with a little figure in the tail section
Engelmann spruce top
Maple bindings
I added:
Abalone purfling with w/b/w borders
The head plate, heel cap and tail wedge are all curly spalted maple
w/b/w purflings all around and mitered them on the tail wedge for fun
My brother is a hunter and this was a surprise gift for his birthday so it has a hunting theme...hmmmm....
Anyway, it has a deer track side port and the nut, bridge pins and saddle are amber buffalo horn. I tried to find deer antlers to make them out of, but it turns out, antlers would be too soft according to some other animal shooters I know.
I had Andy DePaule make me a buck head inlay for the headstock which came out much better than I ever imagined it could.
Side marker dots are abalone and I borrowed the idea for their layout from Chris Wood. I dont know if he invented that method of doing the side dots, but it was on one of his guitars that I first saw them like this.
So, please enjoy the pics!!






The deer track side port



Please post your comments, thoughts, etc. I am open to hearing them.
Oh, finish was Deft Brushing lacquer in semi gloss.
Here is a link to my flickr account with pics of my other guitars:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49539199@N06/
I am currently working on two all koa guitars, an OM and a dread and a curly claro walnut and cedar topped dread. When I make more progress on those, I will post more pics.
Thanks for looking!

Tony

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

That is some A-1 craftsmanship!
I just love the look of walnut....nice figure at the finely mitered end graft.
I bet it sounds as good as it looks!

Thanks Robbie. These pics were taken before I did the final set up. The nut, saddle and bridge were not even polished yet so its a bit rough compared to when I gave it to my brother. He loved it and went from being a guy who played once a week to a daily player which really pissed me off because he shot past me in talent!!

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Really nice work, Tony! When I built my second guitar, I set it on the couch and took a lot of pics of it, and then I gave it to the friend I built it for. You probably remember seeing those. Now those couch pics are the only ones I have of the finished guitar, except for another where I set it on the floor next to #1. Ever since then, I've thought about how that was the nicest that the guitar is ever gonna look. From now on it will be dinged up, etc. For #3 I'm gonna get a piece of black velvet to lay on that couch.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."

Thanks Martin. I have seen that guitar and it is very nice.
I actually finished this guitar in May and delivered it then. I get to play it from time to time as well and it does sound great to me. This guitar is the reason two more people asked me to build them guitars!

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

What I was trying to say is that your guitar looks wonderful, but, dude yo, you really should get a full shot of it where it isn't all like couch potatoed and everythang.

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"...you have to get over your strict adherence to your largely imagined notion of absolute perfection..."