The BEST toys!

    I have a guitar kit I have never even started on. Guess i have had it for 5 or 6 years not. Just never came up with how I want to finish the body. That was one of my picks.

    If the music is to loud you are to old.

    Quote from DJohnson

    I have a guitar kit I have never even started on. Guess i have had it for 5 or 6 years not. Just never came up with how I want to finish the body. That was one of my picks.

    Well, THIS is a pick. :D Got this one at an Alice In Chains concert a couple of years ago in El Paso (I was up front) when they were tossing stuff into audience at end of show. This is signed by their bass player, Mike Inez...




    Slingshots: making children out of adults since 2014

    That's my prized set of Ludwig Vistalite drums over there on the right - set up left handed of course. I bought them brand new in the early 70's. I even have the pencil written receipt around here somewhere. Can't believe I didn't think of these first. There's a Zildjian ride made in Instanbul and a set of hard cases with a sticker from the Lawrence Welk Orchestra from the neighbor my dad bought my first kit from when I was in the 4th grade. I think I'll set them up tomorrow and punish them a bit more...


    Remember folks - this isn't a rehearsal, this is The Show!8)

    Quote from Doc&Ruby

    Ok, apart from your Slingshot, show me your BEST toys.

    I'll start y'all off with my little toy telescope. This is an Apomax. It's stands over 9 ft tall, weighs 300 lbs, and if you want to watch a dust storm moving across the face of Mars or see an eclipse happening on Jupiter, it's absolutely world class.

    We have plans to put up a dome this summer so we can give it a permanent home.


    Anyone interested in a Star Party at Doc's place this summer?

    Doc&Ruby you look like a guy I would want to learn from: professorial and entertaining. Plus you ride a Slingshot. Too cool for school...

    Remember folks - this isn't a rehearsal, this is The Show!8)

    My best toys has always been motorcycles of which I bought the first one in May of 1964, the Sears and Roubuck Allstate Cruisaire made by Vespa. Then in 1970 the first Corvette. Then from about 1998 i finally got my Hot Rod and helped to build about 6 others. I still have the 35 Ford, it has not seen daylight since I had back surgery in 2005. Now we are at the end of the story with the Slingshots, Feb. 12, 2015 and now I also have the 2016 of which I stole a couple of years ago now. If the back holds up I will continue to enjoy the Slingshot's.

    Here are some pic's of the last couple instruments I made.


    I made a guitar and bass matched set. The guitar is essentially a Telecaster, and the bass uses single coil pickups. I made them the same shape and color. They both have brother/sister Schaller bridges, and Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups, the bass also has a vintage wound pickup. I got bored and added a MIDI control pad on the guitar. I hook up a whammy pedal, use the MIDI pad to control it's different functions, and use my finger on the pad to whammy instead of my foot on the pedal. Never have to touch the foot pedal. Can hook up quite a few things to it.


    I tried to reduce the weight of the mahogany bodies by thinning the backsides, around the neck, pickups, and electronics cavities. So they are 1.625" thick in the middle sections, and as thin as .75" at the forearm bevel. I will never try this again. Just too much sanding with my fingertips. The covers and trim are Bolivian Rosewood. I think it was made by the devil. I had a severe allergic reaction, and my head looked like a soccer ball for a week. I also am big on shielding, and included a fusible link on the bridge shielding for safety.





    This is my most recent build, and my favorite. It is a 30" scale bass. I call it my Smooth Mini-P. It is modeled after a vintage P-Bass. I smoothed out the horns of the P-Bass shape, so I can fit it in a hard case made for a Baritone guitar. The body is made from Primavera, or "white mahogany". I chose to not use grain filler, and I use tinted shellac to seal the body, and gun stock oil to finish. The maple covers over the bridge and pickups, would have been chrome plated steel in the 60's. I machined them both from the same solid block of hard maple, so the grain would flow from one to the other when installed. The pickup pocket is machined to accept both a vintage single coil and the LACE Aluma bass bar that I installed. The truss rod is accessed from the front of the body. What you can't see is that I use brass threaded inserts for everything. I do this on all my instruments. I don't use any wood screws, except for the screws that come with the tuners and the string retainer.


    I made this combo amp, using an Epiphone Valve Junior amp, and a Celestion Greenback speaker. I used one 4x8 sheet of 3/4" Birch plywood. I machined 12 individual pieces, and stacked them up to make a solid cabinet. It weighs 65 pounds all together.



    The round speaker box on the right I made years ago, using the same method, but I routed out 24 rings with a hand held router using a circle cutting jig I had machined at work. Then I made jigs to drill holes in each rings. Then I pinned and glued together one ring to the next until I had two half cirlces. Then I literally made a wood lathe using a huge mold polishing mandrel at work. I made fixturing to hold the two halves to machine both the inside and outside diameters. I used the forks of our forklift as a steady rest for my tools. It was risky and I got hit by the handle of my tool, in the stomach, and lifted off the floor one time. I pinned and glued the two halves together, and finish sanded on my lathe. It is 18" in outside diameter, with a 1" wall thickness.



    I guess the what it comes down to is, I make my own toys to play with, and sometimes I make toys to help me make the toys.

    Quote from MACAWS

    Wow now that is impressive - I can't even make toast!

    That's easy. Take bread, insert it into a thing on the counter that they call a toaster. Push the lever down and wait for it to pop back up. Remove the bread (now called toast) and scrape the burnt stuff off and there you have it. Simple, huh? Or take a blast over to Sonic and get one of there Texas toaster breakfast sandwiches. Them are awesome as they say.

    Nobody gets outta here ALIVE

    Okay - figured out the problem after an entire morning of experimentation & online research: Correct ratio is 8:1 NOT 10:1 - this is because I live above 4000 ft.


    (My bad - sorry for not mentioning that earlier but didn’t realize how significant that is)

    Slingshots: making children out of adults since 2014