Destroy
To my defense, I was under a pretty tight schedule to finish the guitar. One of my best buddies, Max, and I had planned a weekend together. With the finished instrument we wanted to meet up and write a song for the 30th birthday of Arvid, the co-conspirator to the birth of this project. To meet the deadline of departure, I had half a day left to shield, wire and assemble the instrument. And all of that after long previous days at the build.
What you need
to not do this
Anyway, I was starting to assemble my guitar and noticed that the pre drilled holes on the headstock were too small to mount the tuning mechanics. My aforementioned lack of sleep only fueled my impatience to fix this quickly. I wasn’t going to have the adjustment of six holes keep me from wrapping all up in time.
Turns out this was my one last chance to ruin the guitar and took it!
How? Well, I simply neglected any woodworking experience, which I had gathered throughout this build. I went ahead, picked a fittingly sized wood drill bit. Then, I sunk it through each hole on the headstock without any piece of junk wood countering the exit. At the sixth hole the massacre happened. A large splinter of wood cracked off the exit hole. What a well deserved slap in the face that was.
Looking back, I am surprised my lack of strategy did not ruin the piece at any other hole. All this had happened after already fucking up the string through holes for my bridge. I absolutely wasn’t thinking straight. Obviously, I cursed at myself for a good fifteen minutes. But the story continued…
I cooked up a badge of skate dust and glue to fill it. Once half dried, I sanded it all level, drilled some tiny holes for the mounting screws of the mechanics and applied a sip of the remaining oil & wax mixture. The finish rendered the fix even darker, because it continued to set. It all made for a massive black tear rolling down the cheek of my guitar.
Most of my friends actually like the accent the fix brought. Maybe they are just trying to comfort me. It shames me everytime I see it.
