If you've wandered over to this part of the site, I can only conclude that you have way too much time on your hands and I would suggest that you find yourself something more productive to do, such as organizing your toenail clipping collection (what, doesn't everyone have one of those?) Either that, or you're a stalker and you're displaying an abnormal fascination with my life. If the latter is true, I guess I can respect that.
In any event, here's the older "latest news" events that were displayed on the main page. I started to archive them here to keep the length of the main page from growing too large.
Old News Events That For Some Reason I Keep Posted Here Instead Of Just Deleting Them:
08/05/2005 - I'm slowly making more progress on the two guitars I'm building. Unfortunately, I had an accident with a router that trashed a neck. Hey, sometimes bad things happen. You can read more about it in the "Projects Currently Underway" section, on the Baritone guitar page. I'll be in Sturgis for a portion of this coming week, so I'm not sure how much I'll get done on the guitars, but maybe I'll post pictures from the trip. Check back!
07/26/2005 - Summer's in full swing, and as usual there are plenty of outdoor activities to keep the family and I busy. However, a recent spell of unusually hot weather (100+ degrees, which is warm for these parts) gave me a good excuse to stay inside and do some work in the shop. I've now got a good start on both guitars I'm building for Remedy Drive. I've given each one their own page under the "Projects Currently Underway" section, so check them out. I think they're going to turn out pretty cool. Thanks for stopping by!
06/28/2005 - Once again, it's been far too long between updates and I apologize. Summer always means a slowdown in the workshop, as there are so many other things going on. Add to that the fact that Tundra Boy is 2 1/2 years old and wants to spend every waking moment with dad, and the projects have to take a back seat. I'm sure the updates will be a lot more frequent in about ten years when he doesn't want to anything to do with me! To top it all off once I got everything ready to post, I then ran into ISP issues that delayed the update another two weeks. Well, hopefully it's been worth the wait. The Tundracaster is done! You can see all the pics in the completed projects section. In addition, I've added a detailed tutorial on how to finish a guitar (or your car for that matter) using spray-can lacquer, a page on carving a neck heel and a few little tools and jigs that make guitar building easier. Those can be found in the jigs section. Enjoy, and if you haven't yet signed my guestbook, please stop in and say "hi!"
04/21/2005 - To everyone who's left me such great compliments on the guestbook page: thank you! It's nice to hear from people who find my musings useful. I've got some great plans for really expanding the guitar-making part of my site, as that seems to be the direction I'm primarily heading in my woodworking endeavors. Stay tuned for some articles on making some special fretboard jigs and carving a "no-heel" neck joint. I'm also approaching the finishing stage of the Tundracaster, and I plan on documenting in detail the finishing process for those of you wondering how it's done.
04/14/2005 - Sorry it's been so long since I've updated the site. Things have been pretty busy here, and unfortunately, most of the business hasn't been in the workshop. It's coming to that time of year when I spend less time working with wood and more time outdoors. The good news is, I've finally got the pages up displaying my BT Central 2x6 Challenge entry. If you haven't done so already, swing by BT3 Central and vote for my Tilt-Top Table. I've also got some more construction pics of the Tundracaster over in the "Projects Currently Underway" section. Enjoy!
03/15/2005 - For those of you interested in following the slippery slope that I did and build your own guitars, I've created a couple of utilities that can assist you in the process. One calculates the fret spacing when making a fretboard, the other will calculate the proper neck angle for a given guitar design. Both of them are available under the "Jigs, Fixtures, Inventions And Tutorials" section. Hope they come in handy!
03/09/2005 - For anyone waiting to see the results of my "2x6 Challenge" entry, I apologize. I busted my hump to get it finished by the contest deadline of March 1st, when I discovered that the deadline was extended to April 1st. I don't want to post any pictures of my project ahead of time, as that might let the competition in on what I've got up my sleeve. So hold on a little longer; I've got a big update ready to put in place on the 1st. In the mean time, I've posted some pictures of the progress I've made on my second guitar (the Tundracaster.) You can check 'em out under the "Project Currently Underway" section in the table of contents at the left. Have a good one!
02/17/2005 - It's a beautiful February day, and rather than being outside enjoying the weather, I'm here updating my site. What can I say; I'm a nerd. I've done a lot of "behind the scenes" tweaks to things, so hopefully this makes your surfing experience more enjoyable. One of the things I'm most happy to announce is that I've now made my FAQ page interactive. That's right! Now you can submit questions to me and I will answer for all the world to see. Oh, and I've gone through my guestbook code and revamped a lot of things, so if you haven't signed it please do so! TTYL.
02/10/2005 - Well, now that I've got my site back to where I can actually update it, you might see things change around here a little more often. Check out my addition of a guestbook; I'd appreciate everyone stopping by to take a moment and sign it. I've also added some tweaks, some additional photos of Tundra Boy and also pics of the progress (or lack thereof) on my next four guitars. I've also got some pictures ready of a project I'm entering in a woodworking contest, but due to the nature of competition, I don't want to post the pictures until the end of the month. So you have that to look forward to!
02/07/2005 - I've had some updates/tweaks done for a few days, but due to a little glitch trying to get access to FTP onto my site, I'm a little behind schedule. Check out the new tour of my shop, along with pictures of my motorcycles. They can be found under the "About The Tundra Man" section in the table of contents. Also, last weekend I let Remedy play my guitar at a show in LeMars, IA. I have the photos of that night posted under my guitar section. Check 'em out and come back soon! Now that I actually have some decent web space, I'm planning on doing updates much more often.
01/28/2005 - Well, if you've been a previous visitor to the Workshop, you'll note some major changes! I now have my own URL and web space, rather than just using the web space that came with my wife's e-mail account. As long as I was moving the site, I took the opportunity to do a major update. Hopefully this will make things easier for people to use. In addition, the new web space has a lot more room for me to post pictures and other tidbits. Now that I have the space available, I finally posted the completed pictures of the guitar for those of you who've been following the progress. Enjoy!
12/22/2004 - Christmas is just a few days away. Hope everyone has their shopping done! I'm making progress on the guitar, and am at the point of applying finish. I will be away for a couple weeks visiting family over the holidays, so I'm hoping before I leave I can get the final coats of finish applied so it can cure while I'm gone. With any luck, we're only about 3 weeks away from being done with this project! Also, I'm out of web space with my current provider, so I'm going to have to find a solution to this little dillema. I'm not sure I want to pay extra for more space with my current provider, or sink that money into a different hosting service that would give me more features. We'll have to see what the new year brings!
12/01/2004 - Thanksgiving is over and I survived despite a food overdose. Hope everyone had a good holiday! The guitar is coming along splendidly. David Zach from the band Remedy stopped by to view my progress, so check out his photo in the guitar photolog ("Continuing On With The Neck Construction" page). Also, many people (OK, just one) have asked for a link they can use to send me mail, so I've added one below in the "About" section. Happy surfing!
11/12/2004 - I'm slowly making progress on the guitar. I had to trash a neck that went south, but I learned quite a bit and so far it's replacement is going much better.
10/17/2004 - I have began the documentation of the building process of my first guitar, so the guitar link below under the "Projects Currently Underway" is now active! Brace yourself for full disclosure...
10/07/2004 - Well, I had a recent bout of the flu which left me with not much else to do but work on the finish of the toy box. So, happily, the toy box is done and ready for final viewing. The link to it is under the finished projects section below. Also, I got some of the older links working for the Regulator Clocks and the Shed Kit.
09/25/2004 - I haven't been posting any updates for a while, as I usually don't spend much time in the shop when the weather's nice. A majority of this year's summer projects were outdoors (new chain link fence and landscaping.) However, in August I did start working on a toy box/window seat and I've now posted the construction pics. Finished pics are still a couple weeks out. With colder weather coming, you should see updates coming more often. Also, I'm starting to run into web space issues, so I'm going to have to come up with some sort of solution to that problem. Oh well, it's not always easy being the Tundra Man!
07/31/2004 - I've added a tutorial on how to perfectly set the width of your dado stack.
04/05/2004 - After numerous questions on how I do it, I've posted a description and pictures of the creation of 3D chess pieces with a scroll saw.
03/31/2004 - The curio cabinet is finally done! This is the biggest project I've ever tackled, and probably the last one of this size that I'll do for a while due to time and budget constraints. See the link below for full details (on the curio that is, not details of my time and budget constraints.)
02/26/2004 - I added a new section for jigs, fixtures and other shop items.
02/14/2004 - I got more pictures posted, and most of the links work, now. Whew! I'll be glad when I finally get this project into maintenance mode...
02/05/2004 - Under the mistaken idea that the whole world wants to know what's going on in my life, my web page is finally released. I've been meaning to do this for a good, long time, but never seemed to get around to it. Well, here it is. No frills, no java, just straight HTML. Not all (very few, actually) of the links are active yet, but hopefully I'll get to it soon enough. Let the boredom begin!