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Tell us about yourself: "I worked for the Provincial Health Department for 30 years. Now I’m retired and enjoy writing, tinkering in the garage, and being outside."
What inspired you to make this?I have no musical talents, but my wife has a guitar and she’s pretty good at playing it. One day I told her that I would make her a metal guitar—one that she could display in the living room. She was skeptical that that could be done, because a) I can’t weld, and b) I have zero crafty skills. But I wanted to try. The strings on the guitar are real banjo strings, and they’re tight enough to make a guitar-ish sound, but it can’t be played.
It took about 150 hours to make. Some of the material was purchased, like the roller chain that makes up the frame, but everything else is just scrap. I have a buddy who’s a mechanic, and he’s always bringing me broken bearings and other interesting pieces of metal.
What design/build challenges did you overcome? The biggest build challenge was the actual welding. I bought a flux-core welder three years ago and tried to teach myself how to weld watching YouTube. Needless to say, my welds are super ugly. I didn’t want those horrible beads to be visible and exposed in the guitar, so I welded a lot of pieces from the back (or from a hidden angle). I also spent a lot of time grinding off rust and slag and polishing pieces before they were placed into the guitar.
If you had to build it again, what would you do differently? I should have included a real Bluetooth-type speaker in the sound hole. I still see a few “air pockets” in the guitar, and I wish I’d had more small pieces of scrap metal (gears, sprockets, etc.) to fill those voids.
Which Princess Auto location do you visit most? The one on Panet Road in Winnipeg.