Blog
New weather dome for solar tracker!
All good things come to those who wait…….
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Carol found this glass dome in our local Charity shop (I knew one would turn up eventually!). It used to be the cover for an ornament – but I nabbed it for my weather dome. I’m just hoping that the same item doesn’t come up on antiques roadshow worth thousands. ‘If only you still had the glass dome madam…………………’
The panels have been connected for about a year now and have produced 1180kwh – we had some problems with the tracker so next year should be even better.
Win a Bailey Guitar at the Darvel Music Festival
Celebrating 10 years of the Darvel Music Festival…………….
Bailey Guitars have donated one of our custom R1’s for a raffle to raise money for the event. The guitar has been airbrushed with a unique design by local artist John Dixon . To find out how to win it click here to visit their site. Good luck!
Tony the Dragon
Chasing the Dragon…….
The proud father!
You have to hand it to him. Tony spent 4 days solid working on that inlay and never complained much at all when i kept telling him to go over it again. I bet his back was killing him and his eyes were strained but look at the result. 10 out of 10 for that one Tony.
The whole guitar took him 9 days to build not including the spray job. As usual he left it with us for the spray job as he wanted the full gloss. Billy stained it blue before sanding it off again to get the distressed denim look.
The guitar also has a trem, a carved top, and hand-made Bareknuckle pickups making it the most expensive one ever built on the course!
The smile on his face tells me it was worth it though.
August BYO – Our youngest ever! (not you John)
Our youngest ever BYO’erJoe (2nd from right)
August BYO boys
Left to right: Simon, John, Joe and Theron (his dad) proudly display their new born babes…..
All these guitars are set neck (glued in) – This is the easiest style of guitar to make on the course as it makes installing the truss rod easier. They all also have bookmatched pieces of wood on the front and we used an offcut to veneer the headstocks.
Simon made a double cut, set neck with 24 frets. The cap is flamed maple and has a shallow carve.
John made an absolute stunner. It has a Jarrah cap with a full carve and all gold hardware.
Joe (our youngest ever!) made a version of the Bailey S2. This one was a flat top. He customised the design by having 24 frets instead of the normal 22 and adding a flamed maple cap. Imagine doing this at his age! I wish I could have done that…….
Theron is Joe’s dad and came to accompany Joe as he is under 16. He made a version of the Bailey P1 with a trem. The cap is a sycamore burr. He wanted a sunburst, so at the end of day 4 Billy got his hands on it for spraying. By the morning of day 5 it was ready for assembly.
This pic was taken at the end of another brilliant 5 day course.
I’m not sure if Joe likes his guitar – what do you think?
June BYO – Bareknuckle Boys
A handsome bunch…..( of guitars)
The Bareknuckle Boys
Left to right: Dan, Neil, (me), Sam and Chris. These four all work for Bareknuckle Pickups and came to build their own guitars…….That’s me in the middle…….I run the course……..of course…….I’m thinking maybe about having a haircut……….one day………..and smiling on photographs.
It was a real pleasure to have this lot all building their guitars together. Not all courses are as much fun as this one. All I can say is that it must be a great place to work. Kind of reminded me of the old days back at Patrick Eggle.
You can see how different they all are (the guitars as well!)
That is what we are really good at here – giving people what they want is what we pride ourselves on.
The course was paid for by Tim (the boss!) as part of their development training so big thanks for that – You have a great crew there.
Bareknuckle pickups – hand made in the UK. Cool.
North West Guitar Show
Before the show opened I went round and took some pics……
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- Testing the projector
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- Our electric guitars
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- Acoustic guitars in the corridor
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- Theron and Joe test the guitars
Oops…forgot to take any pics while the show was actually open. Oh well you can see how we set up our stand anyway. We had the entire basement floor this time which was fantastic. We had enough space to set up a mini cinema to show our film.
Theron is Joe’s dad. They came along to sign up on the BYO course and did a bit of playing for us to demo the guitars. Cheers for that folks!
Solar Tracker
Nearly there……
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This is our dual axis solar tracker. We made it ourselves in the Bailey workshop. Billy has a mig welder so he took care of sticking it all together. It should enable our panels to generate 30-50% more than a fixed system so it is well worth the considerable effort it took to build.
The electronics came from Red Rok Energy. It works by using LED’s as light sensors to tell the ‘satelite dish’ motors which way to turn. The electronics also feature a parking facility so that the tracker parks to the east at night ready for the sunrise. It is all powered by a 12v battery which of course is charged by a small solar panel.
The LED’s and circuitry is housed in a weather dome – I used a jam jar for this because it was all I could find but it could really do with something a bit better……..I have asked Carol to keep an eye out for a glass dome in the charity shops……..
The Relic
A brand new custom Bailey 30 years old!
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Here’s the body before starting the aging process. It has been sprayed but not polished. Normally we would take extreme care and attention and several hours to achieve a perfect gloss. In this case I just threw it on the bench and set about it with some nearby tools! The picture was supplied by Gavin to give me an idea how much aging was required.
Sandpaper was used for wearing the finish. 30 yrs of dents and bashes were carefully added including some serious gouge marks. I slammed the case on it a few times….. I have to admit it was a lot of fun but painful at the same time……
Only one way to get an authentic cigarette burn. It is normally between the E and A tuners but Gavin wanted a custom ‘burn’.
Steeping in Etching fluid aged the hardware. The only problem was working out how long to leave them in for- about 48hrs did the trick…….More sanding, dinks and dents…..We learned a few more words like this….dings….bishes, boshes, bashes, mashes, …and smashes, scrapes and scratches.
Relic’ing a guitar turns out to be quite labour intensive. It took quite a while to make it look natural and not just like a new guitar that has been dropped. It was certainly worth all the hard work just to see the obvious glee it gave Gavin. Who wants a new guitar when you can have a RELIC!