Michael Winston Dales Guitars: Blog

I've learned a lot from other guitar builders over the years, and so this blog is a way for me to share my own build experiences and hopefully let others learn from my success and mistakes!

A photo of a guitar body being held over a workbench, caught in the sunlight coming through an unseen window. The face of the body is yellow stained birds-eye maple, and the top 5mm of the side is natural unfinished birds-eye maple, and then the back of the guitar is painted gloss black.

A Week in the Shop

22 Oct 2023 - delfinen, finishing, fretwork, hästen, oiling, painting, staining, verkstaden

Lots going on in the workshop this week as I push three guitars, body and neck, through the finishing process.

An orange-stained guitar body sits mounted on a jig in a spray booth.

A Week in the Shop

15 Oct 2023 - correcting, delfinen, glue, hästen, staining, verkstaden

Last week we had a failed attempt to stain a guitar body, and this week we get to work saving the instrument from the rework pile.

A photo of me holding my Älgen wood and 3D-printed guitar in a cluster of onlookers. I look like I've escaped from a 70s edition of the open university programs.

A Week in and Out the Shop

8 Oct 2023 - delfinen, makespace, staining, talks, westfield

Troubles with staining guitar bodies, sperlunking an old guitar's electronics, and I give a talk to on guitar design and 3D-printing to a local CAD user group.

A close-up of three headstocks, with my signature and guitar's name laser etched into the headstock.

A Couple of Weeks in the Shop

1 Oct 2023 - Delfinen, Hästen, Laser-etching, Logo, Painting, Verkstaden, Westfield

A lot going on in the workshop as I try to push the three ongoing guitar builds towards finishing, and I get re-united with the instrument that is somewhat responsible for all this.

A photo of me talking in front of an audience. I'm stood wearing a guitar on a strap in front of a slide showing a CAD model of the same guitar, and I'm doing the devil's horns gesture with my hands for some reason.

A Few Weeks in and Out the Shop

17 Sep 2023 - Älgen, Delfinen, Hästen, Wuthering Bytes

A catch of events both out of (attending Wuthering Bytes, talking at OSHCamp) and back in the workshop (a lot of carving and sanding).

A shot of a guitar body still in a clamp in a spray-booth, showing a yellow stained birds-eye maple front, and then about 5mm of natural wood colour as you go down the side, and the rest of the side is black paint.

A Brief Week in the Shop

20 Aug 2023 - delfinen, hästen, painting, spray-booth, verkstaden

Making some scary holes in one guitar body, getting two more further along the spray-painting process, and getting very excited about how one of them in particular looks.

Two guitar bodies are mounted on a rack in the wall of the workshop, the lower one is painted in white primer, and the upper one has black primer around the sides, the top being covered with a cardboard screen.

A Week in the Shop

13 Aug 2023 - älgen, delfinen, hästen, OSHCamp, painting, spray-booth, templates, toothbrush, verkstaden, wuthering bytes

A busy day in the workshop, including finally learning how to spray paint bodies using the booth and spray-gun, and prepping my talk for OSHCamp at the end of the month.

Two guitar bodies sit on the workbench, ready to go to the spray booth for painting. Both have a stick screwed into the neck pocket to be held in the clamp during spraying, and one has a cardboard mask on one side as only the rear will be painted.

A Week in the Shop

5 Aug 2023 - bass, design, fretwork, Fusion 360, grain filler, hästen, verkstaden

This week I had both the highs and lows as my neck building exceeds my expectations before I'm knocked down a peg or two on the next stage. I also prep two guitar bodies ready for the stray-booth, and I do some CAD work on bass guitar work.

A shaped but unpainted guitar body sits on a workbench surrounded by sanding disk.

A Week in the Shop

30 Jul 2023 - fretwork, grain filler, hästen

I move the Hästen guitar build forward slowly, moving both the body and the neck forward with generous application of elbow grease.

A close up of an in-progress neck carve, showing the transition between the headstock and the back of the neck. The neck is made from bird's eye maple.

A Week in the Shop

22 Jul 2023 - hästen, neck, offset, routing, verkstaden

Making headway on a client build, as it starts to get close to finishing time, and some tidying up of one of my prototypes before it heads to the spray booth.