Category Archives: Hobbies

My Hobbies

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I have several hobbies.

One of the most recent hobbies is guitar building. See my post(s) on that topic for more details.

Another even newer one is investing in cryptocurrency. Again, please see my posts on that subject if you are interested. I haven’t explored this topic on here yet but plan to in the near future.

Music listening and playing guitar, drums, and bass are my longest standing hobbies and I intend to explore those as I expand my posts, so stay tuned…

I was involved in Recovery International, a mental health organization for nine years and still try to practice the principles learned to better my cognitive behavior. ‘Not sure you can call that a hobby but it was a daily practice and involved a number of other hobbies such as web design and public speaking that I also want to explore.

As mentioned web design is a large ongoing hobby of mine. I have designed and curated a number of websites with emphasis on non-profit organizations such as labour unions, a mental health organization, a charity fundraiser organization, and a church. I will elaborate on web design in other posts.

With time I may be able to come up with other hobbies I have had it continue to be involved in. Stay tuned…

Guitar Building

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Here I would like to take a moment to introduce a recent hobby: guitar building.

I started into guitar building in 2019 when I moved to an attic apartment on Napier Street in Sarnia. I used the second bedroom as a workshop for the sake of sanding and refinishing as well as the soldering needed to build my first guitar, a blond Telecaster DIY build.

The apartment was small but had a nice second bedroom that I didn’t need and it was bright. I set up a large solid wood dinner table as a workbench.

Small second bedroom on Napier Street

My first guitar build was a bit crude in the sense that it had a maple neck I got on eBay from a Chinese vendor that had been grinded down a bit to remove the serial numbers. I couldn’t tell that from the pics posted on eBay but it was cheap and too difficult to return so I sanded it and finished it and made it work. It was a challenge but I made it work…

Telecaster ‘Chinese’ neck (with Fender logo ground off)

I bought the guitar body already finished and ready to go:

Telecaster body: Paulownia wood

Paulownia wood is very light and when you try to anchor a screw it tends to fall out over time as the wood turns to dust, almost to chalk. When you add the guitar neck it tends to cause ‘neck dive’ where you are always trying to keep the neck from falling forward as you play…

I upgraded a few things including the neck on this guitar but got rid of the body and neck the following year as I had a few others by then to replace it. It was fun building it and catapulted me into the guitar building hobby.