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Well Sunday I will be heading up the the Easton/Nazareth PA area to spend Monday with Dale Bartholomew to hone my finishing skills a little from the Master himself. While I'm there I'll be dropping off a 1957 Guild X-50 to get a Sunburst finish on it. Maybe I'll get to take the Martin Tour while I'm up there if it is open. Wish me good travels a storm is a brewing.

have fun making things shiney. Dale does a lot for me. I am sure you will see a few of them out there. Take some pics

tippie53 wrote:Take some pics

Will do.

So after nearly 1000 miles in less than 48 hours I drove to Nazareth PA and back. In between I picked up some valuable finish training from Dale Bartholomew. The man is a virtual encyclopedia of info of Martin style finishing and I absorbed as much as possible in the 3 hours I spent with him. He is a fine gentleman and I look forward to our relationship from here on out. It was amazing what he does in the space he has, great equipment helps as well.

I also made the trip to the Martin factory and to the Martin Guitar Builders Connection where I was helped by Liz and Gail (mostly Liz as Gail had to help another customer on the phone). I picked up to beautiful necks while I was there. They are called seconds but both of the "flaws" will never show up as one was outside the fretboard on the neck edge overhang and the other will be drilled out by one of the tuners. They must be real parsnickity of they reject stuff like this because I'll take them all day long. It took about 50 pics on the Martin tour, which was amazing intself. Oh to have access to some of their equipment. Here's a sampling.

Here's a couple more.

glad you had a good time. Dale and Martin not a bad duo