For Christmas I had a number of people on my list, and I had no idea what to get them. After a bit of thinking I decided to get Sugru for everyone!

Mainly, I wanted a couple packs of sugru for myself but wasn't sure I could go through the entire 12 pack in 6 months. Sugru does have an expiration date and I didn't want to waste it.

But wait, what is sugru? Sugru is an adhesive, moldable, permanent silicone putty. What does that mean?

I have a plan for a full sized telecaster (actually several telecasters, but let's start with this one first). Alas, the wood that I bought for it badly warped before I had a chance to even cut out a body outline, so I scrapped it. I had that wood sitting around for a couple of months and then it went from perfectly straight to super cupped and twisted in less than a week.

Great classic motown groove:

Great lyrics, great voice, great build up:

This is smooth, you wouldn't expect smooth from a ukulele and acoustic bass:

But when I'm up visiting my mom for Thanksgiving, I can turn it up to 11:

I decided I wanted to make a telecaster. My first plan was to build a body blank by gluing up a bunch of pine planks we have around the house. I had it all figured out, but when I explained my plan to my wife, she quickly proved it would never work because I'd have to plane the boards down too much, so if I wanted the right depth I'd have to glue them three deep and three across and if you figure out the math and divide the cosine by the tangent of the hypotenuse we totally don't have enough wood.

Then she said "Why don't you use those big thick boards we got from your mom?"

These are yummy. Ingredients:

2 cups whole spelt flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter straight from the fridge
2/3 cup milk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

[Backstory: Over on the Cigar Box Nation forums, one of the guys asked where he could buy radial volume labels for an amp he built. This is a slightly edited version of my reply to him.]

Why buy some when it's easy enough to make your own? You don't have to be good at graphics, you just have to know what to do.

Download Inkscape (you probably want the Windows installer) and install it on your machine.

Way back in the mists of time, Petey helped me beta test my kit and helped smooth out the rough edges with the instructions. I asked him to write up his results on the forum, and he did. Now that the forums are no longer in beta, I can give a link to his great build documentation! I love where he put the knobs, right on the front where the speaker is.

I was floored this morning when I opened up my e-mail and saw this 3D printed Stella amp enclosure! Check out those knobs!

Thanks Eli! Here is what he had to say about the enclosure and the build process:

If you've been paying close attention around here you'll notice that I've started offering my Stella Amp kit for sale. As of now, all orders, even the international ones, have been shipped.