Project Finished! (Painted My Truck)

Boy do I love it when I’m done with a project that takes me weeks of spare time to do and it actually doesn’t come out horrible. Thus is the case with painting my old Dodge Dakota truck. I inherited this beast when my dad died last year. If you ever see one of these early 90s trucks on the road, you’ll probably notice that half the paint is gone from it. Dodge had some kind of problem with either the paint or the primer for a year or two on Dakotas back then, and it was flaking off in no time.

This truck has 200,000 miles on it. It leaks oil pretty bad too. Obviously I wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on a fancy paintjob for an old truck that I just use as a backup to my newer Ram. I looked around on the idiotnet while contemplating ways to paint it myself as inexpensively as possible and found the answer on YouTube. I found a number of videos that showed guys painting vehicles themselves with a foam roller and Rustoleum oil based enamel paint. This is the same paint they put in spray cans, and you’ll use the spray cans too for hard to get places. The thing with foam rollers is that it puts paint on very smooth. If you take your time and do it right it looks like it’s been sprayed. You could spray the vehicle just as well, but you really need a garage to do that where the wind will be kept out. It also takes longer because you can’t thin the paint when it’s in a spray can, thus it takes longer to dry between coats. I only have a carport, so a foam roller seemed like the way to go. Since at least half the paint was gone from the truck, I put on a quart of white primer first. Then nearly three quarts of white gloss paint (4-coats). I also had some rust holes in one side that I had to fiberglass and putty over, so this took me a while longer than it would have if it had just been a straight-up paintjob.

I just took the tape and newspaper off today. It still needs to be polished, but I think it looks pretty darn good. I took it over to my sister’s house today, and she didn’t even recognize it. I’m not going to clear coat it because it sits out in the sun every day, so the clear coat would flake off or get chalky in just a few years.

You can see my Ram (with the ladders on it) shuddering in the background, wondering if it’s next!

Here’s the video I watched to learn how to do this:

The Yamaha G-250S Classical Guitar

The guitar enthusiast market has just started opening up to old Yamaha guitars during the past couple of years. This would include many of their acoustic and electric guitars produced from the 1960s through at least the early 1980s. I personally started talking up what great electrics they had in the Weddington and SA2000 guitars around ten years ago and have watched their prices on the used market triple since then. They now regularly go for over $1,500 dollars.

Yamaha red label steel strings acoustics (noted by a red label in the soundhole) from the 60s to early 70s, often referred to as a poor man’s Martin, used to sell used for around $100 to $200 just three or four years ago. They’ve been steadily creeping up since then, and several models now go for $400 to $600. I have no doubts that the prices on them will double again in the next couple of years. They’re just terrific sounding guitars and are worth every bit of it and then some.

A couple of their classical guitars produced during the 60s are already going for nearly $2,000. Frankly, I think the price is unjustified for those. I’ve heard a couple of nice ones from that era, but none that would justify that price. It wasn’t until the 70s that Yamaha started producing some extremely good classical guitars that were also inexpensive and are still a real bargain today. The better 70s models had solid spruce tops with laminated rosewood backs and sides. Necks were generally made from nato or mahogany. The lower priced models had solid cedar tops. And any honest builder will tell you that it simply doesn’t matter whether or not the back and sides are laminated. Laminated backs and sides tend to sound the exact same as solid wood and some will argue that they’re stronger and will last longer. D'Aquisto used laminated backs and sides for nearly all his famous archtop jazz guitars because he said it was easier to get good consistancy of woods in laminates. The back and sides of a guitar contribute very little to an acoustic guitar’s tone. (The one exception is cypress which produces a sound with very little mids.) They’re just there to form an anchor for the top and neck and also to produce an air chamber to push the sound out. They don’t really vibrate at all. For instance, Taylor makes a line of guitars: 214, 314, 414 etc. right up to 914, all utilizing spruce tops but with backs and sides from several different kinds of wood from mahogany to rosewood, and they all sound so much alike that most days you would be very hard-pressed to tell the difference between any of them. (I own one.) But as far as laminates go, think of it like this: If you were ever in an old building made of cinder blocks (including the inside walls) that had solid wood floors and thin wood paneling on the walls, was there anything about walking into that room that would make you think that the paneling had cinder blocks behind it? Nope. You would never even know if someone hadn't told you. The sound of cinder block is not reflected in any way. It's the same with laminated guitar backs and sides. It doesn't matter what's on the other side of that laminated wall. And the laminate itself is thicker than most people think. There are a handful of guitar makers in the $5000+ range that use laminated backs and sides by the way for the same reason D'Aquisto did.

It’s all about the tops kids. It’s getting harder and harder to find good spruce from which to make guitar tops nowadays. On sub-$1,500 guitars the spruce tops are often made of wide grain that’s twisted and not terribly musical sounding. Not all spruce is equal. The good stuff is saved for guitars costing twice that. Classical guitars have often used both spruce and cedar for tops along with redwood now and then. Now we’re seeing many steel string guitars made with cedar too. The problem with cedar is that it simply isn’t as strong as spruce and has a tendency to crack over the years. This is especially problematic with the greater tension of steel strings. If you keep a watchful eye on Ebay you’ll quickly notice that most of the guitars listed with cracks have either cedar or koa tops.

Kids today often think they’re getting a bargain and a great guitar because it’s listed as being made with solid woods all around for under $1,500 when in reality many of these guitars have twisted grain spruce tops or weak cedar and koa. A guitar with laminated backs and sides that has a truly great spruce top will sound better and last much longer. Alhambra and Cordoba are making great headway in the new classical guitar marketplace with very good inexpensive guitars made just like this in the $1,000 range, but with mid quality spruce for the tops. We can do even better and for less money.

Yamaha, Yairi, and a handful of other manufactures were already making guitars with rosewood laminated backs and sides along with top grade spruce tops decades ago. They often had plastic saddles and nuts to reduce costs, but those are easily swapped out for bone etc. (I think tusq sounds better myself, and bone is very inconsistent depending on its density.) They’re abundant on the used market and also very inexpensive at this point. Really, really good classical guitars can be had for just a couple of hundred bucks if you know what to shop for.

This particular Yamaha you’re looking at is a 1977 G-250S (I believe the S stands for spruce). This was Yamaha’s second most expensive classical guitar between 1977 and 1981. It sold for $300 new back then (about the equivalent of $1,200 today). The G-255S was their flagship model and sold for $360. As near as I can tell the G-255S was made from the same woods except for a jacaranda bridge whereas the G-250S had a more traditional rosewood bridge. The G-255S models are so hard to find that I’ve only actually seen one. The G-250S models come up on Ebay and Craigslist regularly though and can be had at an astoundingly low price. I rescued this particular one from Craigslist in St. Louis for $100.

Take special note of the medium grained spruce and how silky it is. You just can’t find spruce of that quality anymore on a guitar costing less than $3,000.

I have a YouTube Video where you can hear how this guitar sounds stereo mic'ed with a pair of Oktava MK-012 mics.


Old Yamahas are a great deal children. Look for models made between 1977 — 81 starting with the letter G such as the G-235S, G-240, G-245S, G-250S, and G-255S. Those all had spruce tops, rosewood backs/sides, nato necks, ebony fretboards and are the cream of the crop in my opinion. They also had the longer concert scale size of 260mm with a 52mm nut width. Also, in 1981 they came out with the G-260S model which is essentially the same as the G-250S. They made those through 1984, and they're also very fine guitars. Here is a YouTube recording of the G-260S. In fact the next few YouTube recordings I'm going to list are all by the same gentleman who apparently collects these old Yamahas. I think you can immediately hear the consistency in how great these guitars sound.

G-260S


G-245S


G-240


G-235


Print advertisement for the G-255S

The Foundling Goes Home

The Foundling Goes Home is a romance for guitar and orchestra. I've not yet written the orchestrations for it, but I think it stands on its own as a solo piece quite well.

The title was inspired by the character, Shasta, in—The Horse And His Boy—a children's novel by CS Lewis and part of the Narnia collection.

More Movies

Some pretty good movies I've seen during the past year or two:

Breaker Morant (Australian/British film)
Witness For The Prosecution (British, and one of the best movies ever made)
The Letter Never Sent (Russian; I mostly just liked the cinematography, but it’s worth watching just for that)
The Snow Walker
Time Limit (A very good Richard Widmark post -war film)
Stagecoach (The original with John Wayne)
The Final Cut (Robin Williams in a serious role)
The Train (Fantastic film with Burt Lancaster)
The Long Voyage Home (Another great John Wayne/John Ford film)
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (British)
The Threepenny Opera (British, not great, but not bad)
La Jetée (French)
Biography: Tom Selleck
They Shall Have Music
Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)
The Whales Of August
Star Trek VIII: First Contact
Dangerous Crossing
Seven Years in Tibet
The Comedian
Blackmail (Hitchcock’s first talky)
The Offence (British with Sean Connery)
Moby Dick (With Gregory Peck, and much better than the book)
Sting of Death (With Boris Karloff)
Lloyd's Of London (British)
Somewhere In The Night
Ink
Foreign Correspondent
The Woman In the Dunes (Japanese)

Movies I didn’t like:

Cypher
Orpheus (French)
Pitfall (Japanese)
Ride In The Whirlwind
Map of The Human Heart
Notorious
The Rules of the Game (French)
All My Friends Are Funeral Singers
Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman)
The League of Gentlemen (British)
Nosferatu
Jigoku (Japanese)
When The Clock Strikes
Bagdad Café
Lord of War
Taxi Driver

Good Time To Invest In Amazon Stock

Amazon stock went up 3-ticks today at the announcement of two new products and a cheaper price for the Kindle 3, all just in time for Christmas:

1) Kindle Fire - Basically an iPad with a smaller 7" screen for only $199.00. Supposedly a 10" screen model is in the works (price unknown). This can sort of be thought of as Kindle's version of the Color Nook. It has a backlight and a color screen; however, it's more of a tablet computer with a dual core processor, 8GB of storage (that's enough to store a movie on), and the ability to browse the web.

2) Kindle Touch - A new e-reader with a touch screen, very much like the Nook. It will sell for $99 with on-screen ads or $139 without ads. Why anyone would want a touch screen though is unfathomable to me.

3) Kindle 3 at a cheaper price as low as $79 with advertisements on-screen or $110 sans the ads.

Bigger news than all this might be India's announcement of a, get this—$35 tablet computer—aimed at the rural poor. It's called the Aakash (which means "sky"). It has a 7-inch touchscreen, 32GB of internal memory, 256MB of RAM, and two USB ports. The 2100mAh battery should last for two to three hours. Now India's children from the poorest segment of society can learn to be slackers too!

"The Perfect High" by Shel Silverstein

I mostly remember Shel from his having written "A Boy Named Sue" that Johhny Cash had a hit with. But he wrote a ton of silly songs, poetry, and children's books, along with some very tawdry drug culture poems too like this one. There's a lot of dirty words in it, but boy is it funny. Shel's the only I guy I know who could give you a poem full of dirty words about a hippy cat looking for the perfect drug and still manage to give you a nice moral at the end. I also find him an enigma in that he was friends with Hugh Hefner and yet wrote nice clean children's books too. He was one strange hippy dude.

This poem is read by Shel's old friend Larry Moyer at the Sausalito Woman's Club.

Nicolas Cage is a Vampire!

That's the latest rumor, albeit a tongue-n-cheek one, that the owner of this photograph has started with this Ebay auction.

He says the following:

Original c.1870 carte de visite showing a man who looks exactly like Nick Cage. Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead / vampire, et cetera, who quickens / reinvents himself once every 75 years or so. 150 years from now, he might be a politician, the leader of a cult, or a talk show host.


This is not a trick photo of any kind and has not been manipulated in Photoshop or any other graphics program. It's an original photo of a man who lived in Bristol, TN sometime around the Civil War.


I've had a lot of questions asking where I purchased this. As followers of my website know, I collect antique memorial photography - images of dead people - from the 1800s. This photo was found in the very back of album that contained an unusual number of Civil War era death portraits (which is why I purchased it). All of the other people in the album, living and dead, were identified by name - this man was not.


Photographer is Professor G.B. Smith. A contact of mine forwarded this interesting article (link) about the photographer, Smith. Turns out he was a confederate Civil War prisoner of war photographer.


Guaranteed to be an original 1860s-70s photograph and not a modern reproduction, copy or photo manipulation.


4" x 2.5".

He's asking one million dollars for the photograph, but you'll be happy to know that he'll accept the best offer he can get. He so far has declined 106 offers!

No, he probably won't even get a thousand for it, but you'd be surprised what some of his old photos sell for. He specializes in, get this, post mortem photographs before 1950. It seems that people used to dress up the dead in strange ways before first photographing them and then burrying them. Here's one that sold for $1,275.00 on Ebay:

Many of the 1,500 or so photos in his collection are from the 19th century and feature young children. People think we're living in strange days now, but believe me, humans have always been strange. Here are a few examples: