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Tomorrow morning Ill be doing a side bending demonstration, and overall demo of how to build acoustic guitars for my daughters First Grade Class

She has been asking me all school year, and I finally caved in and agreed to it. Ive got a bunch of hands on stuff for the kiddies to play with, bridge blanks, fretboards, bent sides, etc. I'm going to be bending a mahogany side for them, it should be quite fun.

SO -- as I said , wish me luck, this could be a tough crowd

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Good luck, Lance! Break a side...er, leg.

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Lance, good luck, you're gonna have a blast! The kids will love it no matter what you do. Just the fact that it's not their teacher and it involves guitars will be enough to amuse the kids. Make sure you play a little music for them when you're done.

Would you mind sharing what hands on type stuff you're doing? I think I might like to give that a try for my kids class next year. They have both been begging me to come play for their class, but I think the building aspect would be way more interesting to the class as a whole.

Cheers!

John

Good luck, Lance. I've taken some of my work in to show my students, and they are always really interested. Be ready for a bunch of questions.

Just be careful about safety. Don't let them near the sharp or hot stuff - Unless it's a really troublesome student
BruceH

Go Lance, good luck bud.
sounds like a blast to me.

hey, any strings on the coco-redwood guitar yet?

great job on that, I just saw it on the fret, but I dont get over there much any more, so I weeks late as usual.

Matt

Lance, good luck. Sounds like an awesome experience.
I did that once in my daughter's class (though I didn't have the guts to bend a side). I just brought in a couple of bodies in various stages of construction and talked about them.
tip: bring in a finished guitar and sing songs that they know. You'll be a hero for sure!

Paul if I even sang one single line -they'd all go running! LanceK38495.3686342593

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

You'd be suprised at how forgiving young kids are.
javascript:AddSmileyIcon('')Pwoolson38495.3704398148

That is cool. Good luck. Are you hand bending, or using the fox bender?

Maybe even bring in some cut offs from lots of different kinds of woods and tell them where they all come from.

I think kids would get a real kick out of it. (my guess is all the boys will like the SNAKEwood, and the girls will like the Pink Ivory.)

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Start them young, Lance. Then you can be a Mentor when they get to high school and have to do a Senior Project.
My seventh "Sr. Project guitar" was just completed by the student two weeks ago. He will give an oral presentation the first week of June and present the instrument at that time. It was about a hundred hours in the shop...starting last September...and that doesn't count the procedures I won't let them do for safety reasons (shapers, router tables, lacquer work). But they do thin, bend, glue, carve, scrape, sand...a lot of sanding...shellac, etc. and they do put in the time observing the dangerous activities I perform. All in all a very interesting year.

Success! and a great time!

First things first, I didn't embarrass my daughter Leanna I guess that makes it a success if I did nothing else!

The kids were great, they had a bunch of questions, and the mahogany bent like butter!

All in all it was pretty fun.

Hank, very cool! And a great idea.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Lance,

Congratulations! I bet that was a kick. Any pictures?

Jeff

Good job Lance!

What an opportunity for these kids see wood being bent and hear about guitar making to help them understand they can do anything they want when they get older.

And it sounds like it was a fun time to boot.

Way to go Lance. Kids are always great to work with. I'm sure they all enjoyed it.

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good luck lance! I do a little "class" show and tell a few times a year at
my mothers school (she gets new students every month or so..trouble
kids that wards of the state...)

One time I showed a video on how to bend sides and I was joking in the
video (that's a new one huh?) and I just jumped on the sides and broke
them into lots of little pieces (scrap sides obviously) and the kids just
watched as if everything was normal....no one got it until right afterwards
I showed them the real deal....

Anyway long winded storyu to say good luck... (

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com