The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’m in the middle of deconstructing two — count em — two of my homemade acoustic guitars. A couple of years ago I convinced myself that even without formal training, without specialized tools and even without the sense God gave a magpie, I could build a reasonably nice instrument. Sure, I knew there would be a learning curve — that’s why I built five, figuring the mistakes from the previous attempts would be corrected on the subsequent experiments. Which, for the most part, was far from my experience. It’s possible that the five banjos I built and which turned out pretty well, might have blinded me to the more difficult task of guitar luthiery.

There are some D-I-Y projects that do not require exotic specialization, they just need a few tools and plenty of courage. A fear of failure is a sure predicter of that fear coming true. In my case the urgent to do-it-myself was fueled by poverty. When a plumber charges $100 to make a house call down this end of the island to diagnose a washing machine problem, trust me, you’ll tear into it yourself. And more likely than not, you’ll find the problem, buy the part and fix the damn thing.

Same with the car, ditto the lawnmower, chalk up a win on the sink replacement, next thing you know you’re a self-sufficient handyman with the hubris of a professional. So okay, maybe the greenhouse I built was a little – or a lot – out of square. And sure, I did almost burn down my studio trying to work on an electric panel box wired directly to the street with no shut- off (obviously the previous owner was a D-I-Y’er) and even now I’ve got a newly installed shower that has a maddening mystery leak no caulk has yet to seal. A lesser man’s confidence might also start to leak — and admittedly mine has — but dammit, mistakes can be fixed! Or at least ignored.

But … that leak in the shower can’t be ignored. Believe me, I’ve tried.

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