Justus Jörgensen, as a student of Max Meldrum, spent many happy hours painting in Eltham. In 1935 Jörgensen purchased land and with his friends commenced work on the buildings that became Montsalvat. The first buildings were two small ‘French Provincial’ style cottages where they could stay at weekends. By 1938 work had started on the Great Hall. This mainly stone building includes two galleries, a studio and a large dining hall.
I found the most interesting part of its history is the Rolling stones chose to hang out there during their '73 tour of Australia. My uncle saw them rehearse there. Cool huh?
Any hoo, after close to 5 years of wanting to do the course, I've finally got the cash together to proceed - thanks to the sale of my fave D*A*M sola mk11 and the planets aligning.
I'm doing the course one day a week for the next ten weeks, one thing for sure, makes the other six days of the week drag!!
Week 1
When I first arrived at Thomas Lloyd guitars I was pleased to find I was the only student there for the the day, this gave me plenty of time to discuss with Chris what I was looking for in a guitar. This included what style I played and the sound I was after - Chris was then able then to guide me to the timbers that would suit me best.
So first things first. Select the timber for the sides, many types to choose from but I settled on Australian Fiddle back Black wood from the Otways.
After matching many sides I narrowed it down to this lot
Then chose these.
Next on the agenda was to pick out the back of the guitar. Took quite a while positioning the guitar mould on the back to find the most highly figured place in the wood, flipping the timber over and reassessing.
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This is done by wetting down the sides and placing them in the jig and pulling the blocks of wood on springs to coerce the wood into shape. Heat is then applied by the way of 3 200watt globes to fix the shape.
The sides were then clamped into side moulds to help hold their shape.
