2016 PA Cigar Box Guitar Festival - LIVE

Wishing like hell that I was there. I am going to take some of Wingnut Bike Work's stinged things there next year even if I have to pedal them there on my bike!

Cluttering up the Works.

Greetings good peeps, and welcome to the Works. It is in this small two room studio in Bloomington, Indiana that I create all of the unique things that are featured at Wingnut Bike Works. That includes the stinged things, such as diddly bows and cigar box guitars, that I hand craft utilizing recycled materials and old bicycle parts.

The Works also serves as my artist studio where I enjoy painting when I get the down time to do so. I love the location, as it sits right on "restaurant row" in the central downtown area but space is always an issue in such a small place.

Oh, and did I mention that I also repair and build bicycles at the Works? This is another challenge when it comes to actual work space at the Works.

Then there is the always rotating inventory of stock that is continually coming in from my daily dumpster diving excursions. Thankfully I have Larry (the furry blue guy) and Rosco (the roadkill raccoon) to keep an eye on things for me.

Despite their efforts, however, those two are no better at getting rid of clutter here at the Works than I am as my "office area" will attest to.

Drinking dumpstered coffee and admiring my chaos, I decided that it was time to clear out some of the clutter in the Works and in my life.

Just take a look around and you will see what I mean. For instance, I have an ever growing collection of cheap sunglasses that I have found in the dumpsters over the past year or so.

Any one who knows me at all knows that I am hardly ever caught without a pair of these babies on, but I am starting to think that I might have a few too many pairs right now.

Additional to my own art work that is hanging and stacked all over the place, I also like to keep a few pieces from other local "street artist" on my walls. The above piece was done by a homeless guy known as "Artist Will". It was done on half of a broken door. I love it!

Even the T.R.E.A.M. garden I am working on out in back is getting a little cluttered. So I took another swig of mud and began to get to work on getting rid of all the things that are cluttering up the works. By the time it started to get dark out I had made some real progress.

To celebrate, and to help get rid of some inventory that is taking up space, I decided to throw a big sale in the online Wingnut Bike Works Etsy Shop!

Of course I have fresh clutter as of this morning, but isn't that just life all over? So if you are reading this then help me out by going to visit the online shop and taking some of my awesome clutter off of my hands? Sorry, but Larry and Rosco will not be for sale! My jewelry and art and unique stringed things will be however and I slashed the prices on everything to get it out the door.

Thanks for stopping by! Now go put something fun between your legs and RiDe YeR' BiKe!

HUGE SALE HERE!

Acid test.

Things here at the Works have been hectic as of late but I did manage to throw together this latest stringed thing from old bicycle parts and recycled items. It started out with a stick of wood and this limited edition Acid cigars collectors tin.

With a little sand paper and a rasps and a whole lotta' elbow grease, I began shaping and smoothing the neck from that stick of wood.

After a couple of hours working the wood I have something that I can use. Digging around in the paint bins I found an old can of green paint. It wasn't an exact match to the camo on the tin, but I thought that it looked good enough together to pull it off.

Next I needed to come up with some tuners for this little two string chugger. So I riffled through the drawers here at the Works and found this little set of tuners off an old guitar. The only problem was that there were three of them connected together and I already had my mind set on a two string chugger, so I got out the trusty ol' rotary tool and began doing a little modification.

They turned out perfectly! Work with what you got!

 Now it was time to put the box onto the neck. Measuring twice and cutting once, I mounted the neck to the tin.

Next I mounted the bridges, in this case a couple of bolts using some gel glue.

Then I secured them down with these nifty little pieces of hardware I found laying around.

Then I used two old chain links from an unusable bicycle chain to mount the strings.

I like the way this here little two string chugger style Cigar Box Guitar came out looking.

And woah doggy can it ever wail! I made a crappy little video to demonstrate it in action.

As always if you would like to bring this sweet little chugger to your home or check out any of the other things I make you can visit the official WBW Etsy shop HERE! Or by clicking the link at the top of this page. Thanks for visiting, now go RiDe YeR' BiKe!

The "Works" has reached Iceland!

Another happy and satisfied customer recently purchased a custom order for 4 of the awesome chain link bracelets to take back to friends that are on a bike team in Iceland. How cool is that?!