A downtown dog standing in a window, taking in the beautiful scenery in the alley between the buildings on Gold and Central (Old Route 66) in Downtown Albuquerque. The apartment is in an old federal building at 5th and Gold that was structurally questionable, and abandoned by the feds several years ago. Apparently, the ground floor has been repurposed into apartments, which must be considered structurally sound enough for a dog to live in.
A view of mounted patrol on Central Ave (Old Route 66) from inside of Lindy’s Restaurant on the corner of 5th and Central in Downtown Albuquerque.
Oriented strand board (OSB) is made using heat-cured adhesives to press together irregular shaped wood strands, oriented in crisscrossed layers into sheets of engineered boards. While OSB is used heavily in building construction as an alternative to plywood, it works well for most woodworking projects that require sheets of wood. OSB is not as pretty as plywood (plywood is made from sheets of veneer glued and hot pressed together in cross laminated layers), however, OSB has the advantage of being very consistent with little or no gaps or voids in the finished sheets of engineered wood (plywood often has gaps, voids and soft spots).
Not many people would consider OSB a suitable material for a guitar; however, Jimmy Smith of the StratAcademy thought otherwise. Jimmy built a Stratocaster style electric guitar that is 100% OSB except for the hardware, e.g., tension rod in the neck (used to adjust the neck), frets, bridge, nut, string guides, machine heads, pickups, volume and tone controls, switch, jack, strap buttons, and strings. Jimmy’s OSB Strat is beautiful and it sounds great.
Jimmy said that he’s not the first luthier to build a guitar using OSB, but in videos he had seen of OSB guitars, the builders did not play them, so he had no idea of how they sounded or played. Since Jimmy didn’t want people having to ask “Well? What does it sound like? How does it play?”, he made a video of himself playing his OSB Strat; therefore, not only do you get to see my photos of it, you can watch the video to hear how it sounds and see how it plays.
After raining for about an hour this afternoon, the rain suddenly changed to giant snowflakes that were coming down thick in the waning light. I ran out and got photos of the falling snow. In the process I got photos of three cottonwood trees I photograph quite often as conditions change. Resa, who has two blogs I follow, Art Gowns and Graffiti Lux Art & More, thinks Mia is lucky to have her own tree. I told Resa she can have a tree if she would like, so I’m putting up four possible candidates. The first three cottonwoods are on our property, and the fourth is by our cattle ramp. The cattle ramp is on our property but the cottonwood is not, and I don’t photograph that whole tree very often. However, it’s a cool looking cottonwood and is situated so it gets good backlighting in the morning and the afternoon. Plus it has a cattle ramp next to it. But Resa can decide if she like any of these trees or wants to look through previous posts to see if she can find a tree that calls to her. Below are a few links to previous posts that include photos of the first three trees:
https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2018/12/first-snow-on-the-2nd
https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2017/10/soft-white
https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2018/8/misty-morning-spotlights-at-sunrise
https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2016/4/medieval-morning
https://offcenternoteven.com/2014/04/23/water-my-world/
Off Center & Not Even 