I had the sincere pleasure of traveling to the heart of Hoosier country in Indiana today to meet Joe White and to see my bro JJ.
The primary reason for this visit was to drop off one of my guitars and to have the honor of being Joe's very first client. Joe has another guitar arriving tomorrow so this makes me his very first client for one of Joe's beautiful poly finishes!
The first order of the day though was to eat
So I asked Joe and JJ if they would meet me in Angola, Indiana at a Chinese place that my family would eat at once a month, every month - 45 years ago. And the place was still there and so far we believe that they have restocked their food in the past 45 years too..........
It's funny how a dump that one has fond memories of can remain the very same dump nearly half a century later.......Here is JJ giving us his undivided attention while we are waiting for our egg rolls......
And here is Joe and JJ appreciating the plastic plant and fake lobster art.......
After lunch we convoyed to Joe's finishing facility. As many of you know when the poly thread was running last year Joe was asking more questions then any of us. Since then Joe has been tooling up, practicing, studying poly finishes and is now open for business.
Joe's facility is a fairly new stand-alone building on Joe's property which BTW is one of the most beautiful settings that I have ever seen. The property is teaming with ponds and wildlife and is as picturesque as can be.
Joe's facility is quite large and consists of three main rooms. Here we see JJ and Joe discussing the presidential primaries....
Everything is spotless in Joe's shop and Joe has recently invested heavily in setting himself up to provide world-class poly finishes to us.
This is the largest and main room where Joe works on the finishes, rubbing them out, etc.
Here is the mother of all tool chests. Joe is one of the few people that I have met who is actually neater then I am.........
Here is JJ examining one of Joe's air driven sanders. What we can't see is JJ is thinking to himself that if that Hesh does not shut up I could sand his face off with this puppy......
And here is Joe explaining the abrasives that he uses and why.
This door leads from the main shop into the spray booth.
And here is Joe's spotless spray booth and if you will notice at the back of the room behind the sliding door is the exhaust fan. The ceiling has fixtures to handle many, many guitars at once - Joe is set-up to provide this service in a very big way.
Back in the main shop I found JJ looking rather disgusted and Joe saying something about it was the egg rolls........
Here is the outside of Joe's shop.
More storage and the material that Joe uses to finish guitars.
This is the third room in Joe's shop, mainly storage and where the massive compressor lives.
Joe's shop is temperature and RH controlled with a very high degree of precision and again the place is spotless.
It was a GREAT day for me and I really enjoyed meeting Joe White and learning first hand that Joe is a great guy in all respects. In a couple of weeks my guitar that I dropped off today will be complete and I will post more pictures then.
Many thanks to Joe for the facility tour and for being the cool guy that he is and many thanks to my bro JJ for yet another great day.
Thanks for looking!
Funny you would ask about the filtering but while we were in the basement thickness sanding some of JJ's maple, UPS dropped off an order from Commercial Filter Service (Ft Wayne, IN.) great service and helpful staff. I am trying out two different filters that they are offering for exhaust to see which I feel catches the most solids.The exhaust trap/filters internally will catch the largest solids. I am trying a polyester strand and a fiberglass strand and may even may even use both if I feel it's necessary. This filter area is 30"x30". Large enough for my small tubeaxial but I think it's always better to over filter ! A second stage (outside the booth) filters and traps any solids that the inner trap lets by before exit via the stack. Again overkill maybe? Nah.These filters are also known as "arrestors" I'm sure you're well aware of those.
