Body making Part 1. Anything steel is welded by laser here now. Why? Because melting metal with light is badass. Does it make the guitars better? I don’t know but if you’re feeling Luke Skywalker energy and questioning your relationship with your father while playing it- this is why. 

Brass bodies are still soldered because brass will bounce the laser. A bouncing laser beam is a bad thing. I learned how to solder by reading about copper roofing, a sheet metal trade that uses different types of joints and solder for fancy roofs. 

The trick with joining thin sheet metal, particularly stainless steel, is it has to get hot enough to have a quality joint but if there’s too much heat the piece will warp. You have to be really precise and you get that by watching how the puddle of solder or of steel is melting. In the beginning when I was learning to TIG I’d ask real welders for tips and every one of them said “just do it a lot” which I thought was a cop out. It wasn’t. Like most things if you just do it a lot and don’t stop eventually you’ll be good at it. The hacks and tips are the last 20% of something but you have to actually do the first 80% for them to be worth anything. 🎶@idamaemusic “Hold You Like the Fading Light” played on a Mavis.