So sorry for your loss, Snail. Wow, the two things I've consistently loved most all throughout my life in one picture: lego and cats. What an insanely cute fuzz-face.

This image feels like either a very good or a very bad metaphor for Brexit.

I never knew chains dropped on a bin lid was something you could find in an orchestra. I fucking love this world.

EDIT: I stand by my gif. Henry is now the forum's Maverick, Navy or not.

Quick update.

I wasn't pleased with what I think was my biggest mistake in the design: having the curve of the beginning of the necks line up with the contact surface between the two planks of the body. It would have been impossible to get a seamless transition between the two pieces, which is now obvious to me.

So, since I had spare bits of ebony, I decided to fix it.

The ugly seam is visible here, with irregularities in the end of the curvature and the layer of glue revealed underneath.

Made a rectangular cut in the seam (of which I forgot to take a picture), then filled it with glue and fitted a piece of ebony in it.

Some chiselin' and sandin' later...

Thanks for the kind comments.

Nothing's particularly difficult, really. It's just a bit of sawing, glueing and sanding. You just need to follow some simple rules so things don't go south. I feel particularly lucky to live in a time where information is so widely available. I spend hours reading through woodworking forums (thank God for forums and screw you 2010s) and watching videos. It's mostly amateur experience, which is a good thing because you should always listen to professionals but their knowledge and techniques aren't always compatible with a DIY approach. Then again, I read on several different occasions about people tainting their wood by diluting their product in water and Suzie - who's professionally trained in art restoration - was like "Uh, never do that, wood will drink that water".

To be honest, I have no idea if that thing is gonna hold over time. Maybe the wood will bend because of moisture and temperature and two or six or twelve months from now, parts will split open.

You're still allowed to be an idiot, too, because once I'd glued the nut, I realized it was completely off-centered so I had to cut a bit off directly on the head, hence the dark stain in the last picture.

Pegs are done.

Right one is done; forgot to take a picture of the lot finished

I'm only slightly worried they're too smooth and will rotate freely, but the pressure from the strings should be enough to hold them. If not, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix.

Next task has been making a nut.

Pictured here is the nut glued but not sanded yet. Now it follows the inner curve of the head.

Current task is painstakingly perfecting everything through sanding. Sides are done, I've still got a bit of very fine work to do around the tail, and today I started refining the top and bottom plates.

If all goes well, I may be able to start tainting and varnishing next weekend.

Yeah, between the chat and the forum, I don't think a Discord would be much use.

That being said.

Wtf, drew?

There were several username changes. I'm actually Teague, Teague's actually Owen and Tom's a placeholder for Holden's ethnographic experiments. We don't know what happened to the real Tom.

Oh, and I'm still French, if you were wondering.

I'm 28 years old and I've finally seen Close Encounters. I have honestly no idea how the Spielberg pre-2000 era has been a part of my film culture since I was a child, yet this film has managed to escape my radar. I guess I just took that era for granted.

As I watched the film, I immediately felt Close Encounters was one of those films that make a deep imprint on a child's imagination. I could express regret over missing it, but that realization means that child in me is still there, and more importantly, this 43-year-old story still manages to reach it effectively. Why?

The thing is that what struck me the most with Close Encounters is how incredibly low-key it plays everything, in any standard, late 70s or now. There is little exposition made, no motivations clearly expressed. Most of the time in other movies, there's always some kind of effort being made to be sure the viewer is following and understands what's going on - even in other Spielberg productions. What is happening, why is it happening. But not in Close Encounters. There's a sense that you're just following along, trying to piece together something that is not particularly worded out for you, like the viewer is out of the picture, and the characters are doing their thing without stopping to explain it. A story not tailored, more akin to a documentary as one of the guys says in the commentary. There are no answers given, but the film is not lacking them, because it doesn't set up things that it doesn't pay off. It just shows.

But it's fairly easy to write a story that doesn't explain, even though it's also incredibly hard to manage to go somewhere with it. The difference is Close Encounters plays the same game with all of its aspects. Although it's difficult to distinguish conscious decisions from technical limitations, the visuals blur the precision of what they're doing and bring out an otherworldly quality to the encounters. The sound design plays a huge part in that, because the ships are actually pretty silent. The beams of lights they emit on the road when Roy is stuck at the railroad crossing are silent.

Because the truth is, Close Encounters is not a film meant to be intellectualized, but felt. There's a dream-like quality to it, and you're led through it emotionally, quite notably even in a medium that's usually used for that. Every aspect of it is about sensation. All those aspects are not trying to describe a reality that could be, they're walking you through a dream. And you don't think a dream, you feel it.

I think very few works in cinema do this, and even less doing it well. Close Encounters is not a film, it's a tale.

Did you buy a bunch of snow? Is that how Canadians are preparing for global warming?

Eddie-tor.

I just realized.