Burls Art – the YouTube luthier behind the Himalayan salt guitar, a Strat-style electric constructed of 1,200 colored pencils and others – is at it again with yet another wacky guitar design.
For his latest project, the YouTuber – who currently boasts over half a million subscribers on the platform – has built an electric guitar entirely of skateboard decks.
He begins by removing each deck's grip tape – probably a good thing, too: any player's arm would be sanded down in no time – before removing the graphics from each of the decks' undersides.
Next, he coats seven of the skateboard decks in epoxy resin, before pressing them together using “tens of tons” of force exerted via a purpose-built steel frame.
He then uses a variety of saws and other instruments to shape and mold the block into a Warlock-style guitar body. A similar process is used when constructing the guitar's neck out of the remaining skateboard decks.
Little is given away regarding the skateboard guitar's electronic configuration, however we can see that it sports a pair of humbuckers and singular volume and tone knobs.
“This was probably one of my more challenging builds that I've done yet,” the YouTuber says. “Mainly, the challenge was in getting the boards pressed together – it just takes so much pressure to press them.”
“I had tried so many alternative methods to pressing before I finally buckled down and decided just to go with a welded steel frame. There's really no alternative method to pressing these than having a big metal frame and a bunch of big jacks.”
With his latest design, Burls Art has swapped pop shove-its for pop-punk, grinds for grindcore and rock and rolls for, well, rock 'n' roll. We approve.
