Hello! I'm a mechanical engineer living in the northeastern part of the US, I have played guitar for around 12 years and have done some minor wood-working projects in the past, but this will be my first time actually building a guitar. One of my co-workers and good friends Mark Noel will also be building a guitar alongside me from this event, there will probably be at least a little crossover in the social media aspect between us. The Inspiration: Back when I was younger I played a video game with my younger brother called Monster Hunter. The basic premise of this game was to hunt monsters to get materials to make weapons to hunt bigger and badder monsters. The biggest and baddest of these monsters was the great black dragon Fatalis, and one of the things you could build from it's materials was a great guitar-shaped hunting horn, called the Fatalis Wailer. That nostalgia is where I'll be taking the inspiration from for my build. I'll be putting my own spin on it however; copying the video game model 1-for-1 probably won't result in the most physically playable thing in the world. The Build: I plan on using power tools to cut out the general body shape and rout pockets, and then plan to hand carve the plates and scales of the design into my guitar's body and head stock. I've been learning to hand carve over the past two weeks in preparation for this event, but I've never picked up a chisel in my life before this. Hopefully it goes well! The guitar itself will be made of mahogany (I read it's a good beginner wood to use) with either a maple or sapele neck. The rest I'm going to have to figure out as I go. I'm excited to start this build! A big thank you for putting together this event and creating this community, and I hope you can continue it into the future!

Best, Andy Dobies

You can visit my YouTube channel here: Andy Dobies - YouTube

You can see the video of my final build here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1N6jhuT5qU