One method I’ve tried to adopt, which I’ve dubbed the ‘Shitstorm‘,  is to take some time out to pull things apart and be overly critical.  It’s like imagining a shit storm and working out where the shit is going to get it in – hence finding where weaknesses are.  With bigger teams someone might fulfil this task naturally (the person disagrees with everyone or shouts down ideas may not be useful when bouncing ideas around in a Brainstorm but can be massively helpful when full-proofing ideas and adding a reality check).  To do it to yourself, with your own ideas, isn’t an easy thing, but completely necessary.   I’m sure great artists, musicians, scientists or whatever, all have this quality: asking ‘Is there a better way to do this’ or ‘can I do it differently?’ if not, they’d stagnate.

So I’ve made some decisions, will discontinue making some models of Mk whistles, and I’ll have a whole lot more time to work on new ideas – a decision that should’ve been made about 5 years ago, but better late than never!

In the quest for ‘total quality’, you come to appreciate people you work with who do excellent work.  When I started out I was actually doing all anodising ‘in house’ (and it was literally in house and very often in the middle of the night at the end of ridiculously long shift in the workshop).  After I realised it wasn’t economical to continue doing in house I went through no less than four companies before finding one that could replicate the quality I had achieved.  And that was just one part of a production chain in which everyone needed to be working to exceptionally high standards.  Now material comes from the Netherlands, parts are made on a Swiss precision lathes using American tooling with design & assembly in Scotland.  But despite seeking the best in their respective fields, as this week’s proved, it’s not watertight.

Musical instruments are tough things to make, and the tiniest of imperfection can leave you with thousands of pounds of scrap.

I spotted this picture by Glasgow artist David Shrigley at the Gallery of Modern Art today and I wondered if this could be me.

One thing can be sure however, that whatever the fire means for me, it’s worse for them.  I wish them the best of luck with getting back up and running.

My first machine: a Colchester Student MK1, made in the late 1950s and still very accurate.  Purchased some 11 years ago, I’ve spent a lot a of time at this machine, although much less lately.  A fantastic machine to work at.

The Toob has been testing both Brian and myself recently.  There have been sporadic bursts of promise that seem to have come crashing down one way or another.  It’s always a case of reminding yourself that this is in fact part of the design process – it’s a case of trying out ideas until one works, and you do only need one core idea to work.

Until now I’ve kept the design ‘under my hat’ so-to-speak – this is certainly the ‘traditional’ way of approaching innovation – show somebody your ideas and they will steal them!  But watching the effect that several big companies with this approach are having, and the recent emergence of collaborative working methods like open source, has caused me to think that there’s a huge amount to be gained from throwing the gates open, documenting our progress, and inviting feedback – so we can harness the expertise of the music community to make the best possible musical instrument we can.  It’s an approach which will stand in complete contrast to the ‘romantic’ vision of a instrument maker, shut away, tirelessly working to perfect their ‘masterpiece’.

In addition to myself, designer Brian Loudon (http://loud1design.co.uk) will be collaborating on the project and it’ll be introduced in more detail and documented on the mk blog.  It offers the opportunity for anyone to get involved with the design and testing of a next generation musical instrument.  I for one am excited by what we might come up with.

This display stand has been designed as a point of sale to display musical instruments.  I originally had all the profiling of the material cut by the amazing process waterjet cutting – a high pressure stream of water which can cut through most things including metals, wood and stone.  As you can probably imagine the foam and ali used on the stand didn’t cause it too much problem.  The waterjet however couldn’t replicate the detail as seen on the top plate, and so laser profiling emerged as the best way to do this – more expensive but able to handle fine detailing much better.   Both processes pretty new to me, it was a really interesting project to work on and should open up some doors in the future.