There was a hierarchy of increasing precision when it came to woodworking, and it went like this: hooves, magic, machines. Like most kirin, Cinder Glow had always been fairly clumsy when it came to getting things made by hoof. But she also had the misfortune of not being great with her magic either. Sure, she could use a ruler and pencil held in her magic to measure distances accurately, but when it came to joining up the marks she’d made she’d always find there was an offset between the pencil tip and the ruler edge. The line would begin exactly on the starting mark, and end up to one side of the finishing one. And then she’d try to saw down the line and end up wavering to either side of it anyway.

Still, that hadn’t mattered in the olden times. It wasn’t like an isolated village of thirty kirin gave much opportunity to shop around for craftsponies, and the ‘rustic’ tables, chairs and shelves Cinder Glow had made would have had to do.

“The seven-minute video I watched made it look so easy,” she said, glaring down at the pile of freshly-sawn wood in front of her. “ ‘How hard could it be?’ Kinda quite hard, it turns out.”

From her familiar seat in the corner, Rain Shine gave her a consoling smile, but of course said nothing.

Ok, first came thicknessing the wood for the sides. She’d held off a moon already because the drum sander had needed a new belt, an item with the delightful attribute combination of being expensive to buy, slow to arrive, and a complete, shocking-badly-designed pain in the flank to fit. But yesterday she’d finally got the belt cut to size and fitted, so today she could begin the work.

Before she did anything, though, she set up the video camera on its tripod, checked the viewfinder and started it recording. Although it would add a good deal more effort to every step, as well as meaning she’d have to make sure her mane was looking reasonably presentable each day, she got the feeling she’d regret not filming the process.

After all, she’d never built a guitar before. And would only ever do it for the first time once.

Not something she’d have ever braved a few years before. She was well aware of her own inaccuracies as a craftpony, and knew she didn’t have anything like the skill level to even bother attempting it. But with the recent mechanisation she’d had to switch to in order to compete with the wider market they were now part of, it suddenly looked like an option.

It seemed the world had turned on its head when those two ponies from Equestria proper had come to visit. It wasn’t even the restoring of the kirin voices – although that event had changed things for Rain Shine – it was the globalisation that had followed. Word of the kirin village had evidently spread, and lots more friendship missionaries had descended on them.

The first real change had been the money. Although things like the pegasus-staffed postal service could have been implemented right away, they wouldn’t do it for payments of nuts and acorns they couldn’t trade elsewhere. So Rain Shine had had to sort out a downpayment of raw materials, like woven baskets and rare wood, to get them enough Equestrian bits for the village to switch over.

And just that whole debacle had taken six moons. Rain Shine had been hailed as a visionary, and would no doubt be remembered in kirin histories for generations. But she’d said stepped down as leader straight after, and who could blame her?

Cinder Glow shook her head. That had been ten years ago. Not much to be done about it now, just adapt and move forwards with the times. “Right, time to build a guitar!”

The table holding the drum sander was already in the middle of the room from the day before, so all she had to do was flick the power switch and press the green button, jumping at the loud bark as it spun to life despite having heard it many times before.

She pretended she didn’t notice Rain Shine’s silent giggle.

So, without further ado, she lifted the two rosewood strips from the pile of wood, the pieces that would eventually become the sides of the instrument. Each was slightly wider than her hoof, around as tall as she was, and about the thickness of a bit. And they were beautiful: a deep, earthy brown with straight grain lines down their length. They even smelled good.

But she’d read enough about that faint scent of roses to resist being seduced by it. On went her respirator, cold against her muzzle and fastening awkwardly behind her head. Then goggles. Then ear defenders.

And then she fed each piece onto the belt, and through the machine they went, while she trotted around to its other side to catch them as they emerged. Nothing happened on the first pass, as expected, so she turned the wheel a quarter turn and lowered the sanding drum incrementally. The second pass, too, was uneventful. Another quarter turn. By the sixth there was some light scraping, and by the ninth, a raucous roaring as the abrasive crossed the whole surface, spraying a fine, smoke-like cloud of sawdust into the air.

Working dust extraction would have been really nice, especially with the whole rosewood-allergy-sensitising thing. But that kind of heavy equipment probably wouldn’t be readily available in the kirin village until the promised branch line of the Rainbow Express was finally built. One-off pieces, like the workshop machinery, could be couriered in by pegasus teams. But commonplace machines like vacuum cleaners weren’t worth it. Such was the nature of things, but at least magic made a good substitute in the meantime.

She kept passing the pieces through the sander again and again, checking their thickness with her callipers every few times. The calipers were cheap and flimsy, but got the job done as long as she was careful with them. “Almost there…” she said after a while, making just a hoofful more passes. It was a tricky balancing act – the thinner the wood, the better it would bend, but also the weaker it would be. “Ok, I think that’s it.” As thin as she dared take it.

A press of the red button and the machine cut off, taking a few seconds to spool down. She wiped a hoof over the sanded surface, leaving a fine coat of dark dust on her hoof and more disappearing into the air. She was glad she’d got Rain Shine her own respirator and goggles last Leaf Day, almost a year ago now. And again delighted at the leather apron she’d received in return, noting how the sanding had left it covered in sawdust she hadn’t been paying attention to at the time.

“Hang on,” she said to Rain Shine, cautioning her with a hoof not to remove her respirator just yet, “let me just deal with this.”

But Rain Shine, too, lit her horn as Cinder Glow did herself, and together the two of them scoured the air of the nasty sawdust and expelled it from the workshop through the window, closing it again afterwards.

“Ok,” she wiped her brow, “sides thicknessed, first step all done.” She patted the drum sander with a hoof, then wheeled it away back to its corner. “So the next guitar thing to do is…” she looked down the list she’d made. “Huh. That’s it. For quite a while.”

Rain Shine frowned at the thicknessed sides, then the rest of the pile of wood, and then at Cinder and raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing else I can do for now,” Cinder said, “not until I’ve made some jigs.” She glanced down at the list again. “A whole lot of them, actually.”

After clearing one of the work tables of assorted tools, Cinder took a breath and then levitated the stack of MDF sheets onto it, setting them down with more of a crash than she’d intended. She had sympathy for the pegasus deliverers who’d had to fly the stack in, but then, they’d also carried all the machines in her workshop, which were much heavier.

“Right,” she said, mostly to herself, “this needs to become the shooting board, the plate-jointing jig, the sanding dishes, the steam-bending jig, the outline jig and the top of the go-bar deck.”

Just hearing the list, Cinder Glow felt frazzled, which she saw echoed on Rain Shine’s muzzle. This was going to take a lot of measuring to lay out what had to go where.

She picked up a pen and piece of paper and sat back on her haunches, ignoring the cold floor. This could be done warmer and more comfortably at home, but it would probably work out easier with the MDF sheets right there in front of her. And, more to the point, she hated the idea of leaving the workshop after the first day with only a few minutes of thickness sanding to show for it.

First came the rough sketch of which sheet would be cut into what, starting with the biggest pieces she needed at the end of it. That became a bit easier when she remembered some were round rather than square, so could be fitted closer together once they lost their square corners. Then out came the tape measure, and the pen, and what felt like hours of drawing lines and adding up numbers. But at the end of it all, she had the pieces she needed drawn on as few sheets as possible, with as little wasted material as she could manage, and even had two sheets to spare.

A glance at the clock on the wall. “I think I can get this all cut out today before it gets late enough to worry about the noise disturbing the neighbours.” She nodded to herself and set her jaw, which Rain Shine took as a cue to slip out. A moment later Cinder heard the kettle being filled in the next room.

Days in her workshop had certainly become more warm and pleasant since Rain Shine had been watching and helping out. The hot drinks Cinder would forget to make herself were even more welcome than the extra set of hooves and magic, especially during the winter months and doubly so since the tea stopped her nodding off in the middle of using sharp tools.

There was a glow in Cinder’s chest as she turned back to the MDF.

Each sheet was large and unwieldy to work with, so the first priority was the big cuts that would divide them into whatever was closest to halves. From there each approximate half could be subdivided however was necessary.

Cinder Glow plugged in the table saw – the only thing in the workshop she’d decided was so dangerous it would live unplugged unless in use – and lined up the first sheet on the table, locking the fence in place to give a flush cut exactly on the line as she wanted it.

She liked the table saw, after having had a few moons to get used to it. It still terrified her a bit, but most of the time it cut dead-straight lines exactly where she wanted them, and that counted for a lot. It whirred into life as she hit the green button, power understated in its song.

The machine made short order of the MDF sheets, each passing through the blade pretty much just as fast as she could push them, clattering to the floor on the far side where she still hadn’t got around to building an outfeed table. Maybe next year. Then came the crosscutting where required, and removing edge strips; anywhere cuts were straight lines from one edge of the piece to the other. All done with no fuss and in very little time.

It did throw sawdust everywhere, both on the surfaces and in the air itself. Dust she knew to be particularly nasty, and so had to be removed at once. She swept it out with magic and drew in fresh air, realising as she did so that apparently she was only working with hazardous-dust wood today.

By the time she was done cleaning up, Rain Shine trotted back in holding two cups of tea in her magic. It took Cinder Glow a minute to extract herself from the ear defenders, goggles and respirator, but it was worth it as she took the teacup in her magic and sat down next to Rain Shine. “Thank you,” she said. A few minutes to rest her legs after being on her hooves for so long was very welcome, and also let her plan out the next steps.

There was more MDF dust to come, of course, since some of the jigs and templates had more complex shapes than the angular outlines the table saw had divided the sheets into. Anything with curves or concave angles would need doing by a different method, but the bandsaw ought to be able to handle the lot. “I think we’ll get the bandsawing done after this,” she said to Rain Shine, “and then call it a night.”

Smiling, Rain Shine closed her eyes and dipped her head.

The bandsaw was a much calmer beast than the table saw. Unless you were cutting tiny bits of wafer-thin wood, it was easy to control. The blade, an oval belt of toothed steel, pulled the workpiece into the table it sat on, keeping it exactly where you wanted it. It droned as the blade rubbed against the bearings, and hissed as it cut.

Cutting out the rest of the MDF shapes took longer than expected. Not only did the pile of pieces to get through seem much bigger once Cinder Glow had got started, but some of the curves were awkward to fit through the machine. Even with the bandsaw’s considerable throat depth, some of the curves had to be approached in stages, working in from opposite ends. And then there were the pieces that would become the sanding dishes: circles almost as big across as Cinder’s outspread forelegs. Even with magic, Rain Shine had to help hold those pieces steady while Cinder pushed them through the blade.

But eventually it was all done, and, after clearing the air again and then the rest of the workshop too, two neatly-thicknessed sides sat atop a stack of different sized bits of MDF in one corner, the evidence of what the day had seen accomplished, and what awaited for tomorrow.

Cinder Glow bade a tired farewell to Rain Shine, trudged upstairs, boiled and ate some noodles for as quick and effortless a dinner as possible, soaked in a hot bath for an hour to soothe the muscles in her back, and crawled into bed.

The next day was going to be bleak, she knew even before she entered the workshop. There were too many jigs to get done to expect any time to work on the actual guitar itself.

First there were holes to drill. Most of the jigs were made in multiple thin layers, so vertical dowels would keep the layers lined up even if they were cut and shaped separately. The pillar drill was relatively simple to use on smaller pieces, but some of these were still awkwardly large. Luckily Rain Shine was ready and waiting for her at the workshop, so after greetings they jumped right in, with one supporting and the other drilling. The drill purred, spinning comparatively slowly, measured and controlled in its task. Once the first layer was drilled, it was held over each successive one as a template, leaving a matching set of holes across all layers.

That was it for the outline and steam-bending jigs, those that would hold the sides in place through the bending process. The steam-bending one was only for one side of the guitar, the outline both together, and so particularly large.

“Ok, glueing next,” Cinder Glow said after they’d cleaned the drill, removing MDF dust from the air for hopefully the last time.

Rain Shine grinned and clapped her hooves together.

Glueing wood was probably the closest thing woodwork had to magic, because it really didn’t seem like something that should have worked. Everypony, throughout their lives, had seen again and again that glue was weak and unreliable. All foals knew that anything glued into a book peeled and fell out within minutes. Superglue was anything but, succeeding only at glueing one hoof to another.

But wood glue, when applied properly, was like nothing else. Doubly weird since it was the same type of glue routinely used on paper with poor results. And yet, if there were one fact every woodworker could quote off the top of their heads, it was that wood glue was harder than the wood around it. Usually implying stronger. Two pieces of wood properly glued together behaved as one single piece. They could be cut, sanded, chiselled or shaped however you wanted, and were no more likely to split along the glue joint than anywhere else. Remarkable, to Cinder Glow, every single time.

Also it was fairly hard to get wrong. If both faces were perfectly flat – as MDF boards were – and were clamped together tightly across the whole glued face, then the joint would be absolutely solid.

From the shelf on one wall, Rain Shine picked out the everyday wood glue and levitated it over. Cinder had bought some expensive specialist luthiery glue just in case, but for making the jigs the cheaper stuff would be fine.

Before opening the village up to Equestria, the Kirin-created glues Cinder had had to rely on had started drying the moment they met the air, so spreading and clamping had always been a rushed affair. But the modern Yakyakistan glues she now had access to had no such problems, consistently making her life much easier. Still, when there were several layers to work with, and large pieces too, she was glad to have a second set of hooves and magic to get it done in time.

“Here we go!” she said, popping open the bottle and squeezing out a line of glue around the outline of the jig piece, half a hoofwidth in from the edge. Then she went back and forth filling in the middle, and then passed the glue bottle to Rain Shine for the opposite panel.

Next came the messy part: using a hoof to spread those thick trails of glue out into a smooth layer across the whole surface. She’d seen some ponies using cards or scraps of wood to spread it, but when she’d tried that she’d ended up filling in the gaps with her hooves anyway, so it seemed easier to skip straight to it. “Make sure we get the whole surface,” she said to Rain Shine, “we can’t leave any gaps.”

In no time at all two panels were completely covered in glue and two kirin were wiping their hooves dry with paper towels. A waste, given that they had lots more glueing to do straight after, but one that let them grip the pieces solidly when lining them up and didn’t put glue everywhere in the process. They then pressed the two panel faces together, aligning them by sight. After that came the tricky applying of the locating pins, taking out a few long dowel rods, tapering one tip of each with a pencil sharpener, and then feeding them into the holes they’d drilled.

With the rubber mallet held in a hoof rather than magic, Cinder hammered each of the dowels until they slid through both layers and hit the benchtop below, being careful not to hit so hard they split and splintered.

Imaginary clock ticking, she and Rain Shine then turned the piece over and covered the exposed side in more glue, along with that of the mirroring side of the next layer. Just as before they applied the glue, lined up the faces, pressed them together and hammered the dowels into the next level. Then they repeated the process again, and again, and yet again.

Once all eight layers were in place and the dowels driven the whole way through, they both raced to get all the clamps Cinder owned locked into place around the circumference of the piece, forcing the layers together as tightly as possible. For added measure, after setting the piece down flat on a side workbench, Cinder levitated a heavy metal vice and laid it down in the centre of the piece, weight to ensure the middle was just as tightly joined as the edges.

Wiping her brow, Cinder sunk onto her workshop stool for a quick rest, and then leaped right back up again. “I forgot the wax paper!”

Rain Shine’s eyes went wide, but straight away lifted the whole piece and vice atop it in her magic, while Cinder tore off a sheet of wax paper from the roll and slid it underneath before the piece was lowered again. A terrible crisis if unresolved, but quickly fixed.

“Right,” Cinder said, this time choosing to lean on a worktop rather than spark another crisis by sitting down, “that’ll be dry by tomorrow. But since it used up all the clamps, we can’t glue anything else until then.” She scratched her head for a few moments. “Ok, we can do the outline jig tomorrow, about all we can do today without clamping is the steam box.”

That would be different. An enclosed chamber into which the two rosewood pieces they’d thicknessed yesterday would be placed. Then steam would be drawn in, softening the wood until it could be removed and bent around the MDF steam-bending jig. A steam box. An enclosure for bending wood… made of wood.

What else was she going to use? She was a woodworker who lived in a forest; wood was the obvious answer. Sure, she could have ordered in a plastic pipe from Dodge Junction, but the courier fees would have been huge, and, well, there was a high chance the bending wouldn’t work at all either way and she’d never want to do it again. So going for a long-term steam oven might have been foolish. She could always invest in one later, if this attempt turned out ok.

“I was going to screw this together, since I think glue might melt, but actually I think nails will do.” Quicker and easier, with less wear on fragile thin drill bits, and not much difference in performance if the steam box ended up warped beyond survivability by their first attempt.

Which it really might, even if the bending were successful. She’d been weighing up whether to use natural wood or an artificial composite. MDF would absorb water and disintegrate, but she thought natural wood would warp too. And it seemed a waste of what would otherwise be nice, valuable wood. Luckily she’d found a few small pieces of plywood in her scrap pile which she thought would be big enough.

Plywood was a fairly new material to her. MDF had been her first love when trade with Equestria had made her aware of artificial woods as a thing at all, and it was still her go-to most of the time. Plywood was lighter, cheaper and stronger, being made of thin layers of wood laminated together, each layer glued at right angles to those above and below. But those straight grains meant it wasn’t so great for cutting curves in, and could splinter or tear out around the edges. And the glued stack of layers configuration meant shaping it three-dimensionally was very liable to go wrong.

For the steam box, though, it ought to be the best option. Grains running in two directions would have a harder time warping. Maybe she was wrong, maybe the glue would all run in the steam and the whole thing would disintegrate. But she thought it was her best option, and worth a try.

The table saw divided the plywood piece into five long, thin strips. Those would then need crosscutting to the right length, and the last piece further divided with multiple crosscuts. For that, the mitre saw was a better-suited tool than the table saw. Cinder measured and marked out the cuts she needed, grateful that any slight inaccuracies wouldn’t matter all that much, then moved the plywood into position with the first pencil line across the saw path, and the rest of the length spilling over onto the table next to it.

From the corner of her eye she noticed Rain Shine rearrange her hooves where she sat. How strange it must be to have gone from the most important pony in the village to somepony with nothing to do. Rain Shine was always welcome in the workshop, and always appreciated. But Cinder did worry about how happy Rain Shine could be with the arrangement, how she defined herself and what she spent the rest of her hours on. She’d lost both her career and her main hobby, and can’t have had that much left. Cinder looked over and gave Rain Shine a smile, hoping it didn’t let any sadness show.

Well, dwelling on it wouldn’t change anything, and it wouldn’t get a guitar built either.

Mask on, goggles down, deep breath. The mitre saw was scary in a different way to the table saw. There wasn’t much danger of accidentally pushing your hoof into the blade, because the wood was kept stationary and the blade only came down vertically. But there was something about having your hoof near that blade, which was much larger and louder than that of the table saw, and always seemed so much more aggressive.

Cinder pressed the button and the saw roared, reminding her too late that she’d forgotten to put on her ear defenders. She brought the handle down, lifting the guard and directing the blade into the wood, then pushed back, sliding the blade from the front of the piece to the back, neatly slicing off the top section.

After grabbing the ear defenders, she slid the rest of the plywood across the saw base so the next pencil mark lined up with the blade, and then repeated the task. In less than a minute, the long strips of plywood had transformed into seven smaller pieces of the right size.

Nails, too, were straightforward and immediate. The vertical plywood piece went in the vice with its top flush with the worktop. The top piece was placed over it, held in place with a hoof while the other held a hammer and magic kept the nail in place. As long as the nail wasn’t too close to either side of the vertical piece it oughtn’t to split the wood, so, without further ado, Cinder hammered it in. With one done, pinning the top in place, the others were even easier.

The other side wasn’t as easy to place, as the first blocked access to the vice. The bottom was harder still, as there was nothing to keep the two sides it rested on parallel. If Cinder had been interested in neat results, that would have slowed things down.

Instead she breezed through, and a short time later held a rectangular wooden box with open ends.

The wood for bending would be slid in from one end, but if it sat on the floor of the box then it would only get steamed on one side. It needed to hang in the middle, and that meant installing the steam box equivalent of oven shelves.

Since it was too large to fit on the pillar drill, she picked up a cordless hoof drill, choosing the familiar dowel-sized bit and flipping the box on its side. The cordless drill was comforting in how relaxed it sounded, a high-pitched squeak whether drilling holes or driving in screws. Cinder drilled half a dozen holes down the length of the box, then turned it over to mirror them on the opposite side. She should really have done that before putting the box together, but the alignment ending up a little out wouldn’t really matter here.

A couple more holes at one end so the steam could escape. Then the pencil sharpener and dowels again, with a little dab of glue to hold each in place, positioned and then rubber malletted in while Rain Shine looked through the box from one end and guided each dowel with her magic. All that remained was sorting out a way to pipe steam in.

Luckily she’d thought ahead and asked around if anypony in the village had a spare metal barrel with a lid. They weren’t exactly common in the village – maybe someday, when the railway arrived – but Autumn Blaze had had one in her Band of Objects, of all things, and had been happy to lend it out for a few days.

A pipe to connect barrel with steam box had been harder to arrange. In the end she’d gone with a cardboard tube Fern Flare had bought a poster in, which Cinder had wrapped in vines for reinforcement and held in place with duct tape. It probably wouldn’t last more than a few hours, but that would be enough.

“Almost done,” she said to Rain Shine, taking down the small piece she’d made for one end of the box, holding the cardboard tube flush against it and drawing quickly around the tube circumference. Then she drilled a hole just inside the line, set the drill down and levitated the jigsaw out from a drawer.

Jigsaws were hack tools. They were for rough DIY around the house or on a building site, not precision cutting in a workshop. They shook too much to use for too long, veered off course too easily, and often didn’t cut straight vertically.

They were, however, better than just about anything else for cutting tight curves and circles. The technically correct way to do it was probably to use the scroll saw, but, between the fiddliness of setting it up and the glacial speed it cut, Cinder never had the patience and would reach for the jigsaw instead unless something needed to be cut at a particular angle.

Poking the blade through the freshly-drilled hole, the jigsaw juddered the wood against the benchtop as Cinder cut out the pencilled circle, no matter how tightly she tried to hold it flat. But it was soon done, the jigsaw back in the drawer and the sawdust magicked away.

And that was it. Steam box all done. Now time to get steaming! So, first she’d need the–

“I just remembered the jig is still drying,” Cinder said, running a hoof over her eyes. “The box is finished, but nothing’s getting steamed today.”

Rain Shine put a hoof on her shoulder. After a few moments she turned and lit her horn, and a glance over Cinder’s shoulder showed the kettle levitating towards the tap.

“Not tomorrow, either.” Cinder glared over at the jig in the corner. “The outline jig needs glueing first too. Could do them both at once if each one didn’t take up all the clamps in the shop.” She could have planned ahead and bought more clamps, but the ones good enough to be worth having were frustratingly expensive. “I guess that’s about it for today.”

Somewhat defeated, they cleaned up, had their tea, and closed up the workshop for the day.

The next day Cinder wasn’t in the workshop for even half an hour. The clamps were removed from the steam-bending jig, the glue was spread on the layers of the outline jig, and then the clamps were tightened down around that one instead. Even with the time to set up the camera and the fiddliness of doing all the glueing herself – since she’d told Rain Shine the day really wasn’t worth bothering with – she was out again before the morning’s market was in full swing. But the weather was good, so she bought some food and went down to the lake instead.

“Steaming day!”

Unfortunately all the time she’d spent thinking about the day didn’t make it run more smoothly or help it get to the good bit quicker.

First the clamps had to come off the outline jig, with a quick inspection to make sure everything had glued ok. That was alright, only a couple of minutes.

But then came the spindle sander. Given that every single project made out of wood would be sanded, a wide range of tools were available for the task. Belt sanders flattened faces, drum sanders took things down to a precise thickness, random orbit sanders did all they could to remove scratches. The spindle sander didn’t get used that often, but it did something none of the others could: curves!

After clearing a couple of things out of the way in the storage area beneath the benchtop, Cinder reached in with her magic and levitated out the spindle sander, then sat it down on the bench and plugged it in. She chose the largest size of sanding cylinder, since the curves she would be sanding were wide and gentle. After locking it into place with a spanner, she was good to go.

The spindle sander made a high-pitched whine as it ran, neither understated nor overstated in its power. The 80-grit sandpaper made quick work of evening out the edges of the different glued layers, making them uniform where Cinder’s rough cutting hadn’t. She knew the reason for the spindle bobbing up and down was to spread the abrasive load across the whole height of the cylinder and so reduce wear on the sandpaper, as well as preventing overheating, but she still had a suspicion the sander mostly did it because it looked cute.

The steam-bending jig wasn’t quite so important, because it was only to be used during the bending process itself. But the outline jig would be locked around the guitar sides for the next dozen steps of the process, holding it rigid while other bits were applied. So whatever shape the inside of that jig was, the outside of the guitar would end up. Cinder took extra time making sure the curves were as even as she could get them.

Yet another stage of putting hazardous dust everywhere, so they swept the air, the surfaces and the workpieces themselves with magic to clear it all, and then Cinder stashed the spindle sander away again.

On the worktop in front of them sat two jigs ready to be used.

Rain Shine picked up Autumn Blaze’s metal barrel in her magic, then paused, pointing a hoof to the door and looking questioningly at Cinder.

“...Yeah, I think outside might be best for this bit,” Cinder said, rubbing the back of her neck. Even if nothing spilled or caught fire, releasing all that steam inside a woodshop probably wasn’t the best move. She picked up the workpiece and jigs in her magic, stuffed all the now-vacant clamps into a saddlebag and slung it on her back, and then trotted out after Rain Shine.

They set up in the gap between Cinder’s workshop and the next, tucked out of the way and sheltered in case of strong winds or sudden rain, though neither were likely. Rain Shine dumped a few kettle-loads of water into the metal barrel while Cinder propped it up on loose bricks, just enough to hold it steady and elevate it so she could stretch a hoof underneath.

Once the barrel was full, she stuffed the cardboard-and-vine tube into one end, and pushed its other end through the hole in the steam box end piece. She dragged a small collapsible workbench outside next to the barrel and set the rest of the steam box atop it.

Then she carefully levitated out one of the two rosewood pieces she’d drum sanded to thickness on the first day and slid it into the steam box, fitting the end piece with pipe attached to one end of the box and clamping it in place, and then doing the same with the plain end piece on the other end.

“Right then.” She pointed at each crucial piece in turn. “Barrel, check. Water, check. Pipe, check. Steam box, check. Workpiece inside steam box, check. Bending jig, check. Clamps, check.” She patted the top of the steam box. “I think we’re good to go!”

Now they just needed the steam. Rain Shine gave her an encouraging nod, and Cinder lay down on the grass beside the barrel, reaching her hoof underneath it. A kirin could heat any water to steam in minutes.

They just needed anger.

So Cinder thought of all the delays they’d hit so far, the hurdles where the construction should have been an easy path. How she’d spent far more time making jigs than she had anything for the actual guitar, and how doubly frustrating that was because she was having to use batch production methods for something she might well only ever make one of.

She’d been planning more, probably, but, after the ordeal it had been so far? Who knew.

With the usual tingling sensation, like a blush but molten, Cinder’s skin changed, her whole being burning up into nirik fury.

All she wanted was to make her friend a Leaf Day present! She’d left herself a few weeks, and set aside that time for it, but the whole thing had been such a calamity so far that she couldn’t now see it taking less than several moons. She had a business to run! Did the universe think she could just pay for her meals out of thin air until then? Why did every little step have to take ten times longer than it ought to?!

Rain Shine tapped Cinder’s shoulder to get her attention, then nodded towards the barrel. Cocking an ear, the bubbling was easy to hear, so Cinder made the mental effort to push her rage into a corner, quelling the fire from blue to orange, and containing it in just the hoof beneath the barrel. That would keep the water on the boil for as long as they needed it.

Already steam was rising from the exhaust vent in the steam box, and they both watched it for a while, mostly motionless for a few minutes as the box silently did its work.

Steam was coming from either end of the box, too, seeping out through the small gaps in the seals where the ends were clamped on. But that didn’t matter too much, as long as most of the steam passed through the box, then its job would be done.

“There’s a basic rule about how long to steam wood for, a certain time per certain amount of thickness, I forget what.” Cinder shrugged. “I don’t think it matters too much here, we’re on the much thinner end. Ponies often bend wood for building canoe hulls, so if you imagine how thick that wood must be… The problem is, I couldn’t find an equation that also talked about angles bent and tightness of curves. A guitar is much curvier than a canoe.”

Frowning, Rain Shine looked off to one side.

“So I don’t know, really,” Cinder continued. “A luthier somewhere said an hour was good when bending the sides, so that’s the plan.” Just an hour spent dwelling on the irritation the whole thing had caused so far. And how much longer it would go on doing so for, too. There certainly wouldn’t be a shortage of material to keep her flame alight.

An hour later, she stirred herself from her grim thoughts. Lighting her horn, she levitated the jigs into position on the grass nearby and set out the clamps around them. The video camera, too, she adjusted to get the new spot in view.

“Ok,” she said to Rain Shine, “we have to get the clamps off and the wood into the jig as quickly as possible, especially as bending it will take a bit of time. All set?”

Rain Shine nodded, setting her jaw and planting all four hooves firmly on the ground.

“Great. Let’s go!” Cinder pulled her hoof back and shook the flame away, stubbing it out on the grass for a moment until all the nirik was pushed out. Rain Shine, meanwhile, had tugged the pipe loose with her magic and set it down nearby.

The two of them together then levitated the steam box, quickly but smoothly, and set it down in the space on the grass. Then they both set about on the clamps, trying to get them undone and removed despite them being flat on the ground, and all the while ideally without getting in the way of the camera.

The clamps were off in short order, and Cinder reached inside with her magic to grab the length of wood and pull it free. She lined it up with the jig and slowly lowered it onto the outline until the wood was touching at the points that would become the guitar’s hip and shoulder.

Then came the scary bit. Cinder took a rounded clamping caul in her hoof and placed it on the outside of the rosewood, above the gap where the guitar’s waist would be. Very slowly she pushed down, bending the wood into the curve. She locked her muscles in place to keep everything steady, just gradually increasing the pressure and shifting the wood closer and closer to the edge of the jig.

She’d expected more noise. Cracking noises were a sign of disaster, but she’d thought there’d be hissing or splitting noises even when the wood stayed intact. Instead it was eerily quiet, and the wood didn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight as she pushed it into place. Still, she kept it slow. Rushing it just wasn’t worth the risk.

Then again, if she went too slowly, the wood would cool and stiffen, and she wouldn’t be able to bend the rest of it.

Soon enough she had the waist curve pushed all the way down to the jig, accomplished without any visible or audible going wrong. She locked a clamp on each side of the caul to hold it in place, screwing them in as tightly as she dared. Then she moved to the top curve, as the next tightest, using a new caul to push it towards the jig in the same way and then clamp it down.

The bottom curve, left until last, was the shallowest, and fortunately the wood did not seem to be noticeably stiffer even after a few minutes outside the steam box. With a final caul she bent the wood steadily around the curve of the jig, clamping it in place.

Then it was done, and she could take a step back. And breathe.

The piece of rosewood was flush against the jig across the whole length of its profile, all locked into place, and there was no sign it had cracked or been damaged in the process. The steam box had functioned much as desired, and the hour’s steaming time had turned out to be just right.

“Job well done, I’d say.” She smiled at Rain Shine. “I’ll look up how long it takes to dry and how long it’s recommended to leave it clamped for.” The more she thought about it, the more she doubted they’d get the second side done today as well. So much for ‘steaming day’ as a single entity.

Even if the wood dried quicker than expected, Cinder wasn’t sure she had it in her to go through the nirik phase of boiling the water and keeping it going for an hour again, not in the same day.

“Maybe we should leave it there for today. I hate how long it’s taking but we’re probably best off with the other side starting afresh tomorrow.”

Rain Shine helped her pack everything back inside the workshop – even though they’d need it all out again the next day, it needed to go inside for now in case of rain in the night. They hugged goodbye and went their separate ways, with Cinder spending a while looking for clamping time answers. Overnight seemed to be the most common suggestion.

Some of the posts and videos mentioned soaking the wood for a while beforehoof, which she now recalled but had completely forgotten at the time. Should she try that on the other side? No, the first had worked out great, no reason to change the method for the second, especially if she wanted the two to match. The first time probably hadn’t been a fluke.

It was almost worse, the thought of the second side going wrong. To get a matching set, she’d have to buy some new wood and redo them both, including the first one which had no problems. All she could do was hope for the best.

In the end, the worrying proved unfounded. Yesterday’s piece looked great when unclamped from the jig, showing no signs of splitting and holding its shape well. And then the second side bent as willingly and flawlessly as the first.

A good day.

Fortunately the working outside parts were done for the time being, because the next day it rained solidly. Inside the workshop, Cinder undid the clamps around the second side in its jig while Rain Shine hovered nearby filming.

Again, the results after bending looked great. There was a slight complication that the workpiece was stuck to the jig in one place, perhaps by some melted lignum from the wood, perhaps some melted glue from the jig. Either way, a few minutes work with a thin-bladed knife popped it off without any sign of damage.

Then came the process of fitting the two sides into the outside jig. The jig was shaped with the outline of the whole guitar body, and the sides were supposed to fit snugly inside it for the next few steps of the build. Each was currently a little too long, so Cinder placed one side in the jig, lightly clamped it in place, and drew a line at the top and bottom where it passed the halfway mark on the jig. Then she took the first side out and repeated the process with the second.

Trimming the excess with the mitre saw was quick but nerve-wracking. Obviously she couldn’t leave it on there, but if she cut too much off there was no way to repair it. At the last minute she decided to cut just outside the line and then bring it down the rest of the way with the belt sander, which she had finer control over.

Cinder slotted both sides into the outside jig, sandwiching them into place with the expanding clamp/cauls she’d specially ordered, then stepped back to admire her hoofiwork.

The side bending was finally done! Six days of cutting, sanding, glueing and steaming, all to make two pieces of rosewood guitar-shaped. It was worth it, now that she saw the end result, but getting there had been such a slog.

Next she’d need to trim the heel and tail blocks to size with the mitre saw and shape them with the belt sander, then glue them in place where the two side pieces met, one at the top and the other at the bottom. She’d sand the insides, and shape a few small vertical braces and glue them into place along the sides too.

She’d shape the sides a little with a tiny plane, and then there’d be the kerfing to think about. Using a jig she hadn’t figured out yet to make hundreds of small slits along four long, thin pieces of wood, so they’d easily bend with curves. Then she’d need to sand the sides into a curved profile using a sanding dish – for which she’d already cut out the MDF, but would need to do some drastic work to in order to get it vaguely dish-contoured – and glue the kerfing pieces around the top and bottom inside rims of the guitar sides, giving a bigger surface area for glueing onto

And only after that would she be able to even think about the top and back. The panels would need planing and sanding to a perfect edge, then glueing, both steps of which would require separate MDF jigs first. After the jointing they’d need thicknessing. And then there’d be the whole separate headache of the rosette, which would need her to buy a dremel and a couple of mounting tools for it, and then precision-cut lots of very small or very thin pieces and glue them perfectly into place.

After that she’d need to work on all the bracing to give the top and back strength and keep them locked into their shallow bowl curves, but in order to shape and glue them she’d first have to build a go-bar deck, which would take a long time.

Once all that was done, at last she would be ready for making the neck, the bit that was said to be actually difficult and time-consuming.

All Cinder wanted was to give her friend a Leaf Day gift to say thanks, and that she appreciated her being around. Rain Shine had sung the most beautiful harmonies, to the point that Cinder recalled them vividly even a decade later. The least she deserved was a guitar she could make music with using her hooves.

In her mind’s eye, Cinder saw herself saying the same words she’d been thinking for many moons. ‘This is for you, thanks for everything. Blessed Leaf Day.’

But they’d have to wait until next year. She’d need to sort out something else for this year instead, and, at this late notice, a trinket from the market or something similar was probably the only option. She could only hope Rain Shine would forgive the lazy gift once next Leaf Day rolled around and the guitar was finally ready. And that she could hang on that long without it.

It had really better be ready by next year.

“Right,” Cinder said, pulling out her list. “What’s next?”

So anyway, guess what I've been spending my time doing this year instead of writing.

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