By Seth Boyum
Graphics Manager
seth.boyum1323@mb.rctc.edu
Mandi Mason designed a four-guitar stand as project for her Computer Aided Drafting program. (Echo Photo by Seth Boyum)
Last semester, RCTC student Mandi Mason displayed her Computer-Aided Design project, a four-guitar stand, at the CAD Department’s open house.
“For my final project, I was kind of just playing around with some bigger ideas,” Mason said. “At my house, I’ve got plaster walls and I have a lot of guitars, and I can’t keep putting holes in the walls to hang up all the guitars. I had a need, and I wanted to kind of fix that need, so my guitars were taken care of and my walls were left intact.”
Mason was encouraged by instructors Pam Benson and Jacquie Deml-Mauseth to expand the project to include building the design she had created.
Photo courtesy of Mandi Mason
Photo courtesy of Mandi Mason
It took two weeks to design the stand using SolidWorks software, one day to cut the wood with a CNC router and three more days, spread across two weeks, to assemble the stand. The wood was stained, with fabric wrapped around the guitar’s alcove.
For further decoration, Mason created an clear acrylic, LED-backlit back plate. The surface of the plate has a laser-etched recreation of the blueprint from the Les Paul guitar patent. The etching was made in CorelDraw.
This semester, Mason is planning to design and build a dove-joint drawer for installing into the stand’s base before declaring the project complete.
“I had no intentions of actually building it,” Mason said about the stand. “It was kind of a dream. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it.”
Mason has since designed and built a second guitar stand for commission for a musician who saw the original on the Internet. She is working on her associate of applied science degree, with an emphasis in computer-aided drafting technology.
She hopes to use the skills she has learned for designing furniture and prosthetics.