Saint Paul, Minnesota — Est. 2025

Fossick Builds

Handbuilt offset guitars from Saint Paul. Ink in the grain. Walnut in the neck. Built to be played hard, hauled to shows, and look better with a dent in them.

Commission a Build Explore the Wendigo
Fossick Builds — The Wendigo in Meridian Green
✦   W E N D I G O   ✦
The Philosophy
01

Built like a find.
Not like a trophy.

Fossick Builds makes guitars that look like they turned up in the right used shop at the right strange hour — weathered, rich, and a little hard to place. The trick is simple: real wood, real grain, real ink, and enough patience to let the finish do what it wants.

These are not museum guitars. They are not polished into a fake perfection. They are built to feel broken-in on day one — like a pawn-shop find, something leaning in the corner of your uncle's basement, or the kind of thing somebody swears Joe Bonamassa overpaid for because it had a story in it.

Fossick means to rummage. To search around. To find value where other people weren't looking. That's the whole shop in one word. The raw wood is the starting point. The guitar is the thing hiding inside it.

Built to age
correctly.

Every Wendigo gets the same spine: weathered walnut neck tint, thin ink finish, oil and wax, and hardware chosen for players who care more about feel and sound than bragging rights.

Choose Your Voice

The Standard
P90 Neck · Single Coil Middle · 5-Way Switch

P90 neck with an Alnico single in the middle and a hot single at the bridge. Sparkle, chew, and enough strange in-between magic to keep things interesting.

The Hot Rod
Humbucker Neck · Humbucker Bridge · 3-Way Switch

Dual fat humbuckers for the player who wants bloom, push, and a little swagger without losing the ghost in the machine.

The Glasshouse
Single Coil × 3 · 5-Way Switch

Three hot single coils. All chime, all cut, all nerve. For Johnny Marr brains, jangle fiends, and people who want the amp to do the yelling.

Choose the build.
Then let it happen.

  1. I Choose your finish. Meridian Green, Sienna, Translucent Kon-Peki, or Kon-Peki Burst. That's the line. That's the menu.
  2. II Choose your voice. The Standard, Hot Rod, or Glasshouse — in solid-body Wendigo or Wendigo Thinline form.
  3. III $300 deposit gets you in the queue. The balance is due when the guitar is finished, set up, and ready to head your way.
  4. IV 30 days, give or take what the wood wants. Your guitar ships intonated, set up with Stringjoys, and ready for a loud room.

Wendigo — $1,100
Wendigo Thinline — $1,250
Both ship set up, intonated, and strung with Stringjoys.
Built like a find. Not like a trophy.

Contact the Builder
Workshop Ledger

Live shop notes.
No algorithm.

Each model has its own permanent build journal. This running ledger is the live feed — short updates from the bench, the window, and the work stand. Quiet proof that the guitars are real and the finish takes the time it takes.

2/14/26
Wendigo Sienna #007 — Oil curing in the window.
2/21/26
Wendigo Meridian Green #006 — Frets polished. Wiring tomorrow.
3/1/26
Wendigo Kon Peki #008 — Grain popped. First ink coat on.
3/7/26
Wendigo Thinline Meridian Green #005 — Set up, played, and shipped to Minneapolis.
Wendigo No. 001 — Meridian Green

The Build

Every guitar starts as raw wood, a handful of parts, and a decision to take it seriously. This is what that looks like.

Parts laid out before the build
001
Everything it is and isn't yet.
Parts laid out. Red tort pickguard, stock pickups destined for replacement, hardware, a string set. A box of potential.
Raw body day one
002
Day one.
Raw body and neck on the dining table. The build guide printed and ready. Coffee going. The wood doesn't know what it is yet.
Raw headstock
003
Blank canvas.
The headstock before anything touches it. This is where WENDIGO will be burned in. Right now it's just wood in good light.
Sanded headstock
004
Open grain.
Sanded back to bare wood. The grain is open and thirsty. This is what ink needs to sink into something real.
Taped for ink
005
Protect the fretboard.
Blue painter's tape on the rosewood before ink goes anywhere near it. The detail work is most of the work.
The ink mix
006
This is where it gets its color.
India ink mixed to the Meridian Green ratio. It looks almost too bright in the bowl. That's the point — it darkens as it sinks in, shifts as the Danish oil goes over it, becomes something the wood keeps forever.
Wiring assembly
007
The honest middle of it.
Wiring harness laid out across the finished body. Red, yellow, blue. The green grain already doing its thing underneath. This is the part nobody photographs but everybody wonders about.
The Builder

Josh Mills —
Saint Paul

I'm a Detroit native living in Saint Paul, building guitars because I got tired of waiting for someone else to make the exact weird thing I wanted. The expensive part was never the wood. It was the patience, the sanding, the restraint, and knowing when to quit before the soul gets sanded out of it.

Fossick Builds came from a simple belief: humble materials, treated like they matter, can turn into a real instrument with a point of view. The finishes are made with fountain pen ink and India ink because they sink into the grain and age like old letters in a trunk — not like plastic.

Every guitar gets played before it leaves. Set up properly. Intonated. Lived with for a few days. And if you ding it? Fine. Good, even. These guitars are supposed to collect a life.

"Ink in the grain. Walnut in the neck. Built to feel like it's already yours."