Albert Grande's
pizzatherapy.com presents
A Rockin' Pizza
Peel With Appeal:
The Fender Stratocaster
Pizza Peel   

Ron wrote: I too am somewhat of a pizza fanatic.
I use an 18" Weber kettle
grill with a 16" Old Stone Oven stone and fire it with a 185,000 BTU
Cajuncooker. I also made a pizza peel fashioned to look like a
 Fender Stratocaster guitar.

{Albert's Side Bar: Musicians who have played a Fender Stratocaster include: Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Mark Knopfler, Dick Dale, Prince...}

Now I have seen some unusual pizza devices,
 but a peel in the shape of a
Fender Stratocaster guitar was a new one on me.
(To see what an actual Stratocaster looks like, peek here.)

Albert: Are you a wood worker?

Ron: I used to work construction and woodworking has always been one
my fields of expertise. I simply do woodworking as a hobby now as
my job isa civilian field representative in an electronics shop for the
Air Force.

Albert: How did you come up with this idea?

Ron: One day I was passing through my neighborhood and one of the
neighbors was having a yard sale so I stopped in to take a look. He had a
Fender amplifier for sale so I bought it and replaced the jacks to
make it serviceable. I then built a guitar and figured that would make
a really neat pizza peel. I made the patterns and then made a few
proto types before I came up with the finished product. It's very close to
the size of an actual Strat.

Albert: How much did it cost to make? How long did it take?

Ron: I would guess that it only cost about $25 to make but there was
a lot of sanding and I also inlayed the frets and scale markings.

 The toughest part was sanding the main body down to less than 1/4". I just
used a belt sander for that job. The whole process could be automated
and be performed quite efficiently. It was fun making something that
no one else has.

I don't really know how long it took me to build. I would just work on it for an hour or two at a time when I felt like it. I don't have any plans to make them commercially as that would take all the fun out of it. It's like making pizza, if you start doing it as a
job instead of a hobby it somehow looses it's allure.

Albert: What do your guests say when you cook a pizza with the Strat?
 

Ron: Everyone loves the pizza Strat. I moved to Germany last October and when the movers unpacked my household goods they saw the Srat and asked me if I could make one for him as he worked as a pizza man at the local pizzeria.

 I think everyone likes it because it's so unique and who doesn't want to secretly be a rock star?

Albert: Are you a musician?
 

Ron: I'm not a musician and can't play the guitar to save my life. I
did make another pizza guitar in the shape of a Gibson SG. It was the
original pizza guitar prototype. It's not as neat as the Strat. I made
the neck out of maple and glued that onto a pine body. ...

Albert: Thanks Ron on behalf of pizza makers everywhere. You certainly have taken the pizza peel to new levels.

A side view of the Fender Stratocaster Peel:

What's The Buzz on the street, about
The Fender Stratocaster Pizza Peel?

• From The Metro Times (Detroit's Weekly Alternative):

"...If you cannot live without one of these, you must be one hell of a guitar player and pizzaiolo or definitely a wannabe. This Fender Stratocaster Pizza Peel is the coolest pizza tool ever. It would probably make frozen pizza taste good. You'll have to be a woodworker too, as it's not available anywhere that we are aware of...."

Of course there are more conventional
peels available:

Check out the  Sassafras Wood Pizza/Bread Peel from amazon.com

Life-time updates:
Albert Grande's
"The Pizza Therapy Pizza Book"
from pizzatherapy.com
Learn how to make great pizza!

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