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What's Your Favorite Part About Building?


Narcissism

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This is when a couple of layers of masking tape wrapped around the bearing edge of the template shine :D

The set I refer to which I should have said but didnt is an inlay set with template guide and spacer. I guess tape or as I have found Shrink tubing heated over a bearing would work even on this set. Now I just make sure the template I make fits. If its not tight enough I add some epoxy to the edges of the template of the cover until it does fit right. Makes everything go faster when it's all ready before hand.

I still hate sanding.

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Mmm-hmm. Can't agree more about sanding. It takes too long, consumes too much paper and you're never "in that window" when sanding needs doing at it's best. I must breed some of those midgets from Blade Runner to do my sanding.

Mmmm. Slaves.

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I hate sanding inside cutaways - that's about the only hating I do.

Unless when (rarely) something unexpected and wrong happens, then I scream and stomp like a 2-year-old. :D

+1

I also despise bending wood binding around a tight cutaway. Never fun.

Other than that it's a fun all the way.

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I really enjoy everything about the construction. It's applying & buffing the finish and doing the wiring that I don't like.

I actually enjoy the wiring. Its the final step before I plug in my creation and hear its voice for the first time :D:

Unfortunately, I really don't know what I'm doing when I'm wiring. I'm only following a diagram. Some day when I have more ambition, I'll figure it all out. I have some electronics basics under my belt at least.

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I honestly HATE making cavity covers. I make my own cavity templates, but its impossible for me to make the covers match exactly. I HATE IT!!!!

Now a hate this part post. It was inevitable.

I once used a template set and made the cavitity cover match exactly. However it was so tight you could not remove it. So much for precision. I now want them loose as thay are made from wood.

I hate sanding, ugh.

HEY! Narc brought it up, how come I end up with the downfall??

But with a template set, you cant make the cover if you dont have a template to copy in the first place.

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wood is good, you're offily quick to throw someone under the bus here. If you read the post before mine, you'll see that I didn't start the negatives.

Who cares though? This is supposed to be a positive thread about guitar building, so someone can read it and maybe get some encouragement to start up a build again if they've hit a "Luthier's block" or something like that.

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Favorite parts must be shaping & sanding. It might take days and days, especially if you're just working half an hour or one per day, but I think it's cool when you start out with a piece of wood and every minute it looks just a little bit more like your "final shape" or it looks better every minute you work on it. Sometimes I'm a bit impatient and get mad because it takes forever, but still those are my favorite parts ... there are no parts I really hate, just some that I still not understand at all (wiring) or am scared of (fret positions). I'm not sure about finishing the instrument... on the one hand it is great to see the progress, on the other hand I just hate all the "wait until it's dry" periods...

Edited by SD83
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  • 3 years later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Love all the bits up to the point where I have to finish sand and pore fill. That's when things get tedious. Don't mind the actual shooting of finish, but polishing is annoying as well.

Merely handling the raw material and cutting/planing/scraping it down to blanks can also be a ton of fun - wood selection for a project is creatively inspiring.

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I totally agree. Today I resawed a flamed Birch top, thickness sanded them to 8mm jointed and made a perfect bookmatch. I have probably never made such a perfectly aligned and prepped top before in my life. Seriously. Just that one minor step in the grand arc of making an entire instrument really made me want to punch the air and shout "flip yeah!" (or similar...cough) into the air.

I just realised that I would probably look like fat Power Ranger if I did that.

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I love making necks and fretboards. I find it quite easy to shape a neck using a spokeshave, rasp and sandpaper. I used to hate routing trussrod slots, but it's no problem now I use a table mounted router, much easier than routing from above.

Fretboards are really easy to do now I have modified a sliding mitre saw for cutting slots. It's a very cheap saw which had quite a bit of side to side play on it, but I've drilled, pinned and clamped everything except the slider tubes so the only possible movement is backwards and forwards. I made a jig to accurately position the board for each slot, using the positioning blade idea shown here

and it works great. I can set the depth at whatever I want using the original sliding saw depth stop. I've cut a range of dummy fretboards by hand out of oak to use as guides, each board has a different scale on each side. I bought some 4 inch circular saw blades that are only 0.5mm thick, fractionally thinner than needed for fret slots, but I follow through with a handheld fretting saw which only takes a couple of minutes. Once I've double sticked a fretboard blank to the oak, I can slot it in about five minutes without raising a sweat :rock
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  • 2 weeks later...

holy cow thats a GREAT idea man! Im gonna have to do this...

a couple suggestions for that already awesome machine

1) drill holes in the bench to dog it down, not clamp it

2) install a depth stop on the saw or even on the wood block to get accurate, consistent depth every time

Edited by bob123
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