ScottR Posted March 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 And this is why I quit using T-88 and spent a fortune on West Systems. Glad you caught it early. Would have sucked to find it later. And ebony was involved in yours as well. We've had a very wet couple of weeks and the zebrano moved. And T-88 does not seem to be handle that kind of stress. Hopefully titebond can. Wood movement can be a very powerfull force, like ice in a crack in a concrete sidewalk. And yeah, as far as setbacks go, this was a good time to have one. That would not have been fun to fix at a later stage in the build. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted March 17, 2015 Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 And this is why I quit using T-88 and spent a fortune on West Systems. Glad you caught it early. Would have sucked to find it later.And ebony was involved in yours as well. We've had a very wet couple of weeks and the zebrano moved. And T-88 does not seem to be handle that kind of stress. Hopefully titebond can. Wood movement can be a very powerfull force, like ice in a crack in a concrete sidewalk. And yeah, as far as setbacks go, this was a good time to have one. That would not have been fun to fix at a later stage in the build.SRZebrano always moves until you get it sealed. Even then it can do crazy stuff. Titebond will hold it but you need to get it sealed before long.Watch the temperature and moisture changes (laughing to myself because of where you are located). Don't work on it in the sun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2015 Yeah, watching the temperature and moisture change will be about all the control I'll have over it. On the other hand in a couple of months they won't change at all. It will just always be hot and humid. Now that you mention it I was just thinking about how wet it was, but we did have a couple of 50 degree overnight temperature swings over that time frame as well. Oh well, a build wouldn't feel normal without some kind of surprise to overcome. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Roller bearing version is the shizzle. A little fiddly to set up, but once it's ready to go it's far smoother to use than a regular square-faced mitre box. That lamination...uh, de-lamination is amazingly clean - you sure you put glue in there to start with? I reckon your trademark headstock shape will marry perfectly with the pointy SS style. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 18, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Roller bearing version is the shizzle. A little fiddly to set up, but once it's ready to go it's far smoother to use than a regular square-faced mitre box. That lamination...uh, de-lamination is amazingly clean - you sure you put glue in there to start with? I reckon your trademark headstock shape will marry perfectly with the pointy SS style. Well.....I did clean up the lams a bit before taking any pics. That is one of those situations where you are sort of driven to jump into action, you know? On the other hand it was amazingly clean. The only thing I had cleaned up at that point was a little CA I had wicked in a few days earlier upon noticing a tiny hairline fissure in an area that was going to be cut away. The boards looked like I had done a masterful job of pore filling each side and then leveled them for clear coating. There was not a hint on either surface that they had ever come in contact. I sqeezed the hell out of them too. And before anyone says glue starvation, the surface of each board was epoxy, not a raw wood fiber to be seen or felt. The wood surfaces were only sanded to 80 grit, plenty to bite into and the glue went deep into each piece, as I learned from sanding back far enough to get to clean open pored wood for the titebond to bite into. Those smooth clean surfaces are ultimately what made me back away from the epoxy. There should have been some fiber pulled away. I agree that my headstock shape should fit nicely with this pointy horned thing. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwedishLuthier Posted March 18, 2015 Report Share Posted March 18, 2015 Agreed. I ordered the newest version with roller bearings and wow, that is even better. I had not seen that yet. I'm going to have to check it out. I actually had you figured for a powered blade system. SR Nah, my table saw isn't accurate enough and I don't have space for another machine so I have to stick to the Stewmac mitre box Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauliemc Posted March 22, 2015 Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 man that debonding crap sucks big time. I use titebond or weldwood (both yellow aliphatic resin) & nothing else realy. Iv had a few issues with debonding over the years, but almost all were due to temperatures getting below freezing in the shop over night - even titebond cant take that while curing. Epoxy is only to hold inlay in place or seal pores as far as im concerned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 man that debonding crap sucks big time. I use titebond or weldwood (both yellow aliphatic resin) & nothing else realy. Iv had a few issues with debonding over the years, but almost all were due to temperatures getting below freezing in the shop over night - even titebond cant take that while curing. Epoxy is only to hold inlay in place or seal pores as far as im concerned. I think I've finally gotten to the point that I agree completely. Titebond has done what the epoxy failed at....so far. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 So I took the neck out of the clamps squared everything up again and routed the truss rod channel. I used brads as guides to keep the headstock plate in place during glue up. I did trim them off below the thickness of the plate. I used the off cut from the headstock angle cut for a caul during the clamp up of the headstock plate. The clamping pressure caused it to split at the glue lines as well and the plate moved a little despite the pins. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 About that time my neighbor sneaked up on me and made me jump. He said Happy Spring Break and handed me this tub of crawfish. It was hot and ready to eat, so what was I to do? I took a break and chowed down on some mudbugs! I taped off the truss rod channel and applied a bit of silicon caulking into the channel to control trussrod rattle. It does look sloppy....therefor the tape. While it was taped off I bushed a very light coat of vaseline on the top edge of the trussrod. Then I covered the rod with scotch tape--which is super thin. The vaseline keeps the tape from sticking to the rod. I trim the tape very close to the channel. I also use pins to locate the fretboard and hold it in place for glue up. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Fretboard glue up. I adjusted my tuning peg locations a bit to make the string pull straighter. So I tested the layout on mdf because on Justin's guitar they got a bit tight. Yep they are tight. I'm going to spread the top two out just a hair. Fretboard out of the clamps. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 I angled my drill press talbe to 17 degrees to match the headstock angle and drilled the machine head holes now so there is no problem with tear out or rough edges on the holes. Here we go. The last time I used my band saw yesterday I developed a kink in the blade somehow. So first thing this morning I changed it out. It turned out the kink was a break that went nearly all the way through the blade...good thing I changed it. And then I used it to rough out the neck shape and put that overweight sucker on a diet. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 I set up a square fence on my sanding table and cleaned and square up the gluing surfaces on the tenon. Once that was done it's time to start carving the headstock. It seems that ebony is a lot harder to carve than zebrano. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 And this is about how far I got today..... The headstock still has a ways to go....but I couldn't help stacking up the parts as they are so far. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muzz Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 You have a fantastic neighbour, those mudbugs look delicious, and the wood work looks awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pan_kara Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 wow nice progress! Loving the build, Scott. One thought I had on the headstock faceplate glue-up: if you placed the cutoff block _below_ the rest of the neck and just some flat piece of scrap on top of the faceplate - that would make clamping pressure perpendicular to the glue surface. Not sure how important that is, you had it held down anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 That is a good idea that I should have thought of. The way I did it, applying pressure makes the parts want to slide, hence the need for the pins. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 You have a fantastic neighbour, those mudbugs look delicious, and the wood work looks awesome. Thanks, Muzz. Those crawdaddies were indeed fine. The effort to tasty morsel ratio is a bit steep but still they are quite good. I'm going to have to take him over some brisket next time I smoke one up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauliemc Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 man that debonding crap sucks big time. I use titebond or weldwood (both yellow aliphatic resin) & nothing else realy. Iv had a few issues with debonding over the years, but almost all were due to temperatures getting below freezing in the shop over night - even titebond cant take that while curing. Epoxy is only to hold inlay in place or seal pores as far as im concerned. I think I've finally gotten to the point that I agree completely. Titebond has done what the epoxy failed at....so far. SR With 3600psi quoted from the manufacturer you cant realy go wrong. From what I hear & read from other users its not too far off the mark in practice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauliemc Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Just looking at the grain in the neck there. Thats gona look something savage, you should get some realy nice stuff going on at the headstock transition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2015 That was one of the main reasons for the zebrawood. Those little stripies should go all kinds of swirly everywhere I carve or contour it. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted March 24, 2015 Report Share Posted March 24, 2015 I bet carving that ebony was real fun. Made my hand hurt just looking at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2015 It is not as difficult as you'd think. Used correctly the palm gouge works as lever or fulcrum and supplies plenty of force. Each kind of wood has a direction that it wants to be cut in and a direction that it fights the cut. It can be different from wood to wood too. I'd much rather carve hardwoods than softwoods and many soft hardwoods. Hard woods cut cleanly with a sharp tool and the softer woods tend to compress instead of cutting. And the very worst of is well seasoned pine and similar woods. The combination of very hard rings (I forget if they are early wood or late wood) and very soft rings are a nightmare to carve cleanly. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackdog Posted March 25, 2015 Report Share Posted March 25, 2015 Once that was done it's time to start carving the headstock. It seems that ebony is a lot harder to carve than zebrano. WOW !!! That's really Old School !!! Respect !! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted March 25, 2015 Report Share Posted March 25, 2015 It is not as difficult as you'd think. Used correctly the palm gouge works as lever or fulcrum and supplies plenty of force. Each kind of wood has a direction that it wants to be cut in and a direction that it fights the cut. It can be different from wood to wood too. I'd much rather carve hardwoods than softwoods and many soft hardwoods. Hard woods cut cleanly with a sharp tool and the softer woods tend to compress instead of cutting. And the very worst of is well seasoned pine and similar woods. The combination of very hard rings (I forget if they are early wood or late wood) and very soft rings are a nightmare to carve cleanly.SRI tend to struggle when I have 2 adverse consistency woods side by side. Zebrawood being as moody and grainy as it is causes enough problems but then with the hard ebony next too it would make it not fun.So do you carve the Zebra into the Ebony or reverse? Or do you try to work them separately and blend the joint of the two later? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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