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Wonky Frets 2 - Multiscale Sixer


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I'd be concerned about the resisting force of the wood. The torque of each blade hitting burl or figured wood is ripe for big chipout. Those things are great for making chair seats and dishing, however I'm not sure how well it would work as the hogging tool for a carve. After all, there isn't actually THAT much wood to remove on most carves compared to larger furniture or sculptural pieces. I'd be tempted to stay with the flapwheel on the angle grinder.

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Never fear. I fully expect a period of experimentation with this weapon of mass destruction. I have plenty of offcuts from the top to play with. At the very least I can surely find a use for it for non-guitar relating woodworking projects around the house.

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The Turboplane is fun to use, but probably a bit too aggressive for guitar building. I can see it working well for large-scale sculpting work where a rough-hewn look is desirable, but it's really easy to get carried away removing material. I experimented doing some concave and convex carving on some offcuts of the eucalyptus burl. Chipout wasn't a problem with this thing, but a lack of superfine control makes it difficult to maneouvre without accidentally taking too much out. I found it easier to control by using it on a steep angle of attack, where the blade on the cutter was least-exposed. The drawback is that it takes little nibbles and makes more work for later on to smooth it all out.

Convex carving:

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Concave carving:

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Just recently, yeah. I've been changing around some of the build steps a little and have found that, for whatever reason, I can put a radius on a board while it's off the neck blank a little easier.

The binding will cap the ends of the fret slots, so it makes sense to radius the board after slotting, tweak the slot depths at the edges once radiused, and then apply the binding last of all. Getting the slots to the right depth will be nigh-impossible once the binding is on. Trimming the binding to the same level as the radius will then be just a matter of running the radius block over the whole lot at, say 320 grit until it's flush, and then repolishing the whole assembled board at 400/600/1200/2000 grit. Side dots and position markers are little easier to fit while there isn't the bulk of the neck in the way too.

Clamping a 16" radiused board to the blank for gluing is well within the "skew" abilities of most clamps.

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It is, however using a caul ensures even pressure distribution. Clamps in the centre might evacuate glue outwards (potentially starving that spot) and certainly exacerbates skating from hydrostatic pressure. Most clamps apply way more force than is required for a small area. Two f-clamps with a good caul can manage an entire board, three is better. Your quick clamps with the soft pads are pretty ideal though.

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I usually use a row of quick clamps up each side of the fret board, two rows in parallel, packed in as tight as I can muster, no caul. Clamping pressure is on both sides of the fretboard rather than straight up the middle. Any loss of pressure occurs where the noses of each clamp touch on the centreline of the fretboard. Conveniently this is where the trussrod runs, and also where you don't really care if there isn't any glue in the joint due to too much pressure, or an extra 0.2mm of gap due to no pressure.

A couple of 1mm brads at each end of the fretboard driven through the 1st/24th fret slots are sufficient to prevent slipping during clamping. The brads get pulled out after the glue dries.

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Perhaps a poor explaination on my part.

At 16" radius the curvature across the fretboard should be small enough to allow my quick clamps to adequately secure the fretboard while gluing and provide sufficiently even pressure across the curved portion underneath each clamp head.

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The soft rubber pads on those quick clamps marginally deform too. I've not done a study on final clamping pressure with those, but I suspect that kg/cm² yield of those is lowered by the force lost deforming the pads and the acting area increased similar to a small caul. They're still more than adequate I reckon. Especially when you seem to use a good sixty of them...haha

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Not much to report from this weekend. Managed to shape the headstocks of both neck blanks. Gluing the binding to the first fretboard was a dead loss, as the weather has been really cold and damp recently. The first epoxy glue-up didn't take properly in the cold and the binding peeled straight off the sides of the fretboard as soon as it came out of the clamps. Have brought the fretboards and binding upstairs into the warm house and am using CA this time around. Appears to be working this time:

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Damp enough to leave a frost on the ground overnight and ice up car windscreens. I'm situated on the side of a hill and don't get much sun during the winter months, so any moisture that settles on the ground tends to stay for weeks. Day time temps are lucky to get over 10 degrees, night time temps around 0. Humidity in the mid 70s. Probably not condusive to reliable epoxy glue-ups in a cold shed at the moment.

The epoxy I use is normally pretty good, but I'm guessing it's just too cold to work at the moment. The binding simply peeled off with a fingernail, and the glue that remained on the fretboard edges could be picked off in big flakes. The CA drying inside the house appears to hold it all together properly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Too freaking cold here at the moment!

Spent some time getting the headstock binding prepped. A bit of heat from a heatgun helps soften the plastic binding so that it will deform to match some of the tight corners without snapping or springing back. I probably should've used the heatgun to set fire to my trousers. At least I'd be a bit warmer. Staining around the CF bars is from the epoxy used to glue the rods into the channels:

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