Newcomer build "22 Magnum"

[Skyjerk]

23 minutes ago, Shay said:

Fantastic thread! Once I started it I couldn't put it down until the end. First of all congratulations on celebrating your recent anniversary, I also reached a milestone in my recovery last year when on July 3rd I celebrated 10 yrs. of good clean healthy sober living. I also recently came across this forum, so I'm  a newbie or maybe a transplant. I used to spend a lot of time hanging around  motorcycle building forums (another weakness of mine). I have a question or two for you if you don't mind, I was wondering what method you use to press your frets into your fretboard, are you using a caul on a drillpress or do you use the luthier hammer ( the one with shot in the hammer head) to beat them in like Ben Crowe does? I've always used my drillpress but recently I caught a video of Ben doing it with a hammer and that seemed to work very well. I was always afraid of causing damage using a hammer. I also couldn't help notice that you must be an avid you-tube watcher like I am. Its amazing what a great learning tool it is! I've picked up a ton of great guitar building tricks. Well I'm excited to see what you come up with for the guitars finish, and I'll keep an eye out for your future builds. I see your also a Midwesterner like myself. I live in Nw Ohio. So that gives us both plenty of building time during winter months of course. Oh, also one more thing. How did you do the lettering that you put on the trust rod cover. I think that really looks great, I have recently been trying to get together a set up to print my own headstock logos, I want to be able to Change them so they can be different on each guitar, like color and size and maybe change the wording  but I'm having a difficult time getting it done. I had a printer do them in the past but that could start being an unnecessary expense. I have everything at home to do it. OK WELL ITS GOOD TALKING TO YA'    PEACE,. -SHAY

Hi shay,

 

thanks for for your comments. Makes me feel good if someone either enjoys or gets something out of my posts ?

 

Motorcycle enthusiast here myself. I think my Fat Boy is partially visible in a couple of the pix. Used to hang on hdforums.com a lot, but the luthier forums are more gratifying.

yep, YouTube and forums rock. I literally taught myself everything I know about guitar building from those two sources, and a book or two as well.

congrats on your own 10 years. No small feat when one knows what it's like to not be able to go one single day ?

 AnyWho,  thanks for checking in.  Probably got a finish on this thing in late March or early April so check back ?

 

Chris

[Skyjerk]

  Oops forgot about the frets.

 I actually use both methods.  If the fretboard has the same radius end to end I use a caul in my drill press.  If it's a compound radius like I've done two or three times I used a hammer because I won't have cauls exactly right for every fret

 I only use stainless steel fret wire so I have no concerns about the hammer denting the frets ?

[Prostheta]

His technique is poor. If you want to see great videos on fret installation using a hammer, Carl Thompson plus many other truly experienced luthiers have videos out there. Carl uses CA in his fret slots, however that's never mandatory.

Beware of instructional videos by anybody who wants to hawk you their product, or at least read between the lines. 

Also, beware of instructional videos by people with head tattoos that even GG Allin would have regretted as being poor decision making. 

[Prostheta]

Also, beware of instructional videos where the person has several band-aids on their fingers, or at least has more at the end of the video than they started with. 

[Skyjerk]

22 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

His technique is poor. If you want to see great videos on fret installation using a hammer, Carl Thompson plus many other truly experienced luthiers have videos out there. Carl uses CA in his fret slots, however that's never mandatory.

Beware of instructional videos by anybody who wants to hawk you their product, or at least read between the lines. 

Also, beware of instructional videos by people with head tattoos that even GG Allin would have regretted as being poor decision making. 

Sounds like you aren't a big fan of Ben Crowe ;-) 

 But how do you know that I don't have head tattoos even worse than his? ;-)

 I picked up some useful information from his videos.  I could wish he didn't ramble on quite so much though ;-). 

The things that I found to be of the most value  are more along the lines of the tips and tricks stuff as opposed to general guitar building techniques 

The masking tape and CA glue trick instead of double stick tape in particular was probably the most awesome thing I've learned from his videos. 

 That trick alone was worth all of the time I've spent watching his videos ?

 

[Skyjerk]

 Double oops

 

 I forgot to answer your question about the truss rod cover, Shay.

I make a veneer out of ebony and inlay the logo with white mother-of-pearl.  Sand it down smooth and then cut it out to the shape I want. 

on my 22 special build that I entered in the December guitar of the month contest I used blue paua abalone  instead of mother of pearl 

[Prostheta]

Not much. I don't jive with smugness or a false air of superiority. "Arrogant buffoon" seems to put it bluntly enough.

Hey Shay, check this out:

 

Carl is well into his seventies now, and in spite of not working from a big shop or having large output he's sought after. Many many "famous name" luthiers learnt from Carl or worked in parallel with him in NY. He's a great honest luthier, and a mine of information and anecdotes. Shame that the video quality wasn't too hot.

[Prostheta]

I know that the question was aimed at yourself @Skyjerk re: fretting via a press or a hammer, however I thought I'd chime in. I've done both myself, and by far I prefer using a drill press. It's the most consistent. That said, there are differences not immediately considered. One of them being that I don't own a drill press or an arbor.

Take how Carl frets his; firstly he does the ends with the middle sticking up. When the middle is mashed down, the outer edges splay outwards slightly, causing the tangs to cut a more horizontal path, kind of like a capital "L". It could be argued that this increases fret retention and certainly with CA in the mix, they'll be solid in place. Pressing locates frets straight downwards.

Did you know the Fender used to install frets sideways in from the ends....? That's always something that I've wanted to try. It's also why it's useful to know whether this was done prior to refretting a vintage Fender....pulling frets upwards when they went in from the edges causes chipout from hell. Advantages? Maybe just bragging rights I guess, you tell me. 

[Skyjerk]

30 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Not much. I don't jive with smugness or a false air of superiority. "Arrogant buffoon" seems to put it bluntly enough.

 

I can see that.  He's labeled himself a "master" Luthier  which takes some pretty big stones considering I don't believe that he makes acoustic instruments.  I may be wrong but personally I consider that to be a requirement if you're going to call yourself a Luthier of any stripe let alone a master.  I could be wrong because I know that he worked with a violin maker before he was building guitars  but I've never seen an acoustic guitar on any of his videos.

 Anyway that's why I call myself a guitar builder and not a Luthier.  Acoustic guitar's someday but not yet  :-)

Anyway, there are things that can be learned from almost everyone.

theres a guy on another forum I frequent that's the biggest arrogant douche-nozzle you could ever meet. I  wouldn't piss on him to put him out if he was on fire,  but I've learned a few things from him :-)

[Shay]

On January 12, 2017 at 10:16 AM, Prostheta said:

Also, beware of instructional videos where the person has several band-aids on their fingers, or at least has more at the end of the video than they started with. 

 I was a little Leary of Ben and His videos when I first started watching these type of videos but as I started running out of videos to watch that I hadn't already saw, so I gave it a try one day I started watching one of His custom build series videos and I thought that He was very imformative and was also building a nice instrument. It seems that He was really concerned with giving the customer the quality they deserved in a custom build. Now I'm not really into all that electronic stuff he seems to add to His builds sometimes, like piezo system, moog board the sustainer pickup. I guess it's good to see the installation of that stuff but I just think too much of it isn't always a good thing. I happen to like the sustainer pickup but not a fan of the rest of it. I saw recently where they installed a set of those truetemperment frets in a guitar and I found that interesting. But I agree, He does ramble on a bit, but then He must be doing something right because 4 or 5 years ago He was building guitars out of his shed in the backyard by himself and today He's got 15 plus employees and I think we all know how difficult it is in this business just to make enough to take care ourself let alone 15 others. But he obviously works hard at it, He seems to put out a new video every other day and his business is constantly growing.

Edited January 16, 2017 by Shay

[Prostheta]

What concerns me most of all is the number of fundamental flaws in his thinking, which are then passed off as"fact". Propagation of poor information is something that bothers me greatly, because it becomes like whack a mole. Frustrating when people defend mistruths told by a person too, as they commonly take it as a personal insult. There's something very wrong in that! Anyway. I'm sure that as a successful business he can now afford tattoo removal or more hats. 

I agree that you can always learn something from anybody, but true "master luthiers" are few and far between, generally of a generation older. If you're willing to teach whilst still being on the road yourself, a bit of objectivity, humility and qualifying your information goes a long long way. 

[Norris]

7 hours ago, Prostheta said:

What concerns me most of all is the number of fundamental flaws in his thinking, which are then passed off as"fact". Propagation of poor information is something that bothers me greatly, because it becomes like whack a mole. Frustrating when people defend mistruths told by a person too, as they commonly take it as a personal insult. There's something very wrong in that!

Now known as "fake news" . Oft repeated, takes on a life of its own and becomes "fact"

[Skyjerk]

9 hours ago, Prostheta said:

What concerns me most of all is the number of fundamental flaws in his thinking, which are then passed off as"fact". Propagation of poor information is something that bothers me greatly, because it becomes like whack a mole. Frustrating when people defend mistruths told by a person too, as they commonly take it as a personal insult. There's something very wrong in that! Anyway. I'm sure that as a successful business he can now afford tattoo removal or more hats. 

I agree that you can always learn something from anybody, but true "master luthiers" are few and far between, generally of a generation older. If you're willing to teach whilst still being on the road yourself, a bit of objectivity, humility and qualifying your information goes a long long way. 

Honestly, and I say this wholly without rancor, I'd love to hear some substantiation of these statements.

To be clear, I'm not defending him, however I've never seen any indication that he has provided information that plain wrong. Theres more than one way to do almost every part of guitar building. In truth, my own methods are an amalgamation of a lot of different approaches that I arrived at by watching a lot of videos and reading a lot of threads, absorbing all that information, and then using the methods that make the most sense to me. I dont follow a single persons approach at any point in a build. I dont subscribe to any theory that postulates that theres a single "right" way of doing things.

I've seen Ben Crowe do things in the course of a build that make me scratch my head and think "Theres no way I'm going to do it that way" or "That seems like a silly approach"

Obviously you feel the same way

However, if the end result is a quality instrument that performs the way it should, well then I'm not willing to state that his way was wrong. Only that it was wrong for me.

If other folks defend his approach in a pissy way and take it as a personal insult when you challenge something they learned watching Ben Crowe, then in that case shouldn't your rancor be more properly directed at the clown thats getting insulted? They are the ones lacking  the imagination and insight to understand that there's more than  one way of doing things.

At the moment, the only negative thing I'm prepared to say is that calling himself a "master" luthier comes across as somewhat pompous and arrogant, but then perhaps a touch of bravado is a requirement to build a successful boutique guitar building business. theres no denying that he has been doing rather well in growing his business and I have to think that is at least partially because of his guitars.

Again, I'm not standing in defense of Ben Crowe. It just seems your comments sound unduly harsh, but if there are circumstances that I'm not aware of I stand prepared to be educated

 

 

[Prostheta]

That's it exactly; there's more than one way to achieve an end for most things....even packing parachutes, right? 

I've always been of the opinion that the best form of education is the one that makes the learner capable, rather than them simply encouraging them to ignorantly ape. Agreed about the brown-nosers. I walked away from the "conversation" (tenuous use of that word....) as you could tell that nobody was looking for solutions or consensus on the suggestions made. The discussion with Ben was never closed thanks to the loud idiots rushing in to "back him up". I'm sure that Ben is perfectly capable of managing himself.

All information is good information, however there's a degree of responsibility that is required in presenting it for public consumption. The most immediate example is not qualifying dangers; an example being routing. Making it look simple or not putting sufficient emphasis on the difficulty/skills required easily puts the enthusiastic into situations where they can injure themselves. To me, the line is drawn clearly when the responsible safety of others is involved.

I have no opinions on his guitars or his business in anything other than his blatant hawking of his own products. Hell, I'm an idealist and have long thought that education should be completely separated from commercial interest, and be a non-profit venture. Education is an investment in people, not a vehicle for marketing. I can't help but watch various videos by YouTubers and wonder exactly, "what is this trying to say?".

I unsubscribed from his videos long ago thanks to his long-winded blathering and cringeworthy false attempts at humour.

[Skyjerk]

4 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

That's it exactly; there's more than one way to achieve an end for most things....even packing parachutes, right? 

 

Actually yes. I know of three commonly used approaches for ram-air parachutes. Flat packing, pro packing, and psycho packing. Dont be mis-lead by the term "psycho", its not really that crazy

[Prostheta]

Without wanting to draw this out, the comparison I'd use is that you couldn't responsibly allow a beginner to make a jump on the own packing simply because they watched a YouTube video on how to do it. By that coin I should be able to drive an Aston Martin at warp speed thanks to having seen Jeremy Clarkson on the gogglebox a few times. 

[Skyjerk]

17 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Without wanting to draw this out, the comparison I'd use is that you couldn't responsibly allow a beginner to make a jump on their own packing simply because they watched a YouTube video on how to do it.

 

Nicely done