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Bizman62

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Everything posted by Bizman62

  1. Yes, I've learned to apply solder to the eyelets first and then melt the solder while pushing the wire through. There may be better methods, I must admit that my soldering sucks. To avoid cold joints I often seem to overheat the object like the abovementioned switches clearly show.
  2. That was taught to me by an electrician, works well especially if you have to desolder some components. The capacitors on PC motherboards can be quite stubborn and tightly fitted, some extra fresh solder on the tip sort of wraps the heat around the old joint.
  3. Would the last one be similar to your situation except the kill switch? One pickup etc. http://artecsound.com/pickups/electronics/wiring/wiring-B04a.jpg. It's for a bass but then only difference is the amount of strings... And would the jack act as an on-off switch to prevent battery draining when not plugged in?
  4. Yes, I know that. That's how the bottom of the switches melted! But a drop on the tip helps spreading the heat to the object.
  5. Most likely not. Here's my take of a set neck guitar, full width neck tenon. Full story here: https://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/50745-started-a-t-type/?do=findComment&comment=584956. The body is only 38 mm thick and there's 17 mm below the neck pocket. As you can see there's no actual heel either. No issues whatsoever. Unlike an LP this one doesn't have a neck break angle. They say that even 10 mm thickness in the neck pocket would suffice but it also depends a bit on the wood. Think of the durability this way: There's similar string pull all along the guitar. Yet scarf joints are commonly used in the narrowest and thinnest part, right before the headstock. Yet there's no complaints about that joint, Gibson headstocks crack on the solid wood section instead and even that requires a shock.
  6. You know how it is when you're that close, you just can't keep your fingers off the almost finished build. Yesterday evening I thought I'd do the the electrickery but the solder wire didn't want to co-operate. I guess the 1 mm solder wire is a bit too thin for this purpose, you just can't get a drop big enough on the tip. Another funny thing with the new wire is that the fumes smell fishy! I mean, like baked sprats in a can - not actually unpleasant but strange in that context. Anyhow, I made a makeshift jig out of cardboard and started soldering the eyelets. The thin wire didn't want to fill them too quickly and when trying to push the wires through them the solder didn't want to re-melt. After melting the bottom of the switch I decided to go to the sauna and continue later. Today I started over and managed to ruin another switch. Fortunately I tend to buy the inexpensive things in dozens so the third attempt succeeded. And it made a sound! But after having screwed the jack and backplate in place, there was no sound. Unscrewed the jack and noticed that the prong for the tip was bent, reshaping that didn't require any rocket scientist skills. But the sound still went on and off so unscrewing the back plate was next on the list. Oh yes, both the bridge pickup and the lead wire on the switch were loose as was one of the ground wires on the pot. This time I used my old solder wire which is a tad thicker. That melted to a nice shiny ball on the tip of the soldering iron which made it easy enough to quickly fix the issues. One thing to ask: How on Earth do you manage to solder all the ground wires on a tiny spot on the pot? I also found a pair of knobs left from my first build a decade ago, pieces of a branch of our plum tree. The holes aren't perfectly centered, at that time I didn't know how to find the center of a cylindrical object. But they fit the theme. She's now alive! There's still things to do, the nut is way too high and the knobs require a finish on them. Next Saturday is Winter Holiday for schools so our course also has a day off. I may or may not do some kitchen table tinkering, let's see...
  7. Almost there! As the only hardware in place was the pickups I decided to apply some of my beeswax-carnauba mix. Wax on, wax off... Then it occurred to me that I should check the state of the frets and noticed that I hadn't levelled them yet. No matter how I turned the adjusting nut I couldn't keep the notched straightedge from rocking. So I put it against a ruler and noticed that the edge wasn't straight! Fortunately a fellow builder had a better one. There's some sticky sandpaper on my shopping list for the next time, the big jointer plane has a trued level table for straightening. After having got the fingerboard straight it was time to apply marker on the frets and start sanding. A few frets were lower than the rest but not too many strokes were needed. The metal filings brushed off easily enough but for crowning I found the slotted steel strip too clumsy so I taped the fretboard and reapplied the marker. After having narrowed the coloured lines with a smooth-edged triangular file - two pairs of +1.5 reading glasses made seeing the almost vanishing line easier! - I did the lazy man's rounding by rolling a piece of wet'n'dry to a flexible loop between my fingers and running it back and forth a few times. And finally it was time to polish the frets with the nail buffer. For this the slotted steel worked but again I noticed that two pieces of tape worked even better. But there was no need to wrap the entire fretboard, two pieces jumped from fret to fret didn't loose their stickability nor did they wear through.
  8. New to me as well, thanks! In Finnish we have an idiom close to that, "perstuntumalla" - literally "by feel of the arse".
  9. Plainly so. A plain plane could easily land on a plane plain, such a roadable aircraft even more so.
  10. Heh, I didn't read the full story, just looked at the pictures. Very little can be found about the company, though.
  11. This might be of interest: https://www.lumberjocks.com/threads/hand-plane-with-no-name-any-idea-what-it-is.62377/ And further: https://timetestedtools.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/quickly-identify-your-hand-plane/ which has further links to brand specific identification. The links for other TimeTestedTools articles don't seem to work as such but using the title in their search engine may reveal interesting results. Plus there's lots more on their site. For the obscurities to potentially help identifying, the frog being held by just one screw seems to be rare. Also the depth adjuster screws being just knurled without grooves is something to look at. This Samson looks surprisingly similar for the details that are visible: https://www.etsy.com/fi-en/listing/1478851183/vintage-samson-8-inch-hand-plane-tool-do. Unfortunately I couldn't find any information about the Samson brand but the light grey paint, the Made In Usa behind the tote and an unbranded blade and no cast brand on the lever cap... What do you think? That said, if it really is a 'Samson', who is the actual maker?
  12. Tell that to the Fretless Wonder players. Crown height .015 to .020 according to https://www.mylespaul.com/threads/fret-wire-for-freless-wonders.78997/post-3165557 That's 0,38 to 0,5 millimetres. That's an obscurity, though. For someone who has played on 'normal' height frets under 0,65 mm may well be unplayable. So if you're re-leveling the n'th time you may consider refretting instead if you're going that low. Oh, and I noticed an error in my previous post: 'Tall' means the height of any fret. 'High* usually means a fret that sits higher than the other ones. Back to your original question, dents on the frets usually look much deeper than what they really are. Same goes for frets sitting too high. I did a fret job for a friend who strongly believed that he'd need a total refretting done, the pictures tell the story: So if you start at some 1,2 mm, then level the high ones and finally level all frets down to the bottom of the scratches you may actually take only some 0,1mm away.
  13. That burst really is nice, it's so subtle that on the photos it's easily mistaken to be a shadow or other lighting related thing over the slanted back or the roundover on the top. A very nice 3D effect indeed.
  14. @JimtheDude by no means being rude but do you really think he still has them after 19 years?
  15. I started by smoothing the top and bottom with the random orbital sander equipped with 400 grit Abranet. The reglued chip from a couple of weeks ago now is level with the rest but as some parts were now almost to bare wood I applied yet another coat of my oil mix. Having the guitar clamped to the workbench by the neck I then started to concentrate to fitting the electrickery while the oil was curing. As I struggled with getting the pickup wires through the hole that quite didn't hit the bridge pickup cavity I took a long 8 mm bit to widen it through the jack hole. And of course the threading of the bit knocked off a few pieces - have I already said that the wood is brittle? Of course most of the pieces were missing so I turned to my trusty old friend, the almighty TonePutty. Surprisingly it still is workable after a decade! Agreed, it was a bit grainy but still good enough for this purpose. The result is at least as strong as the original. As mentioned last weekend the wires of the neck pickup were a tad too short so I soldered some extensions. Not the prettiest but it's hidden and not under stress so there's no risk of the tape peeling off or the joint breaking. And I also remembered the ground wire for the trapeze! The pickups are now in place, spring loaded for height adjustability. And following the theme of reusing things both the black screws and the cables were salvaged from old computers. Even the lilac rag protecting the clamped neck has a history: I bought the sweatshirt from a last item bargain basket back in 1984 using my summer job earnings. The shoulder seams started to finally give up so wearing it made no longer sense. But even this won't be its final job, after it's too ragged to serve as protection or spreading oil it will help keeping me warm one last time in the fireplace. Talk about longevity!
  16. Nice job, looks like you concentrated more into getting a workhorse than a shiny decorative item on the shelf. The almost vertical two streaks on the sides look strange, I had to take another look to assure myself that it's not about a photo being reversed. Do you have any idea what has caused them?
  17. Yes, by tall I mean high. Tall seems to be commonly used when talking about fret height. I'm a Finn... There's no such thing as 'minimal fretheight'. There's lower and taller frets by design, the lowest maybe the 'fretless wonder' by Gibson back in the late 1950's to early 70's. They were about half a millimetre tall or even less. The tallest frets are about 1.5 mm. The minimum is highly subjective, it's the height you still like to play on.
  18. That reminds me about the different marketing styles or rather attitudes, don't know if there's actual terms for those. Anyhoo... Back in the day when PC's were new and mostly sold to companies for a stellar price, the sales personnel were engineers speaking tech jargon about how powerful their products were etc. instead of trying to figure out how and what for the customer would need them. Engineer driven marketing instead of customer experience, the terms were something like that IIRC. Heck, that was some 40 years ago! But that's still an issue, nerds make a product that has all sorts of features which require the end user to be a similar nerd to intuitively figure out how to properly utilize all the features. Kudos to you for being patient with StewMac and kudos to the SM guy who's going to try to get a simple manual made.
  19. Guess they have a YouTube video with Dan Erlewine telling how wonderful that calliper is, explaining all the modifications. So why bother printing an illustrated manual. It seems to be more of a rule that the customer service guys don't actually understand what the real problem is. They simply apoligize and send you a new item. The guys at StewMac know how their tools work and they automatically assume that if someone buys a luthier tool they also know all the details. Why would they buy something if they don't know what it is or how to properly use it? Manuals are for sissies anyway...
  20. I've used a straight beam, 2x4 cm aluminium beam cut to 28 cm length. Why 28 cm instead of the full length of the fretboard? Because wet'n'dry sandpaper sheets are that long! I've been wondering whether I should get a long radiused beam and use it for fret leveling. Didn't think it might chew the edges but now that you mentioned it, it's kinda obvious. You can't see what's happening under a long wide beam. With a narrow beam you can immediately see where you've sanded the marker off the fret. Also you can't do a major damage by just a few strokes. Still I find the idea of a radiused beam tempting.
  21. I did. But now that it's been said that the stick part has been deliberately shortened for measuring fret heights you'll have to zero it separately for using the depth measuring stick. That will leave the jaws open by a few millimetres. Stand the end on a flat surface and slide the stick down, then zero it for measuring depths. For ordinary people like you and me such things can be confusing. The tool looks similar, acts similar but has a difference that doesn't seem to make sense. Agreed, the notch makes measuring fret height more accurate as the solid part will stand on two feet to eliminate errors caused by an angled callipers but then again, why would anyone want to measure the height of individual frets? A fret rocker would be more accurate as it doesn't care whether the fretboard is level or not. For measuring a fret to find a suitable replacement regular callipers should be accurate enough.
  22. Dents are a common cause for fret leveling. So are tall frets. Basically you could have addressed both issues on one go but there's nothing wrong with first spot leveling the tall ones. So the next step would be to lower all frets to the bottom of the dents. And a beam is a commonly used tool for that. You can use a marker on the frets so you'll know that you've sanded all frets and depending on the depth of the dents you may need to reapply the markings. And of course you'll have to recrown the frets after leveling.
  23. That combined with the fret measuring notch. Didn't realize the notch being of importance but obviously it's a feature. That. For some reason the digital callipers seem to wander, with the jaws pushed together the reading is not always 0. Guess that's why they have the zero button.
  24. To me that looks like the depth measuring "stick" of the StewMac is a couple of millimetres too short. No question about that. You should get the same readings when measuring the thickness of an object like you did with the case. The notch is irrelevant as the stick is meant for measuring the depth of tight holes.
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