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Prostheta

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Article Comments posted by Prostheta

  1. On 3/3/2024 at 8:57 PM, Sentpacking said:

    Hi Folks,... I'm "a little late to the party" I'm a new member here at " ProjectGuitar.com " . I feel like I might have stumbled on one of the best luthier/hobbyist builder's site on the net. 

    I enjoyed this series, { pt. 1  and pt. 2  on workbenches and the advantages and disadvantages of different types of benches and now "hold down" devices. I am looking fwd to the conclusion ? / pt.3 .  Unfortunately though I haven't found part three /3 as of yet. Can someone be so kind as to point me in the right direction please ? 

     

    Thank you for the kind words! As with most things with me it seems, my large amount of time spent percolating over ideas often ends up with circumstances evolving beyond the original purpose of the idea. I still have this bench, however I personally didn't find sufficient use for it in way it was designed. Functionally it is excellent and perhaps I should just write an article honestly about how it ended up....another surface covered in stuff as storage space when moving things away and off other things....overall I think it is the sort of specific use workbench that requires a larger and less cluttered shop so that it doesn't end up smothered into disuse. A luxury that I think few people have in their own shops?

  2. It's a combination of two things, perhaps three. Gibson headstocks with the traditional compression rods remove a huge chunk of wood for the rod adjustment nut, plus use a higher headstock angle of ~17deg which shortens the length of grain from headstock face to behind the nut. That makes them exceptionally weak compared to lower angles of 11-13deg (I forget what angle the SB-1000, etc. had). The best Aria Pro II necks came laminated, which means that each pieces that forms the neck has a slightly different growth ring alignment with respect to its neighbouring pieces, providing a less clean path through any short grain. They'll break, but the resistance to it is far higher than a single-piece neck.

    Without exact numbers, I recall guitars as being something like 120lbs of tension and basses 160lbs? It's a far amount of difference, but I don't think there's a lot of correlation between basses being more prone than guitars to headstock breakages. At least, not from string tension as a factor. It tends to be more about shock from being dropped.

    I would hazard that it's more about headstock angle. Basses don't seem to use anything nearly as high as Gibsons, and I would think that is where most of the difference lays rather than simple cross-section.

  3. The problem that is progressing needs stopping in its tracks, that's for sure. I'm not an expert on Strats by a long shot, and I am sure this is not a unique case. I would seek opinion from the Fenderhead community, as common issues are often handled with common and established repairs. In general I think the most minimally-invasive techniques should be the ones considered first unless a sure-fire solution is identified, in which case go with what works. I would imagine that the compressed wood is going to continue to present problems, and might be something requiring careful drilling out and dowelling. The glueup would be long grain, and hence strong. Again, see what the Fender community agree on as the most appropriate measure. I'm sure as a second opinion it will provide you with more confidence that the direction you go is correct.

  4. I guess a short answer would be that heavy thick tops reduce your capacity for using F-clamps on the face, but the weight in invaluable if you do any sort of hand planing work. If you don't, then don't introduce unnecessary bulk. A lighter table racks and rocks more, but is easier to build and offers a lot more options in what you can build into the top, such as t-tracks, flippable tops, etc. I can't remember what the minimum depth for most commercially-available dogs are, however this is another useful top thickness indicator.

  5. Oops! I missed this reply. As you'd expect, "living and working with" any workbench soon develops new ideas and highlights flaws. My train of thinking was broken (yes, two years....wow) however I do want to pick this one back up. Two years has revealed a few habits, cheats, shortcuts and reliable methods which definitely add a lot to the subject.

  6. There certainly will. A lot of these series were started before commenced with planning video work. Mostly it makes sense to do long-form publishing alongside the more visual stuff, so a fair number of things such as this have been on temporary hold. The alternative is that it sort of ends up disjointed and/or repetitive.

  7. I quoted this post to my boss at the small furniture company I work at. It's genuinely useful information, and not used as often as it should be. The epoxy plus 10% alcohol....makes life with the stuff a luxury rather than a nightmare. It sounds like you have a lot of extremely useful and practical information to share!

    Agreed about the DIY thinners mix. Toluene is a nice solvent to have around the shop since it's good for removing dried glue from wood....

  8. Pretty much! In the context of guitar maker use, they are the cheapy alternative to a bandsaw and beyond that, the result goes to the router. If a jigsaw can't produce a rough product that can safely be take to the router, it is not an appropriate tool. Even scroll saws and their lack of power cut straighter than a jigsaw since the blade is supported at both ends.

  9. That's the thing, Rich. Once you start considering buying a decent jigsaw, you start approaching the territory occupied by small bandsaws. There's still a great deal of consideration to be done with jigsaws as to whether they're appropriate to a task on thicker materials. Fundamentally, the way they work undermines how useful they can be. The risk is always there.

  10. Sounds like this series worked out perfectly in terms of timing for you then! Part 2 goes live tomorrow. It just needs proofing and minor corrections carrying out. :peace

    Maybe the bench I'll be describing in part three will be right up your street, but preferably not in your garden unlike those floppy Workmates.

  11. That would be a perfect world, wouldn't it? There's a lot more you can do with any bandsaw than a jigsaw of course. However, at the cheapy low-end they present their own problems, so it's not entirely a graceful transition from one to the next. They'll do the job given a lot of patience, false starts and fiddling around. I'll do a jigsaw vs. cheap bandsaw video at some point in the future. Excellent topic!

  12. Jigsaws do have that problem, and there was a bit of splintering and chipout here. Nothing massively destructive, but pendulum motion does help allay the issue somewhat by moving the blade out of the face of the cut on the downstroke. That would otherwise "push" wood out of the underside of the workpiece. The top is a different matter. Some jigsaws have zero-clearance inserts which help prevent blowout on the top (I think the Festool has that) but generally it's not too bad unless you really hack at the workpiece. Once you know the "fractious personality" of whichever tool you're using you can compensate for excessive splintering by making more allowances at the margins. This is another one of those balances between coarse stock removal with a jigsaw in advance of finishing cuts with a router. You either risk the jigsaw chowdering your workpiece or you risk offering too much material for the router to safely remove.

    Good question about cheap bandsaws. I think once we have enough money coming in the Patreon hat each month, we can look at buying a crap bandsaw in simply for illustrating why they are problematic. Around the couple of hundred mark (where the crossover between expensive jigsaw and cheap bandsaw exists) things get a bit more complicated. Small benchtop bandsaws have pathetic throat capacity where you might struggle to evacuate material from cutaways, and have excessive blade wandering  at body blank thicknesses. This is entirely where the pros of a good jigsaw overlap with the cons of a bad bandsaw.

    Overall I prefer the "workpiece over the tool bed" approach of a bandsaw over the "tool on the workpiece" both for large cutting and routing operations. There's a much larger bearing surface, and you can easily chicken out of an operation if things look like they're getting out of hand. You can't always do that with a bucking jigsaw or a runaway hand router!

  13. Thanks for commenting! Well, that was the reasoning for the article really; I think jigsaws get a bad rap, especially from luthiers who have a better-equipped workshops with bandsaws, etc. There are an equal number of people who don't, so jigsaws have their practicalities once you understand their limitations and work within them. I think that the unit I borrowed had just been abused, so the sole locking mechanism had far too much play in it.

    Great to hear from a luthier that "work within the wood"; often I have to keep reminding myself that not every luthier pre-ordains the end result using templates and precision working where it is truly not always needed. The wood has a lot to say, and sometimes it needs to be listened to. :peace

    Post a build or two over on the forums!

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