Muzz

Fantastic guitar, you just need a safety cap on the end of the headstock when you play on stage, your band mates might mandate that! it's a gorgeous rock machine.

Perfect save on the sand throughs, everything is looking radiant here,  

13 hours ago, ScottR said:

By God you know how to live and enjoy the day!

Your blue tongue lizards were not out but my blues lizards--anoles that run back and forth across my driveway and always pause to listen when a good blues song is playing....those guys have been steady companions. I need to take another pic of those for my build.

Do you always store your amps in the woodshop? Mine would collect so much wood dust I'm afraid they'd spontaneously combust the next time I plugged them in.

SR

It was such a nice day Scott. and I hope that you can get a picture of a blues anole, it is really great to have wildlife living around you, good for the soul, and good for your lizards that you play the music that they like! Yes I like playing guitar down in the woodshop, the other day I was playing some Acca Dacca and L.A. Guns songs in there. 

Those clamps have been on for 24 hours.

I have just taken them off.

That fretboard needs some wood rasped off the treble side and then it gets radiused.

A beautiful balmy day today in Oz, I got everything ready to glue the fretboard in. First the truss rod was stuck in at both ends with silicone, I used mould resistant Selleys, you don't want any mould growing in there.

One last check that the rod is flush with the top of the neck.

Covered the rod with 9 mm wide blue tape, spread Selleys Aquadhere on the neck, wiped off the excess, especially from the middle, then ripped off the tape. Put 2 mm drill bits in the two holes in the fretboard and then stuck the protruding bits in the locator holes in the maple. Placed the clamping caul on and started making a porcupine.

Finished making the porcupine, and then went for a walk in the park to enjoy the Spring sunshine. 

The blue tongue lizards were not out today, had to slow down on the way back for a bin chook (Ibis) strolling across the road like he owned it. Got home and on to the balcony and watched the sun start to go down with  a Great Northern.

Hahaha but can he make a Tune-O-Matic out of a potatoe? 

The 30 mm from straight edge has been marked out on both sides of the fretboard, it doesn't have a centre line, it's a weird shape on the non-straight side.

Lined up at both ends 

And clamped down.

And drilled on the 1st and 20th fret, 16 mm depth.

2 mm holes

On 8/10/2021 at 12:21 AM, Bizman62 said:

Had to look for 'Foredom'...

Back in the fifties they knew how to make real household machines! In the Big Cookbook of that era there's a bunch of ads on the last pages. One that tickled my imagination as a child was the ad for a food processor with all the bells and whistles a housewife could want - plus a couple of features for the man: A flexible shaft and a palm sized handpiece with a chuck for drill bits and sanding disks. Unfortunately Google has never heard about it so there's no pictures.

I would have liked to see that kitchen appliance, I think in the fifties they sometimes tried to get the most use out of an electric motor as they could. And you never know the folks back in the day may have found uses for the flexi shaft drill in cooking. Not to be outdone, some folks in the twenty's have done some MacGyvering and come up with innovative ways of using power tools in the kitchen  

21 hours ago, ScottR said:

Is there a story behind this?

SR

There is indeed Scott, many years back I made a skate board out of acrylic and had a practise run on drilling an offcut, got a small cut on my thumb but went on to make an awesome board that lasted 3 years and managed to get more blood out of my knees on a few occasions 

18 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Rotating plastic confirming that Bob is married to one of your parent's siblings? That would be an old school rotary phone!

Absolutely, it was and this is going to make for a variety of music on this thread, here is the 1931 song 

15 hours ago, Drak said:

Dremel tools? To quote a phrase, 'I put that shit on everything'.

I have two of them and use them reasonably often. One stays attached to its router base, the other I use for stuff like this.

I take it for granted I'm going to break the cutoff wheel, it happens all the time, but they're cheap and I have dozens of them.

But they come in handy-dandy in plenty of instances, I use them to cut pickup mounting screws down all the time.

This was from building one of my pedalboards where I wanted a more secure corner-fastening mechanism than just a glue-joint and needed to whack off the extra screw length and protruding screw head. It works perfect for that kind of thing. Why I bother to take pics of this kind of thing, that is a topic for another day.

 

That is a great photo, I think it appeals for a few reasons, we are programmed through evolution to appreciate fire and photos that can freeze fast moving sparks in time that our eyes can't otherwise see are often captivating. perhaps why angle grinder dancing makes for some spectacular photography. 

I like taking photos of helicopters with a fast shutter speed so you can see the blades

11 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Nice photo though. I have to admit that I haven't replaced my Dremels even though I hate them. I can't afford a Foredom yet.

Looks like I am somewhere in the middle in my feelings towards Dremels, I like my reciprocating saw with a fine tooth blade for cutting bolts etc, Those Foredoms look good, I have never tried one, are there many jobs that need the flexy shaft or are they better quality?

On 8/5/2021 at 10:35 PM, Prostheta said:

I highly recommend having a few double-cut machinists files around the place! After you've sanded a corner like that, a few licks with a file smooth it out further than rough sandpaper does. It's partially endgrain so they become a pain to sand up without significant reshaping. That looks hella good though. Nice and square to the outline.

Cheers Prostheta, I am pretty stoked that an offcut from making a neck, can be made into a neck  

I am/will be using tiny files to smooth out various bits on that neck like a barb where the two templates met,

The other side is next.

Fished out my acrylic  jig for doing side dots, line up the scribed line on the glue line of the fretboard, position the hole half way between the frets and drill in, If anyone makes one of these, make sure not to hold acrylic down with your fingers when drilling the hole in the acrylic, the drill bit can catch and spin the acrylic around and the edges are sharp, clamp the acrylic down and Bob's your uncle.

It looks like I have gone back in time to get this beer, the only way it could look more antique would be if it was in a clay pot.

I love the blackburst on the Ibanez ART but your counterstaining technique is likely to take things to a whole new level, where the grain will sparkle and dance in different lights. 

The bass is looking so cool, I especially like the f holes and the neck to body transition

On 8/3/2021 at 11:23 PM, Akula said:

Makes sense! A little project on my to-do list is to build myself a plunge router base for my dremel - I can only imagine how much more useful that tool is going to become.

Great build too, mate, can't wait to see it finished. I remember following your Pointy Stick thread way back in the day, that one was so damn clean.

Great to-do project, I have seen a few guys on the forum make them very successfully, Glad you are enjoying this build mate, I remember our conversations on the Pointy Stick thread, good times.

On 8/4/2021 at 12:26 AM, Prostheta said:

I wouldn't. Dremels are terrible. The most they are useful for is evacuating pockets when inlaying. Making a plunge base is better than buying the overpriced accessory of course!

I think it is important to say just how terrible Dremels can be. Firstly, I should say if you are going to do some fretboard inlay, Dremels with a Stew Mac precision router base look like a good popuar go to and reasonably safe. But my advice is do not use Dremels for some of the uses they are mainly promoted for unless you use some heavy duty PPE (and even then don't) because Dremels with cutting wheels or wire brush wheels or any fitting if your sleeves are not skin tight are $&@%!+? dangerous. When you get those little brush wheels spinning at 35,000 rpm they are shooting little metal arrows right at your face, the cutting wheels can shatter and spray you with tiny ninja stars, and if your sleeve gets caught in the whirling chuck, the Dremel turns into a loose cannon with no cut-out switch. Anyway, rant over, back to the point, yep those StewMac precision router bases are #$)*&@! exy, I have enjoyed seeing various PGers make them with some looking like Flinstone tools and others looking professionally machined.

This arvy I had a play with this

Then used a router bearing to penlil in round off lines

Filed first then used some sandpaper stuck to a piece of wood 

Fit looks OK

Wondering how black it's going to be, as black as the blackest black pudding? 

Crisp edges on both side of the tunnels and perfect fit for the machine heads, nice  

This guitar has a great metal shape, nice.

On 8/2/2021 at 9:18 PM, Akula said:

Out of interest, why so? 

Deepening the channel in the nut section with a normal size router all OK generally, but in that previous specific case when I had taken all the apparatus away it would have been a lot easier and quicker to do it with the Dremel. I find the phrase live and learn applies especially to guitar building.

On 8/2/2021 at 9:23 PM, Prostheta said:

A lot of truss rods are slightly deeper where the two rods are connected, usually a small welded block. It has to be larger to have sidewalls strong enough to hold the rods together. The alternative would be that the rod is slightly narrower where it goes through the block but that's a recipe for shearing the thing in two!

You know I am surprised more rods don't get snapped or stripped from people having a go at adjusting their truss rods

20 hours ago, ScottR said:

Good solution Muzz, nicely done.

SR

Cheers Scott, I did the maple neck tonight and the truss rod is sitting in nicely now, Rounding off the corners at the heel and knocking off those barbs at the base of the headstock are the next jobs before the fretboard gets glued on.

On 7/31/2021 at 2:33 AM, Prostheta said:

I have to admit that I use mine as awls as well. the carbide can end up getting pushed into the body a little so don't hammer away at it!

Using a pinpoint and sharp scribe as an awl is a good idea, so many parts of guitar making needs an accurate centre indent. A scribe used as a centre marker would be good to make a drilling template to ensure ferrule holes are in a straight line and evenly spaced.

I tried out a technique to seat the truss rod nut into the channel on the practise neck first. The truss rod nut sits 0.8 mm lower than the rod ends, so the channel needs to be at least this much lower where the nut sits. Previously, I have deepened the channel there with a full size router, not a good idea.

I tried my mini router with a carving bit

To set the depth I put 1 mm cutting boards on the neck and lowered the bit until it hit the bottom of the channel and tightened the lock.

Then took away the 1 mm spacers and routed with the Dremmel. The blocks of wood are clamped 28 mm away from where I want the extra depth route to end.

It went OK

.

The rod at the headstock end now goes all the way in

Making sure there is no rocking and the truss rod is sitting flush within the channel.

Quite a few folks on board that could pass the Aust-Citizen-Test 

and Scott, the patterns on both sides are starting to really pop  

Luxe guitar, awesome work

 Oh those flamin drop bears are annoying.

One of the little buggers dropped smack on to my right said fred the other day on my way to the pub. He ripped my winter singlet to shreds but then got distracted by a bunch of boy scouts that were close by and tore after them. Lucky, cos I had my good going out thongs on and couldn't hoof it away too fast,

Good thing the lady from Wildlife Rescue showed up wearing the right PPE and sorted the little blighter out 

That bass just makes me want to go for a walk in the woods at sunrise listening to Thin Lizzy, it's so beautiful.

40 minutes ago, Drak said:

You just quit too soon, it takes a while to sand that out.

Its normal, it happens, to more or lesser extents.

No need to start over, its completely savable.

I'm guessing you don't have a bench sander or belt sander.

If you have an orbital sander you can use that to get most of them all out.

If its down to you doing it manually, use a block of wood to keep things perpendicular.

And yeah, if doing it manually, that's an afternoon of sanding.

That's more than 10 minutes right there.

But that all will come out, just not as fast as you would hope for.

That advice is spot on, use some of this and those scuff marks will come right off

On 7/29/2021 at 8:45 PM, Prostheta said:

Next time you're in the store, buy a carbide-tipped metal scribe. These are ubiquitous China-import crap, but they do a great job of scribing lines tightly against the blade of your square. A bit of chalk dust increases visibility. I don't know this company, however the scribes I have are the same as this from here:

https://www.aussiesapphire.com.au/tungsten-carbide-tip-steel-scribe-with-pocket-clip

That's gone onto my shopping list, the grip on it looks better than on my awl. The crook slot has been filled and leveled, it will get recut sometime on the weekend.

This is the body about 9 years ago at the lovely Bayview Hotel, Gladesville, at this angle you can't see the old open book headstock neck.

And this is what it looked like before I decided to deconstruct it and play guitar Mr Potato Head by replacing the neck

That is a nice Faraday cage that you have constructed, 999 times out of 1000 you don't need to do the solder joins between the foil sheets, but you and I would never be able to not do the solder thing because we are both

The shielded control cavity does make a huge difference to noise,. It's great pulling up to a complete stop on a high gain amp and hearing the sound of silence. 

On 7/28/2021 at 5:50 AM, ScottR said:

That's funny stuff! You guys have some of the best comedy.

SR

My favourite modern UK comedy is Ted Lasso and here in the land of Australia my fave is Fisk with Kitty Flanagan. Are there any other Aussies left on the forum after Searls Guitars last posted 5 years ago? his thread is still pinned three from the top.

15 hours ago, mistermikev said:

wow, once you smoothed it out that figured just jumped out at me.  still... i love the look of your guitars when they are in that 'rough carved' state.  is really neat.  

Yes  that intermediate stage also looked lovely with all that textured carving, captured for posterity in the photos. 

18 hours ago, Prostheta said:

It's not the biggest problem to fix. Could be worse, right?

It certainly could be worse, It's about a 1 on the boo-boo to fubar scale, Lesson learnt - don't try and cut slots in fading daylight. I have seen some people fill a slot with with super glue and wood dust,

I think that gluing in actual wood is a better technique. I went to Bunnings today and bought this to try out,

If it looks OK on the rock maple I'll finish the neck with it. I also treated myself to a new try-square

I'll use that to draw the fret slot in the right place.