I am making a playing card holder with oversized slots for a person with a medical condition. 

This is the idea:

Below are pics of where I am at on my workpiece. . I now need to cut across the length on an angle.

I have a bandsaw, but no jig and I would prefer not to make one for a one-off (I doubt I will cross cut on a 28 degree angle again).  I have a table saw, but I am concerned with tear-out. 

Any thoughts on the best way to make this cut are greatly appreciated. 

It is basically a very compact view camera, without bellows. The large format lens/shutter sits on a focusing helicoid to allow focusing. The idea is to be able to use a groundglass to check focus, or do scale/zone focusing by guestimating distances.

There have been a few similar projects on sites like thingiverse and printables, but I really like the conventional film advance lever (rather than manual rotating of knob), and it is much easier to make a neat dovetailed wooden enclosure (for me at least) than doing a 20 hour 3d print. So yeah, still getting the hang of it, I have bought a longer lens too (and made a lens cone for that, because it needs to sit further away from the film plane).

The Front, those large format lenses have the shutter fitted in the middle, you can take them apart.

Rear, with 120 rollfilm back, this is 6x9, but I now also have 6x12

And the ground glass, the camera has a clamping mechanism which allows exchange of groundglass and filmbacks.

I had some scraps of the Teak plywood left over from the Roll Top Desk, so I glued them up.

Then I cut 1/8" x 3/4" strips of mahogany to glue up an edge.

I also covered the bottom with vinyl.

Wife put mineral oil as a finish.

Now back to guitars.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dMawVCwVgO23pS65XaksfH3ULjK5Mknt

Now for some reason she said "instead of making guitars, why don't you finish my desk?"

Well I built the desk with Teak plywood and put 1/4" trim on the edges and three coats of lacquer.

Well today I finally got around to glueing up the roll top after watching Norm Abram make one.

Well so far so good.  

So I told her that it would take as much wood as it wood take to make a guitar.

I need to get back into making Guitars!

Queue a long learning curve of Fusion, PCB design, etc etc all the way to the wiring, butt-clenching during testing and overwhelming joy that I didn't die in the process it sounds at it should and functions like I wanted it to. It's mean, tight, dry, very dynamic and I love it. Since I basically did everything except design the amp, I learned a lot and feel proud that it actually works.

Finished product:

Some sound bites now to showcase how badly I play. Done using my home made 6 string "Purple Haze", into the amp, into a 1x12 VHT P100E, into an iPhone put on a stool in front of the speaker

First on the Less channel on cleanish settings. Uninspired I know. First half is a humbucker neck, parallel, second half is bridge humbucker, series:

https://on.soundcloud.com/F6CmwSjgExyA72uw9

High gain: a riff from Monuments on the bridge humbucker (series), towards the end some mindless around the fretboard jumping on the neck humbucker.

https://on.soundcloud.com/d7jso9pf28VJs1Vc6

And some picture from the build sequence:

Now on to planning my next guitar build... I got some ideas already

First job of the day was going to be converting an old throwing knife into a marking knife, I also intended to start beating a bit of leaf spring down into a bore tapering reamer but the tongs you can see in the picture above didn't hold it well  -I'll arc weld a handle onto the piece and try again another day.



I drew out a long rat-tail tang, and cut the surplus off the front end, then rough-shaped the blade. With that done, I turned to a repair job. Years ago, I managed to warp the frame of a g-clamp through abuse so it hadn't worked very well since. As it was malleable cast iron, I thought it was time to get it hot and whack it back into shape.

A bit of heating and beating got it back to almost where it was originally, and the clamp will not work a lot better. I swapped hammers for the job for the one I made at blacksmithing college 25 years ago - happy days and good to be working with an old friend again.



Getting the  old kit out did make me wince at the condition of it all, lots of rust, wooden handles in desperate need of linseed oil and the hide part of my copper/hide mallet falling out for lack of neatsfoot oil. I'll get busy on that, then I can do more metalwork this summer - I've got ideas for some of the hardware on the Tele (update on that project soon) that will look awesome if it works as expected.
Last job of the day was a quick rough grind on the marking knife, and I found a boxwood pen blank that will be a good handle.

I have a metal base that the wicker top has fallen apart.

The wife said "instead of making guitars, make a new table top".

So I just made a screened cover.

Well well well. It's been a moment. Life overtook me yet again, and I find myself in a new set of circumstances outside of industrial woodworking and design. Thankfully one that is more stable and predictable, if anything can be considered so these days....!

For anybody that isn't familiar with my background, I've been an industrial woodworker and furniture maker/designer for a few years and worked with a variety of 3-5 axis HOMAG/WEEKE, SCM, Biesse and "random faceless" CNC machining stations, cutting wood, light metals, composites and plastic. The industry I did that within is notoriously fractious when it comes to companies being reliable and consistent, with every year throwing new levels of fuckery....especially after CoViD-19 chaos.

So now I am more seated in a different industry - albeit one without ready access to industrial woodworking machinery - I am committing to a 2yr CNC project build. At least, this is what I predict for timescale. One of the major steps requiring warm weather to perform reliably, since I also do not have a large heated indoor space separate to living space, plus the fact that this is not going to be a cheap project on any level. Designing, problem-solving and making things a little above the norm has always been a big driver for me mentally. If one isn't learning and progressing, one ceases to be good, etc.

Project Overview

The design is already partially-cemented, having had about a year of development time in my head with most of the design choices made. I chose the configuration of a gantry CNC over a moving gantry as it affords a higher degree of rigidity and better cut quality. This is at the expense of footprint or otherwise a reduced workpiece cutting area. The frame of the CNC will be mineral casting, often called epoxy granite or other parallel terms. This allows me to achieve number of key goals, but is pretty much a project in and of itself. Compared to the typical hobbyist CNC whose frame tends to be mostly an open aluminium extrusion frame, I am wanting a reasonable enclosure around the cutting area. The machine will be run by a Masso G3 Touch controller, but is likely to be initially commissioned using a RootCNC Controller ISO unit.

The electrical side of the machine will be housed in a separate control box managing the motor supply, control voltage and auxiliary power. I am aiming to do this within electrical safety codes, or at least aping the important aspects of best safety practice since I am not specifically qualified in this area. I know enough to know when I don't know enough. I've had excellent input from a few other CNC builders when proofing the machine design, so it should end up being a very capable mid-range enthusiast CNC. As with all CNCs, once commissioned it can start making its own parts.

This is an early render of the rough design idea that at illustrates the important features. The largest change will be the base, since the sheer mass of this clocks in anywhere from 300-350kg depending on the actual composition of the casting. More on this later.

Whilst not illustrated in the model, the front and rear of the machining area will have perforated chip curtains of some sort. These are either a woven material - like nylon or Aramid - or a plastic like PVC/vinyl. Ultimately these are intended to keep dust and chips within the area where the extraction can manage the finer stuff, and keep any coarser material from ending any real distance from the work area.

The gantry's Y axis is built around a purpose-designed extrusion from Vallder in Bulgaria. This is a very impressive product and a massive shortcut. The extrusion includes channels designed specifically for HIWIN HGR20 linear rails (or clones) and a 16mm ballscrew.

The upstairs hallway wasn't as badly worn and more importantly it wasn't empty. Moving all the bookshelves and my wife's office to a dust free place wasn't a tempting idea so I decided to take a cleaner approach so I grabbed a card scraper and a sanding block. First I attacked the front of the toilet as it was worst, about a third of the length of the hallway. Also did that in two parts so that we could still use the toilet bypassing the curing oil. And then the Osmo used for the kid's room ran out, there was just enough of it to cover the cleaned area once. No biggie.

So it happened that I noticed a can of German made Hard Wax Oil at the local Lidl for a tenner, intended for wooden floors and staircases! What a bargain! A quarter of the price, made in the same country so I was hoping it might even be the same product under the house brand. Or at least similar enough. So a couple of months ago I scraped and sanded another third of the floor and used the new stuff on it. It seemed to blend in with the Osmo but both parts were a bit too close to bare wood to my liking, another coat was definitely needed.

A month ago I finally attacked the last third. The plan was to let the stuff dry while we were on a road trip for almost a week. Scraped and sanded, moistened and resanded for the smoothest possible result as I had done with the previous sectors. Also cleaned and lightly sanded the previously treated areas for a second layer. And finally in the morning right before leaving I spent half an hour upstairs doing the entire area spreading the Parkside oil wax with a soft paintbrush. Despite having used it liberally the bare wood had already sucked up quite an amount of the stuff by the time I reached the stairs but obviously I didn't want to step on the wet oil to apply more. Anyhow, so far so good and there was plenty enough left for a second application if need be.

Well, the stuff hadn't dried during the week. The new sector is tolerable but apparently I should have wiped the excess off of the previously treated areas. The boards are rustic, meaning they're outbowed with beveled edges so the oil had drained to the seams in many places and created a wrinkled skin. And after four weeks it's still tacky! I tried wiping with turpentine to see if the wax would dry and when that didn't work I tried thinner - on a small area of course! The wrinkled drains came off by rubbing but I doubt my palms would not have endured the task. Then I did some testing with baking soda and rubbing it by hand seemed to make some difference to the shiny tacky goo so I spread it all over the floor with a softish scrubber. You know, soda powder can be used for sanding and as a side note, sanding was done with sand until they invented sandpaper. Well, it sort of worked: The dust that had stuck onto the wax came loose but after vacuuming the soda away there was no difference.

So finally today I took the scraper and started to remove the wax. The first 70 centimetres have now been scraped once, some 5 metres to go. I'm afraid that I'll have to do it again unless the residue decides to harden.

I thought I would document my current build here as well, even if it's not a guitar but an amp.

I have been extremely happy with my latest guitar build to the point of delaying the next one (!). So I have been tackling pedal builds and it went much better than expected, with a couple of kits being built and functioning perfectly on the first try. So I decided to step it up and get a kit of an amp I always loved the sound of: a Soldano. And luckily for me, a EU company sells kits with good reputation: https://www.rosamp.com/

So I bought a Slo 30 kit. The only thing missing was a head cabinet but hey, that's the woodworking part so it should be fine hopefully. For what it's worth, it seems to be all of good to great quality. My only complaint so far was that some electrolic caps were subpar (ordered new ones, Nichicons and Panasonic, 20€ total) and some of the provided wire length is really tight for the build (10€ on top I would say).

Anyway, here goes. Yesterday was the first day.

Starting point:

Sockets in:

Standers, plugs and pots in:

Wiring in progress:

Kinda proud of my flying ground bus:

Made the pins on my lathe, it's 16" W x 64" long.

The pins don't fall over to easy so, when I get a chance I'll tapper the ends a little more.

My 5 yr. old grand daughter will see it this afternoon. I guess she'll be the judge if it's fun or not.  

There does not seem to be an introduction area to the forums, so I figured I would just post the last thing I built, which is an arcade cabinet. This arcade cabinet was a really fun project and if anyone has the least inclination towards it, I highly recommend it. As for me, unlike the vast majority of folks here, I am very much a beginner guitar player. I have some intermediate abilities with woodworking, so when I started learning guitar, I almost immediately wanted to build my own. I've spent the last couple of weeks just learning how its done and will spend a few more doing the same, but I'm definitely looking forward to the process. If anyone has any tips for someone who has a pretty decently stocked shop, but is only just starting off with guitar making, I'm all ears.

Meanwhile I figured I needed to show some of the arcade cabinet build, so here are some pictures:

Thank you all for reading! 

Now that I'm making some guitars I need an amp to play them, so I plugged it in and it sounds great.

Bedrock went out of business in 1997 , This is a new chassis that's been sitting around since then. 

So I'm making a case for it.

So 3 days of hard work.

I am attempting to design a lap-steel and wish to include a system similar to the sliding capo featured on Duesenberg fairytail lapsteels.

This design seems to feature a roller nut that sits behind a steel bar with a steel rod above this and a thumb screw. This slides up and down on a track and locks down when the chosen position is found.

I have purchased a bender system from Certano that includes a very nice roller nut.

I was original going to try to replicate the Duesenberg system by using a T-track and clamp and adapting it.

I have difficulty seeing how the duesenberg system works. Why is the roller nut needed if the strings are clamped down? Do you need to loosen it to tune?

Since my metalwork tools/ability are limited, I have been thinking of the simplest way to achieve this. My current thinking is that i could mount the roller-nut on the sliding t-slot. I could put a simple nut made from L section steel/aluminium behind this to maintain break angles. The whole nut then moves up and down and I shouldn't need any locking mechanism. 

Any thoughts on this would be welcome? Perhaps I need to make a mock-up to test the idea?

But then another issue arose. He also needed a controller for them. A tablet was what he first thought of but after some pondering he figured that an abandoned smart phone has a large enough screen to show the temperatures etc. His wife had a suitable one so the next step was to find a way to hang it on the wall. As we're going to have a meeting in a couple of weeks I thought I might be able to build something now that the Autumn semester had started.

Plan A was to build a frame but a) making the power button and charging port accessible without large gaps seemed a bit tricky and b) my scrap pieces were too narrow. So onwards to plan B which involved just a skeleton with a rest for the phone. Today to my pleasant surprise there was a piece of gluelam birch board in the scrap bin, long enough to allow cutting the longitudinal joints away. So I just took a piece of my offcuts from a previous build and did some routing and gluing. As the friend in question is a guitarist I also added a detail I think he'll like. The piece of plywood is about the same size as the Samsung phone, very handy to have a dummy for testing. It's sanded to 32o, waiting for some finish and a mounting hole.

So fresh out of my latest guitar build I wanted to try my hand at pedal building. I found a kit based on my favorite pedal so far (Fulltone OCD), and since I wanted to do a few mods on it, I went for it and order a AionFX Titan kit from Musikding.de .

I built it yesterday. Glad to report it works first try! Was a nice experience and a good practice for my poor soldering skills. In addition I could make good use of our CO2 laser on the powder coated enclosure.

Gut shot:

Front shot:

I might do a few more while waiting for the amp kit I want to be back in stock, and the right piece of wood for the next guitar build.

She is keeping me very busy, complete kitchen re-build.

Fun Fun Fun

so these are two buffers for a two pickup instrument, and a summer.

There are some through hole components, but most is SMD on the underside of the boards.

 ).

Enclosure volume is about 13 liters, tuning frequency will be 55Hz or so. I've tried them now with a closed back panel, because I was keen to hear them. Seems the little Hotone amp is not up to the task though, so I'll need to find a different amp to drive this cab.

Wood is cherry for the sides, beech for the top, and basswood for the bottom panel, the baffle is 9mm ply, with a large brace at the back.

Dovetailed carcass, the cherry sides are almost quartersawn (which is why I bought them, because thin panels in cherry have a tendency to warp a bit otherwise).