Hotrock Posted December 1, 2004 Report Share Posted December 1, 2004 I was just checking out the Industrial guitars ... great stuff ... more like I was thinking of making but I wouldn't want all those rivets. I wonder if anyone has any ideas for attaching the top other than this idea ... some kind of super / super glue? I was thinking of doing something similar, too. Maybe epoxy would do the trick? Silicone would probably hold, but the softness of it might dampen any resonance. TIG weld? We're looking at brazing (silver solder) to join up the front, back and sides of the resonators we have on the cards. Can't remember if it's an option on Aluminium though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 1, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 1, 2004 As far as patenting a metal front guitar you gotta be the first to patent it and lots of folks have been using metal to decorate for a long time. Zemaitis made (d. 2002) some spectacular ones. I googled this image : http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~k-ma2/guitar/z_meta.html And it appears that Zero Guitars welds them up. http://www.zeroguitars.com/pages/210658/index.htm 6061 tig welds and wire feed welds quite easily if you have a welder who can plan the weld sequence so it doesn't twist up. Homebuilt aircraft makers use epoxy to glue their spars together - they're aluminum tubes telescoped together for a taper. For a guitar, I think you'd have to use a square bar on the inside corner of the panels in order to get enough area for the epoxy to grip but might work nicely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted December 9, 2004 Report Share Posted December 9, 2004 Well, no one can say Project Guitar's not inspiring! I'm planning my own "aluminium Alien" and have cut out the basic shape from MDF and it looks great! It's a shape I've always wanted to make. Basically, it's a sort of left handed strat...I've got a good enough left handed neck...with an extended cutaway into the longer lower horn...and the controls and contours as on a right hander! I'll be using .6mm sheet hammered into shape over a timber shape as a top...this will be strengthened and will be hollow and joined to a timber body/back. 50/50 aluminium/timber. I've got some cool ideas for finishing using highly polished and brushed areas. Like a strat there will be a lot of sexy curves...hope it all bends to shape ok. I figure they're able to bend sheet into coke cans so, with care, I hope to get those fender curves and then some! I've got some sneaky ideas for construction after checking out all those sites...I'll start a thread of my own when there's a little more to show. It will take some time as I'm planning on fitting custom wound new design pickups (open coil singles) and my own trem design I'm working on! So It will really be very custom!!!!!!!! Anyway, thanks MC and you others and watch out for a thread in the new year from me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tirapop Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 (edited) On my list of guitars-to-build is an aluminum skinned resolectric (basically a semi-hollow body guitar with a resonator cone plopped in the middle). It would have wood sides and interior. There'd be a nicely figured veneer on the sides. I like the look of the screws on Specimen and Industrial Guitars. The top would be flat sheet, screwed to the wood frame. I think with thin aluminum sheet, I could use a laminate trim bit to do the final trim. The back would also be aluminum sheet screwed to the frame. I think it would also be glued and use pan head screws (countersunk with a hemispherical cap) ground flush. The back would be pounded out a little in the middle for an arched back. Shape-wise, it would be a single cutaway somewhere between a Les Paul and a Maccaferri "Django" guitar. I like how ornate old resonators are. Something art deco would be cool. I remember how there was an Egyptian fad in '20s and I thought it might interesting to create a period guitar in that style. A soundhole, where the toggle on a Les would be, in the shape of Osiris' eye, obelisk hieroglyphic inlays on the ebony fingerboard, an ankh on the headstock, and some kind of Egyptian design motif (palm trees?) punched into the resonator cover plate. There'd be a neck pickup and a piezo on the resonator cone... maybe a bridge pickup built into the coverplate. Edited December 10, 2004 by tirapop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 Excellent! Gonna get me some competition and some of those ideas sound great. I would still remain cautious about the wood/ aluminum interface. The thermal expansion of aluminum is 13 microinch/deg. per inch of material. Wood is around 1.7 to 2.5. If it stays at room temperature - no problem. If you leave it in the back seat of the car on a really hot day or really cold day there's going to be some stress on the fastening points. Something like contact cement or glue that doesn't harden would have a little give. The double back tape that they use for carpet installation might do just fine, I use it for milling really thin plates. I'd be hesitant to use epoxy on a wood/aluminum joint but homebuilt aircraft makers use epoxy to join spars and ribs (obviously a lot of faith there) but it's aluminum/aluminum. Blind rivets like on airplanes would work well and eliminate bumps. If you're thinking of forming (hammering) look for 3000 or 5000 series sheet. They're softer and would form better. Aluminum will work harden and if it's bent too much it'll start cracking. You need to do it in steps with annealing in between. To anneal aluminum, take an acetylene torch, set the mixture so it's puking black smoke and blacken the aluminum. Then clean up the flame and heat the aluminum until the black is burned off but no more. It'll be soft and you can work it some more. For cutouts for pickups you can use a router if you don't get too greedy and have everything clamped down. There's a whole lot of learning about to be done on this metal stuff. I still don't understand all I know. A lot of the rules for getting tone out of a wood guitar seem to be suspended with aluminum. All of the ones I've built sound good but the 7-1/2 pounder sounds better than the 13 pounder. My current theory is that the partial harmonics don't decay as fast in metal as in wood so you get more coloration in the sound... um, that's the theory for today anyway... Please post pictures. I get my ideas the old fashioned way.... I steal them. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 OK, I don't want to give too much away...especially since it might not work...but: What I'm thinking is an alloy/composite top...the alloy sheet being bent then filled with a material with a lot of give...and fitted to a flat, perhaps plywood, base. This would be about 18mm (3/4") thick in total and to this you could mount the neck, bridge, the pickups, and controls, etc. from the back. The solid timber back would bolt around the edge, into the alloy top, from the back. If the sheet is bent sufficiently and the shape right, I figure that expansion will cause deformation of the shape in all directions (including up), which will also help address the problems of expansion. Another idea I had was a top made of a couple of sheets that overlap (would look like a scratch plate I guess) which would act as an expansion joint. There will no doubt be a number of ways to achieve a good result. Bending the edge radius of my strat shape looks like it could be a problem, so thanks for the tips on annealing...we'll have to see how I go...I still can't seem to work out how to identify what I've got or can get. This stuff, 0.6mm thick sheet, you can bend with your hands but getting the complex bends, especially around the horns look like it will pose the biggest problems. I want thes curves, not only because they look sexy, but the geometry should provide strength and stiffness to the otherwise thin top. I wonder if the shape could be pressed in a male and female mold set. What do you think, would that help the cracking problem? thanks again pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 I don' see any reason that you couldn't do a full bore mass production on something like that. The body shape could flex... Could be made by one of those outfits that press out aluminum briefcases. you could also get into all kinds of splash anodizing. The metal underground is growing... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 I forgot to mention... you can make these suckers too thin. Try finding low height behind the panel switches can be a pain. Even the mini's can get kind of close to the back after wiring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted December 11, 2004 Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 If nessesary, you could route into the into the inside of the timber back...necessary if it has a tremolo anyway. I felt that if the neck and all wiring could be kept together but be accessed from behind, this'd be great and very neat! As for thin, I'm never going to be able to bend thicker. I anticipate some reinforcement will be necessary from the neck to the bridge and around the controls. I'm also thinking of indenting the knobs in shallow curves. The variety of curves will be so as to provide stiffness where critical, despite it's thinness, by avoiding flat areas completely. The stiffness comes in part from it's geometry and an idea I have of filling the hollow top (post shaping) to help avoid dings and feedback without comprimising too much the hollowness and alloy properties. As the back is not structural it could be made of a number of materials. I'd love to make guitars but where would I get a suitable necks for a production line of the things? Still, we'll see how we go, if this works out well, I've a mind to make a nine string iceman! pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 By thin I meant the body cavity depth. Strength wise You could probably get away with a single flat plate 6mm thick I'm down to 3-1/2 mm (.140") and don't see any flex at all from string tension. Of course the rounded edge helps there. As far as necks - Warmoth, USA Custom, Stew-Mac, Moses and others will sell you all you can afford to buy. Fretted, finished, inlayed. The fret jobs on Warmoth necks are the standard by which others should be judged. They're basically plug and play. However, they've really got a case of Seattle attitude. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted December 11, 2004 Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 Sorry MC, but you've mis-read my post. The sheet is 0.6mm (ie half a mm) thick not 6mm. This is pretty thin, I think you'll agree, but do-able provided sufficient reinforcement is provided to support it with enough give not to separate with expansion. My design calls for a 18mm (3/4") or so molded top (ie to the point and including neck fixing) made with this material with a similar thickness timber back. The total would be very similar in depth to the thickness of a Strat, so even if some space needs to be made in the back for controls, trem springs and the like, I wouldn't expect any problems. As far as necks - Warmoth, USA Custom, Stew-Mac, Moses and others will sell you all you can afford to buy. Unfortunately, I don't think you could really expect to make much profit as an unknown builder using aftermarket components such as these for a commercial proposition, that's kind of what I mean't. By the way, what's your opinion on Aluminium Necks. Does the expansion issues outlaw their use. I no Travis Bean and Kramer had them and heard they had problems with stability with temperature changes...even those caused by stage lighting. It occurs to me that the back of the neck could also be made by moulding alloy sheet in a similar way in which I'm proposing with the body and gain stiffness and strength in it's natural curve shape. If the fretboard were of some other material, would you risk separation. I guess what I'm thinking is that the amount of expansion and contraction is linked to the amount of aluminium used, (or am I wrong here?), and that by using hollowed sheet I'm giving the material some play in all directions. I imagine there will still be stress on the joins but, other than epoxy I'm not sure how I would join it. I dont feel that riveting, etc. is the solution for my ideas but I appreciate that any amount of uneven expansion between materials stands the risk, or even certainty, of a failure in the joins. psw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalcarver Posted December 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2004 Pesky little decimal points anyway. I had visions of sledge hammers and sweating bodies, glow of flames, big guy with hood and whip... One thing to keep in mind about forming aluminum, is that it needs to be squeezed and not stretched. I guess that was the big trick in forming aluminum cans. The punch and die have to pressure the material into place without stretching. I've heard that about Kramers and Beans with the stage light stuff. I guess Les Paul made an aluminum guitar himself and couldn't keep it in tune on stage. My guess is that - especially in the neck- having wood and aluminum alongside each other makes it act like a thermostat. It'll curve toward the side with least expansion. It's probably going to take some extreme conditions to do that or they wouldn't have made them to begin with. A lot of people like the Beans. Veleno had a neck cast for him out of aluminum and people are willing to pay $10k for those now. But it was all aluminum. Yes the expansion is proportional to the material dimension. and in 3 dimensions. Just multiply the expansion rate X the dimension X degree change. So at 13 microinch/deg/inch you're not going to be able to measure a lot of change. But if that material is locked to something that doesn't change as much There'll be lots of pressure, more than enough to bend stuff. From looking around on the net there are lots of high end guitars using 3rd party necks. Have you made many? I run a machine shop so I really don't have the wood working end of things down pat. But I recognize quality when I see it. I'll pick on Warmoth because I have 3 of them. All three were within .003" (.076mm) on the heel dimensions - and that may have been due to finish. They ship them with a little bow in the neck so the wood won't take a set before the strings are on, but if you tighten the rod so that the frets are flat the ALL of the frets will touch my surface plate. The absolute best guitars out there have necks totally made by hand and you can't touch them for quality. They're stuff you dream about. But you really have to have your poop in a group if you are going to compete with computer carved necks on quality AND price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted December 13, 2004 Report Share Posted December 13, 2004 Thank's MC, I'll take that on board...still feel some of those corner bends could be a problem...squezzed, not stretched you say...hmmmm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldnslow Posted May 25, 2005 Report Share Posted May 25, 2005 Thank's MC, I'll take that on board...still feel some of those corner bends could be a problem...squezzed, not stretched you say...hmmmm ← hey guys ive done a lot of work with a process called hydro forming ive used this process to build 2 stroke expansion chambers in alloy stainless steel and mild steel with great results il give u a breif out line of it here we go cut out the shape u want *2 then take one shape and drill 2 holes in it at either ends one end bleads excess air out and one is the water inlet then weld the two shapes together now attach a plumbers hand pump to inlet side bleed air out then blow the peice up to the shape u want you could use this process to make a nice arch top hope u all under stand what im on about here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devon Headen Posted May 25, 2005 Report Share Posted May 25, 2005 Can we please try that with punctuation? I think I kind of get the jist, but I want to make sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marksound Posted May 25, 2005 Report Share Posted May 25, 2005 The first I heard of hydroforming was on the C5 Corvette's frame. You can read about the process here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tirapop Posted May 26, 2005 Report Share Posted May 26, 2005 I used to have a great link for what oldnslow was describing, but, the Eurospares web site seems to have disappeared. What you're doing in metal is essentially what you do with those mylar balloons: you have two flat sheets of material, joined at the edges in a shape, and you inflate it. You can play around with a couple sheets of tissue paper and glue to get an idea of what the inflated shapes would look like. There are limitations to the technique. If the contours change dramatically or if you want a lot of depth, you can get creases along the seam (like on those circular mylar balloons). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAI6 Posted May 26, 2005 Report Share Posted May 26, 2005 "Hey guys! I've done a lot of work with a process called hydro forming. I've used this process to build 2 stroke expansion chambers in alloy stainless steel and mild steel with great results. I'll give you a brief outline of it. Here we go... Cut out the shape you want. Then take one shape and drill 2 holes in it at either ends. One end bleeds excess air out and one is the water inlet. Then weld the two shapes together. Now attach a plumbers hand-pump to inlet side. Bleed air out then blow the piece up to the shape you want. You could use this process to make a nice arch top. Hope you all under stand what I'm on about here." I think that should be it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldnslow Posted May 26, 2005 Report Share Posted May 26, 2005 "Hey guys! I've done a lot of work with a process called hydro forming. I've used this process to build 2 stroke expansion chambers in alloy stainless steel and mild steel with great results. I'll give you a brief outline of it. Here we go... Cut out the shape you want. Then take one shape and drill 2 holes in it at either ends. One end bleeds excess air out and one is the water inlet. Then weld the two shapes together. Now attach a plumbers hand-pump to inlet side. Bleed air out then blow the piece up to the shape you want. You could use this process to make a nice arch top. Hope you all under stand what I'm on about here." I think that should be it... ← thanx mate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted May 26, 2005 Report Share Posted May 26, 2005 Well, it probably beats my initial thought...make a male and female mould of the shape in concrete...place thin sheet aluminium between...run over it gently with the car...park overnight.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tirapop Posted May 31, 2005 Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 Hey, the link for hydroforming is back up, if anyone wants to check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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