Hot Knife

[thedoctor]

I am putting this on tools and shop seperate from my complaint about Carvin necks in solid-body cause this is the good half of that disaster and involves tools. Pretty fart smeller, ain't I? As I explained the tedious process of hot-kniving a fretboard off to my son, he commented that I was spending most of my time heating the wood and the knife(a piece of 14-guage MS sharpened). I knew that they used electrically heated wire to cut the foamcore he works with at Disney but it never clicked. We took a hacksaw blade and sharpened the center 6" to a crappy chisel edge and ViseGripped(registered trademark) a piece of 1 X 4 to the last 2" on each end. I ran #6 welding cable clamped to the gun of my Lincoln 110 volt MIG welder to one end and the ground clamp to the other(mistake in hindsight) Watching the blade heat when I stepped on the trigger, we realised we didn't have a welder setting low enough to keep the knife at just about 220 degrees and this Carvin glue was needing a lot of heat. I spent the next hour stepping on and stepping off the gun trigger but got pretty good at cycling it without that telltale smell of burnt wood. Needs refining but I had fun. Here is the ground mistake: I smelled what I thought was the beginning of wood burning but it was my left glove about to flame-on next to that cheap ground clamp. I would post a picture but don't quite have a full grasp of the picture-posting rules. Wasn't that pretty, anyway.

[feylya]

Oooh, post a link to the pic at least

[thedoctor]

feyla, I seriously don't have the slightest idea how to post a link but my son took some really stupid pics and said he'll help me post it Saturday. Its me at my absolute worst!