Old Mcdonald Had A Radius Block

[Prostheta]

At least the SM straightedge wouldn't cost them much in shipping and import refunds to send back if it wasn't in fact straight.

[dugg]

I made a few attempts with homemade radius blocks years ago, but gave them up. I'm sure my blocks were very accurate, but sanding is still sanding and it just doesn't flatten the wood anywhere near as accurately as my 22" jack plane. Those long aluminum radius blocks look like a disaster in the making to me. Anyone who has ever used a 6' aluminum level knows how easily they get tweaked with the littlest fall. It only takes me about a half an hour to plane a nice compound radius and the results are far more even than any machined FB I've seen yet. In short, I use the hand plane because it's flatter and more even than the sanding blocks. In fact, I would venture to say that it's flatter than any machine could make it as well. If you a bunch of people all doing the same thing, that doesn't guarantee that it's the best way.

[SwedishLuthier]

Dugg, using a plane is of cause perfectly good. But I often have lot of mother of pearl inlays. I think that means ruling out the plane. I imagine it would chip the MOP badly.

And why I am so uptight about the beam being not straight is that I plan on using it for fret dressing.

I'm still waiting to recieve the third beam from SM.

[Prostheta]

Sometimes it makes you wonder why we bother purchasing items at these high costs when the item doesn't meet it's purported spec. I'm sure that hunting down a friendly guitar-playing machine shop dude to mill a radius into a solid metal beam would cost less in terms of stress and time, although perhaps more in terms of money.

[dugg]

Swede, I'm sorry to hijack the discussion into a non productive 'monkey wrench' area like that. Should have realized you had yer reasons!

[87kevin]

Swede, I want one of these for the same reasons you do. I put off buying one from SM because of all this talk. I've decided to make my own and I have a chunk of AL big enough to do 3 or 4. I'm gonna attempt cutting them on my router (I've done a little AL before). Are you interested in one if it works out? I should be able to keep it within .001 or .002. It will take me some time and it will be solid, not extruded..

[Setch]

Didn't I see a jig somewhere where you could make your own with your router on a pivoting arm? Someone should make up a dozen or so and put them in the "for sale" section. If they resonable cost, I would purchase one to save me the trouble to building the jig.

-John

Found it!

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/radius.htm

I went to google to find it, and it sent me right back here. I should have known.

-john

I've actually just made up a newer version of that jig, which holds the router upright, and keeps the radius block level. I've cut one block, 9.5" radius, about 24" long and it worked out well. I'll bank that it has *way* more than .016mm varience, but I don't look for that kind of accuracy in my radius blocks - they just radius. A carpenters level does the levelling afterwards, as well as imparting a slight compound radius by sanding parallel to the strings not the centre line.

[soapbarstrat]

Ok, which one of you hot-shots is gonna move to Athens Ohio and become old MacDonald's new "Purchasing Agent" so you can influence all this QC stuff ? (happened to just see an 'Employment' link at the bottom of their web-page)

[John Abbett]

I picked up one of those wagner safety planers over the weekend. It took about 10 minutes to make up a radius block using the method described here. It came out pretty nice. I found that after I took off the bulk of the material, I took a final pass and took off just a tiny bit, and that left a nice surface. Most of the time was getting the fence lined up and making sure that everything was in the correct plane.

5 degree tilt gave me 12 inch radius.

The Wagner tool was about 50 bucks at woodcraft.

I'll use it to taper the back of necks too.

I'm guessing it paid for itself for the two radius blocks I made. 14 inch and 6 inch blocks.

-John

[Prostheta]

I'm not really convinced by those safety planers as tilting a circle produces an elliptical profile rather than a circular one.

[Flon Klar Guitars]

I'm not really convinced by those safety planers as tilting a circle produces an elliptical profile rather than a circular one.

That's precisely why you can get a different radius based on the degree of tilt!

[Prostheta]

Not quite....a circle which is stretched unevenly no longer possesses a constant radius....

An instrument made with this elliptical section "radius" would work as long as everything else on the instrument was set up to match the geometry, but it wouldn't be a constant circular radius.

[John Abbett]

I made a 12 inch radius pattern and put it up against my new block to make sure I had the radius correct. It made a nice tight fit all along the pattern. If it's off, I can't see it.

-John

[anderekel]

I made a 12 inch radius pattern and put it up against my new block to make sure I had the radius correct. It made a nice tight fit all along the pattern. If it's off, I can't see it.

-John

There is no if, it is off. It's an elliptical shape, not a circle. however, it's probably not off by very much at all. Depending on the person, what their tolerances are for this sort of thing, it's negligible. I don't think it would make enough of a difference at all to matter.

[soapbarstrat]

I never bought a radius block. And when I did want a set, I didn't trust the stability of "new" wood. So I got a bunch of oak from old furniture (stuffed chairs etc, where the wood frame is hidden, until you rip off all the material and stuffing).

Then on a router table, I'd rough in the radius (deeper channel running down the middle, then more shallow channels as I got to the edges) (and of course, before that, I'd plane the boards flat)

Then I'd put coarse sandpaper on my "radius jig" (You might have seen a drawing of my jig in Stew-Mac's "trade secrets")

I'd then go to finer grits, but I can't remember how fine I went.

Fairly current pic of that jig (about 15 years old, and you can see some parts are missing, like wing-nuts) :

http://usera.imagecave.com/soapbarstrat/ra...jig_11_05_1.jpg

Before I'd put the sandpaper on, I'd use an accurate (machined) plastic radius gauge to check the radius and I had a fairly tight tolerance. I would adjust it until nothing thicker than a .002" feeler gauge would fit between the radius gauge and the plexi top of the jig (I'm fairly sure I was able to keep this tolerance with all my blocks). Had the same tolerance lengh-wise.

http://usera.imagecave.com/soapbarstrat/ra...jig_11_05_5.jpg

Don't use them much these days, due to my preference for conical radii, and because it's been damn long since I made a new fret-board (have mostly been truing up already made boards). Instead, I use much shorter radius blocks that I had made even earlier, before I knew anyone else made any. I made those strictly with a router rigged as a compass. And I only use these for roughing in a conical radius, before switching to a long thin straight leveler.

But these oak blocks have seemed to remain quite stable (ok, I did go nuts with putting watco on them when I first made them)

http://usera.imagecave.com/soapbarstrat/ra...jig_11_05_6.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/soapbarstrat/ra...jig_11_05_7.jpg

[John Abbett]

You are so right about new wood being a problem. I cut a neck blank out of "Kiln Dried" maple and it warped 1/8 inch over it's length. Nothing like wood that is done with it's movement.

I built my radius block out of some old mahogany I had in the shed, it's been there for at least 5 years. Gets HOT in there, it's done what it's going to do after 5 season changes from very hot to damn cold. It was too narrow for a neck blank.. Too bad on that one.

-John

[Prostheta]

It's probably worth letting a radius block "season in shape" once it's been cut in case any internal tensions have been released with the stock removal. This is probably me just splitting hairs however.

[SwedishLuthier]

I have finally had time to check the third beam SM sent me. This one is actually more or less 100% straight. The deviation is less than 0.002" and within the stated tolerance. A pity it took them three tries to get it right.

[Woodenspoke]

I have finally had time to check the third beam SM sent me. This one is actually more or less 100% straight. The deviation is less than 0.002" and within the stated tolerance. A pity it took them three tries to get it right.

I think SM's policy is to ship it and hope your an Idiot. With a wood product it may deform afer a few months. Too bad they dont read this forum maybe they can learn something about quality control, thats short for check it before you ship it.

I have tried the safety planer method and it produces an acceptable radius block. Certianly better than trial and error methods I have used in the past.

[soapbarstrat]

Too bad they dont read this forum maybe they can learn something about quality control, thats short for check it before you ship it.

Trust me, they do read everything they can find about them on the forums. And sometimes they are closer than you think.(maybe even being too obvious by only submitting post in stewmac product related threads)

As far as checking before shipping. I think sometimes they have a whole batch of defective units. Then what are they supposed to do ? (Or , to be more specific, what does upper management tell them to do ?)

Yes, it would be nice if when all their in-stock units don't measure up, if they would say "look, we've checked over a bunch and none are up to par. We'll either wait for the next batch to check again or give you a refund".

Well, at least they do always give you the option of a refund, without much fuss. That's a good enough reason to always give them a shot before going somewhere else.

[SwedishLuthier]

Yeah, but they do not manufacture their stuff themselves. They have sub suppliers for more or less everything and as a sub supplier you always try to cut corners. High accuracy means high costs and less profit for you as a sub supplier. As Soapbar pointed out earlier (in his normal subtle way) it is the purchasing department’s job to agree on the level of quality the sub supplier should deliver. They have that covered. SM could go back and give me the expected tolerance. Then SM need to have someone to actually take a sample now and then to check if the goods received is within tolerance. Obviously that doesn’t happen to often. And even when the order department specifies that the items to ship should be checked the shipping department has no clue of how to do it.

But as stated a few times before, finally they get it right most of the times.

[soapbarstrat]

I don't know about right now, but Stew-Mac actually did make the wood radius blocks in Athens Ohio. I have old catalogs that say so.

Also in these old catalogs, it said many of the metal tools, such as straight-edges, etc, were made by Waverly. Stew-mac owns the Waverly company. But the Waverly co is in Montana (Don't know if that's where it still is today).

Also I'm pretty sure both owners of StewMac (Mr. Stewart and Mr. MacDonald) moved out to Montana. So maybe the Waverly co became their baby.

Yeah, their pride and joy, since waverly tuners are held in such high regard.

Now, when Waverly co makes some crap tools like the absolutely horrible set of straight-edges they offered in the early 90's ( I had a set and sent them back. They were an absolute joke), and they're coming out of the factory out where the Stew-mac owners are living, that could make the regular little employees at Stewmac quite hesitant to tell the big bosses that their factory is putting out crap.

[John Abbett]

I ordered a rosewood fingerboard from Stu-Mac this week (Among other stuff), it came in with a hairline crack along the grain. Hard to see. Anyway, I called them up, they are sending out a replacement today.

They are a good company to work with. Some companies would make you send back the defective one, then and only then would they send you a replacement. Stu-Mac said "Toss that one, we'll get you another fed-ex."

They are a little more pricy then shopping around and getting a little here and a little there, but they stand behind their products. I don't have anything bad to say about them.

-John

[Ifixguitars]

That home made block making jig is downright scary!

I'm not sure what your guys' time is worth to you but considering how much time away from the repair bench making your own stuff takes up, I'd much rather belly up to the LMII & Stewmac type joints for the right tools for the job.

I ordered a few of the aluminum Stewmac blocks for different projects. One (7.25") was a little funky but they sent out a prefect replacement right away.

[John Abbett]

I agree with you, if doing this takes you away from making more money then by all means pony up and get the stuff that you need to make money.

Some of us, (Myself) don't make money, and in fact, it costs me quite a bit to build a guitar. So, if I can trade some time for saving some cash, and end up the same end result I'm all for it.

My only problem is what am I going to do with all of these guitars that I can't part with. I'm getting quite a collection.

-John