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#4 Has An F-hole


ScottR

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Yesterday morning while I was fretting the neck in my garage, a young lady walked up my driveway. She had a clipboard and I was afraid she was either going to be selling or preaching.....but what she said was, I want to complement you on your music.

B)

She said who's playing? I said, why that's Gary Moore! She said she stopper her car and opened the door and went, whoa....that sounds nice. What does he play, jazz? I said, well, he gets jazzy sometimes and he's played a lot of rock, but mostly he plays the blues. Is this from his latest release? :D No, that's something live from Montreux. I'm gonna have to look him up. :D Always glad to help educate today's youth.

I use a wedge of jatoba with a grove in it to hammer in my frets. The ends are rounded to keep it off the board and between the mallet and the fret-set, I don't get any bounce. I just slide it along the fret and tap. It does a nice job of focusing the energy of the tap too.

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This is stainless steel jumbo wire. I cut one fret with my docks and moved on to a cut-off wheel on my dremel. The 12" radius that lmii ships there wire in is perfect for my 14" board.

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I made my first attempt at cutting shell for an inlay. It was very tedious. I used a Stewmac router base for my dremel (very nice piece that) and a 1/32" down spiral bit. I cut a tighter hole on my practice piece. Man the strokes on thee letters sure looked narrower when I was cutting them.

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SR

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Frets are in trimmed and beveled. I think before I level and dress the ends, I carve the neck. I clamped it into my portable work bench and went to work with my handy dandy rasp I made from a used bandsaw blade. That thing's still the fasting cutting rasp I own.

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The neck is now roughed in and the inlay is leveled but not polished.

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SR

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Thanks guys.

Soooooo, does anyone know how to smooth one edge of a diamond triangle file? I thought I might be able to knock off whatever it is they used to bond the crystals to the metal of the file.

But so far.....no. So far not even another diamond file is working.

Huh :D

SR

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I've got a stone on my grinder that was intended for cleaning up the edges of granite slabs after they are cut up into counter tops.

Didn't touch it. Didn't knock the first crystal off. The file did make a pretty good grinding wheel dresser though. :D

SR

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Scott why did you have to switch to the dremel for the Stainless wire?

I just bought a bunch because of the huge requests for it... also bought some EVO to try.

My heavy docks (wire cutters)weren't doing a very good job cutting it. It took way too much effort and the ends deformed quite a bit before being cut off. I have a great tool here at the plant that is used for cutting rules for steel dies.....but that was not where I was. The cut off wheel was fast and accurate and even useful for trimming up close to the board. Did make the frets hot though, I had to hit them with a little compressed air before touching them with my fingers.

My StewMac frett cutters are great for cutting up close to the board, but they already had a small dent or chip in the cutting edge from nickel frets. They worked fine for EVO too. I didn't even try them on the SS. Jumbo SS is pretty dang tough stuff. That's why I am trying to fix up a diamond file for dressing the ends. The angled bastard file I set up for beveling the ends workd fine BTW, although it did take longer.

SR

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Scott why did you have to switch to the dremel for the Stainless wire?

I just bought a bunch because of the huge requests for it... also bought some EVO to try.

My heavy docks (wire cutters)weren't doing a very good job cutting it. It took way too much effort and the ends deformed quite a bit before being cut off. I have a great tool here at the plant that is used for cutting rules for steel dies.....but that was not where I was. The cut off wheel was fast and accurate and even useful for trimming up close to the board. Did make the frets hot though, I had to hit them with a little compressed air before touching them with my fingers.

My StewMac frett cutters are great for cutting up close to the board, but they already had a small dent or chip in the cutting edge from nickel frets. They worked fine for EVO too. I didn't even try them on the SS. Jumbo SS is pretty dang tough stuff. That's why I am trying to fix up a diamond file for dressing the ends. The angled bastard file I set up for beveling the ends workd fine BTW, although it did take longer.

SR

I guess I am going to have to budget for replacing tools more often with the SS frets. I am testing a new set of flush cut diagonal cutters. They are great for nickel I guess I will find out next week how they survive on SS.

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Do you have one of those flexible extentions? I love mine. Except for routing that's the only way I set mine up. I hang the body with a bungie cord let the extension dangle near my work space. Very handy and much easier to control and get into tighter places.

Which cut off wheel do you use? I like the ones made for the B&D Wizard much better than the Dremel wheels.

SR

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I have the extension, but I've never used it. IDK why, but it just never occurred to me. :D The only disks I've used are the Dremel brand. Unless I mail order, that's the only brand I have available around here. I don't mind though. I might go through 2 disks a year, so longevity or cutting speed just isn't a concern for me at this point.

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I've been considering SS frets for a while but all the extra work at the fret mill stage scares me.

Curious to see what you and RAD have to say after finishing and what the improvement is as I've never even played a SS fretted guitar

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I've been considering SS frets for a while but all the extra work at the fret mill stage scares me.

Curious to see what you and RAD have to say after finishing and what the improvement is as I've never even played a SS fretted guitar

I will tell you SS is all the rage with the new metal guys... not one customer in the past 2 years hasn't asked for them.

Personally I am not a fan... I own 2 parkers and while they play awesome they sound a bit harsh on the high end (might be voodoo). I love my old Dunlop 6150 wire but the new stuff hasn't been as great. My challenge will be to place them in warm smooth sounding fretboards to counteract the harsh overtones...(absolute voodoo I am talking now :D ).

When my old stock of Dunlop ran out I went Jescar. I liked the Jescar but went back to the Dunlop recently... now I have a tube of SS and some EVO so we will see.

I will post in my threads how it goes and how the tools wear. Wes swears by them so we will see.

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I started dressing the fret ends last night using my regular steel triangle file that I smoothed the edges down for this purpose. It works fine. It takes longer on these SS frets, perhaps twice as many strokes, but it gets the job done. iwasn't getting anywhere setting the diamond file up, so I gave it a shot.

I've never worked with or played on SS or jumbos either for that matter. I'm pretty much only building this for the fun of building it anyway, so I figured I'd find out what all the fuss was about.

SR

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I have the extension, but I've never used it. IDK why, but it just never occurred to me. :D The only disks I've used are the Dremel brand. Unless I mail order, that's the only brand I have available around here. I don't mind though. I might go through 2 disks a year, so longevity or cutting speed just isn't a concern for me at this point.

I've picked these up at Walmart, Lowes, HD, and Sears. They've always been with the Dremel accessories.

http://www.blackanddecker.com/attachments/RT1000.aspx

They don't shatter like the dremel wheels do and those things are like shrapnel when they go.

SR

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It seems like I've been working on this neck forever. And like every neck I've built so far, I boogered up the fretboard while dressing the frets. So I had to go back and polish it all over again.

One thing I learned worth passing on is the best way to clean oils and resins and general gunk out of micro mesh. I've used everything from soap and water and a toothbrush, to rubbing alcohol, to lacquer thinner and a scrub brush.

Today I used denatured alcohol and a terry cloth rag and it is hands down the best. Cuts fast, cleans quickly, and drys soon; it leaves the sheet looking like new.

So I did get done with the neck shaping and fret dressing.

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that should be enough about the neck until I set it.

SR

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