Shirtman's 2014 Builds

[sdshirtman]

Green with Book Press Envy!!!

Says the man with the CNC!

A few more progress pics for you guys.

I'm shooting fora little better consistency on my carves for this model so I made me some carve templates.

Here they are finished. Now I have to get some bigger template bits for this.

Honestly I'm wondering if it will save me any time at all. My freehanded method seems quicker and is reasonable accurate.

We'll see as I'm going to put these to use this weekend.

[RestorationAD]

Green with Book Press Envy!!!

Says the man with the CNC!

But I don't have a friggin book press!

[RestorationAD]

BTW CNC do not fix bad glue lines.

[ScottR]

Green with Book Press Envy!!!

Says the man with the CNC!

A few more progress pics for you guys.

I'm shooting fora little better consistency on my carves for this model so I made me some carve templates.

Here they are finished. Now I have to get some bigger template bits for this.

Honestly I'm wondering if it will save me any time at all. My freehanded method seems quicker and is reasonable accurate.

We'll see as I'm going to put these to use this weekend.

I'm curious to hear the verdict on this........

SR

[ScottR]

Speaking of progress pics..........

SR

[sdshirtman]

Fair enough Scott. I'm a lot further than than shown so I'll do truncated picture catch up.

Backs getting carved. I'll dial this in all the way after my necks are glued in. My grinder and DA are becomings closer friend of mine.

I did find another use for the new smaller #7 gouge I just picked up. I dont like having to get out a smaller router bit just to do the corners of my pickup routes. The new gouge fits the bill perfectly. A good time saver for me.

Back carves mostly done. I'll finish up when I glue the necks.

I'll be doing a lot more of these magnetic truss covers moving forward so I made a simple template to help speed things up. Again these are time consuming and I can use any time saver I can utilize.

The first few of these I made were cut out on a scroll saw with a 45 degree angle. This time some of the laminates I did just tore apart using this method regardless of the speed and feed. I had to resort to a gentler method.

A block cut at a 45 degree angle, a popsicle stick with some double sided tape and a rounded block with sand paper does the trick quite readily without destroying the truss covers.

One in maple, one in cream abs and one with .030 white abs to match the board with block inlays.

The new template worked very well. They snapped right into the intended position although there were a few tricks I used to insure that that I'm not divulging.

On the board with maple binding. These look cool new but I've seen that they have a tendency to soak up nastiness from your fingers over time and discolor. To thwart this I taped off the maple binding and gave them a few coats of tru-oil to seal them up on top before I installed frets. Once dry a few strokes with some steel wool took down the gloss. The sides will get lacquer. This should seal them up keep from griming up for a while.

And last for today. (my computer has 7% left)

I told myself I wasnt going to ever make another set of wood pickup rings again but one of these builds is screaming for a set. I was just going to buy some pre made ones but everything I found out there were either flat or the color was off and very pricey. So I said screw it and ended up just biting the bullet and making another set. Two actually. I'll save the other set for a future build or sell em on ebay.

These were pretty time consuming to do by hand. I'd say a good 5+ hrs from start to finish from a nice billet of cocobolo.

The entire time I was working on them all that I was thinking about was how these could be done soo much faster with a CNC machine. Someday right?

I'm very happy with the final result though. Once in context on the build it will be time well spent. My last two sets I finished in lacquer. These are just getting a light coat of tru-oil. I think they will wear much better that way plus I dont think the cocobolo really needs it.

This installment still doesn't bring these builds up to their current state. I'll bring this thread up to speed soon enough. Today I finished up the front carves and will be binding them asap. I'll post more pics soon.

Till then . . .

[pan_kara]

I love the wooden covers and pickup rings. I'm attempting the same things nowadays, but my methods are much more crude.. this is very inspiring, thanks!

Care to share at least the outline of the process you use for the pickup rings?

[arriereitor]

Those one the most beatifull guitars i've ever seen.

Simply brilliant

[ScottR]

Looking great John. Nice little assembly line you've got going there. Is your wife calling herself a guitar widow yet?

The cocobolo rings are sweet. I seem to remember madhattr3 discovering that he couldn't get tru-oil to cure on cocobolo. It would probably be worth it to wipe some on some scrap just to see if it will cure.

SR

[sdshirtman]

I love the wooden covers and pickup rings. I'm attempting the same things nowadays, but my methods are much more crude.. this is very inspiring, thanks!

Care to share at least the outline of the process you use for the pickup rings?

My method is probably as crude as yours.

I'll have to add pickup ring tutorial to the never ending list of things I have to do but probably will never will. Lol?

But in a simple nut shell here it is verbally.

I split a 1" thick billet in half on the band saw. I then cut the pieces to size using a table saw sled with a vertical toggle clamp mounted on it to hold the pieces in place. After this part check the pieces to make sure they are perfectly square.

I then mounted the pieces onto my router sled bed using double sided tape to cut the angle into it. If memory serves I think it was around 3 degrees. Its what ever the stock Gibson rings are. I checked this with a digital angle cube. There are some pictures of this from my previous builds.

I then lay out where my holes are going to be drilled including the inside radius of the four corners of the inside using a square ruler. Once this is done I drill out all the holes.

From there I put it on a scroll saw and connect the 4 radius holes to cut out the center. Make sure to leave yourself some meat to sand the insides down to spec.

From there its just a matter of carefully sanding the insides flat and into spec. I made a set of three different sized sanding blocks with radiused edges matching the radius of the inside corners. The trick here is to cut your sand paper and attach it to the block just shy of the radius so you wont sand into it the radius.

I'll note that the counter sinks were done slowly by hand.

I sand all the edges and corners with 220 then move into higher grits and finish with steel wool.

Let me know if thats hard to follow.

Those one the most beatifull guitars i've ever seen.

Simply brilliant

Thank you very much

Looking great John. Nice little assembly line you've got going there. Is your wife calling herself a guitar widow yet?

The cocobolo rings are sweet. I seem to remember madhattr3 discovering that he couldn't get tru-oil to cure on cocobolo. It would probably be worth it to wipe some on some scrap just to see if it will cure.

SR

She doesnt call herself that yet. Between running a full time business and doing this in the evenings and every weekend I think I've worked every day for about 8 weeks straight. So wether she knows it or not she is one.

On the tru-oil and cocobolo. I did run into some funky curing problems. After 24 hrs they still weren't completely dry. I rubbed off what was left of the uncured oil with a rag and buffed it out. That left a nice shine on them. Always learning right?

Since I'm on here again today I'll add this from this weekend.

I found an incredible piece of spalted maple with some nice flame on it a few months back. Against warnings from a few others I decided to do a carve top with it. For for what it is this piece seemed stable enough to pull a carve top off. This piece actually had a decent tap tone in its raw form instead of the a dull thud like you'd guess a piece of spalt would have. If it didn't, I dont think I would have used it. Whats the point of building a dead sounding guitar right?

I started by soaking it with some wood hardener. It drank up a good 3/4 of a bottle before it was saturated.

From there I treated it like any other piece of maple until it came to carving it. I ran into trouble trying to use a DA on it. As you'd guess the softer parts would sand quicker than the harder parts leaving ripples.

I got around this by using a lot of custom made sanding blocks and methodically taking my time. This carve took me almost double what a normal piece would take.

After I got this down pretty close to its final form I sanded it down with 120 and gave it another good soaking of wood hardener. Thats where I am now - waiting a few days for it to cure nice and hard. Then I'll sand it down again and route the binding channel. I still haven't decided how to tackle gluing the binding on.

Here it is during shaping. You can see from the shaving that it wasnt too deteriorated.

And then with a good soaking of hardener. Best of both worlds? (ignore the brush hairs. Those will sand out)

Part of me really wants to try and pop the flame out a bit more but given the piece I think thats going to be impossible.

[ScottR]

That was obviously worth the extra effort. I think you are right about the grain popping. I think it would stand a good chance of hinding the cool spalt characteristics.

I don't knoooooow that for a fact tho.........

SR

[demonx]

I think the top looks great as it is. Stunning piece of timber

[sdshirtman]

Its time to bind these and one of these is getting the cocobolo treatment. Cocobolo's kinda brittle and I knew this was going to be a pain but theres no turning back now. I made all this from a nice 36" chunk of cocobolo I have so I got to break out and play with my newly acquired drum sander. It took all of 15 min to make them. I dont know how I got along without a drum sander.

http://www.jobsinmotion.com/jobs/-/J3G4126XL74MVNZH3X6?IPath=JEHRNRA&siteid=cb_emailrec_US&emailversion=CB_1_hr&clicktype=recemail&utm_source=CB&utm_medium=CB_Recommendations&utm_campaign=Email

I cracked a lot of these pieces trying to get them to bend properly. This is two of a bunch I screwed up in the process.

One of the problems was how tall the two pieces for the inner horns were and the extreme curve I needed to put on it. Since cocobolo is so oily it doesn't accept water so I couldn't get the steam that helps it along. I even tried soaking this stuff over night to see of I could saturate it but no dice.

In this process of trying to saturate the binding strips I came up with a simple solution. Put a cork in one end of a piece of PVS pipe and fill with water. Use a small spring clamp to keep the pieces from falling in. Durp.

I finally got I piece I could use. The rest of the less tall stock bent much easier.

[sdshirtman]

And a few bonus neck carve pics that show the veneer I put on the back of the headstock for the one getting the cocobolo treatment.

Thanks for looking. Carry on....

[ScottR]

Nice solution for bending the coco.....you always come up with a solution for the tricky stuff you design into your builds.

Fine anchor point for the rubber tubing, reminds me of an old method for catfishing......

My work boots look just like yours.

SR

[pauliemc]

If I get a tricky bit of wood binding I find that a few minits in boiling water makes it go like rope. You just have to be quick getting it roughed into place & use heat resistant gloves but it works a charm.

[sdshirtman]

I cant believe its been a month since My last post. Life has had me on the run the last month.

I had my daughter graduate HS and we had a tons of friends and family out for the occasion. Her 18th birthday a week after that. She got a car that took me a week of searching to find. Scratch another weekend. Spend the next weekend with a friend who is moving away. That ate a lot of weekend build time.

I have free weekends in front of me so maybe I can get these done soon.

Thanks for the previous comments. I did do some experimenting with the boiling water trick. Great tip. Appreciated and thank you.

Bringing these up to date.

The spalted one has been bound with two ply to mirror the neck binding.

Neck on the spalt is glued up and blended in. Still needs the bridge installed and a nut cut and grain fill, but then its ready for clear coat.

I had originally planned for a chrome bridge and tuners for this one.

But after some contemplation and a lot of badgering from a friend of mine and my wife I've decided to go all black on this one. Kind of cliche but I think it works better which is why everyone else prolly does it.

Opinions?

That meant ordering new hardware. The Pigtail bridge I had planned on using doesn't come in black but the Tone Pros wrap around version does! It was actually a little cheaper and came with locking studs.

I think the Pigtail came first but it makes makes you wonder if there was ever a lawsuit between these two. They are almost identical. I like the saddles on the Tone pros a little better. I tried to get this customized by having nickel/chrome saddles on it but no dice. And unfortunately the saddles only come pre notched. If anyone knows of any saddles that will drop into these let me know.

The one with the cocobolo binding has a pretty thick top and thus a thick carve on it. When I did the recesses they came out little deeper than I thought they would be. I ended up re-contouring this one a bit to try and make these appear a little shallower. Worked out better in the end.

Colors.

I want to leave a natural top on this one. I'm thinking it needs just a small amount of pop so I did some tests with a weak mixture of med brown applied to a pre-wet surface.

This looks close but its still just a little dark to me. I just want to slightly enhance the figure. .

The spalt is getting clear coated which leaves the one bound in cream in question. I was thinking red but It clashes with the blue green inlays.

In an effort to mimic the inlay I did some experimenting with direct dyed dark blue with a sand back then shot with tinted green lacquer over it. I thought that might preserve the blue a bit. In the end it didnt look the way I wanted. I'm also not a huge fan of green guitars anyways and I dont think many others are either. I've decided I'm going to do a blue burst on this one. Simple and classic.

[sdshirtman]

So heres a nice screw up. I almost didn't post but decided to post it as a sort of tutorial to show how I fixed it.

Yesterday I was finish sanding these just before I dyed them. Each one had one small depression in the top that I was going to steam out using a soldering gun. My gun was up to temp and I soaked a small rag with water and went about the relatively simple task.

What I didnt notice and see was the set screw for securing the tip to the gun resting on the top. It left a nice deep black burn mark right in the center of the guitar. Why couldn't this of happened on my spalt body? Here's a little recreation.

Many expletives were shouted and I had a small meltdown moment. A nicely figured top I was leaving a natural finish on ruined in three seconds of careless oversight.

I had to step back and be done for the day. (Scotch to the rescue.)

I started experimenting on some scraps the next morning. The only thing I could come up with was to graft a piece of matching wood. The question was how.

I tried cutting out a square/diamond shape but it was too difficult to match up and ended up looking like total crap. Not going to work. I needed something that was more or less un-noticeable. I decided to try and take a small oval shaped chunk out a matching piece and glue it into the void I would cut out from where the burn mark on the body was.

Here's one of the practice pieces. The lower oval piece was one I had cut too deeply and it left an obvious horse shoe shape under it The pencil circle is the acceptable graft.

So heres is my fix explained

The only way this would work is if the grain matches almost exactly. Here I'm measuring the grain width with calipers.

And measuring against the grain of a piece of scap. This is a good reason to keep your off cuts. Without this matching piece this wouldnt have worked well.

Its hard to see in this picture but after I found a suitable grain line to graft from I used a little naptha to allow me to see where the figure was running through both pieces. I wanted to match this as accurately as possible. That means the figure lines too. Otherwise there would be a noticeable gap in that spot after it was dyed.

And the marked figure line from the donor.

With both marked I had something that looked like this.

Using a very sharp number 7/9 gouge and a block to let me duplicate the correct angle I take a piece out by cutting half way in from each side.

This demonstrates the block to get the angle close. The cut angle is obviously important in matching the two pieces together.

Not the actual piece I used, but this is what the piece from the donor should look like.

And removing the burn section.

Its very worth noting that this is a little backwards. I started with removing the burn first. Then I took a slightly larger piece from the donor. Having a slightly larger donor piece is IMPORTANT. This gave me room to sand flat when dry. Otherwise I might end up with a depression.

If any of you try this I'd advise practicing several times on scraps first. This took me a few tries to get right.

Once you have these steps complete its just a matter of gluing the piece in. I used a fat dab of stainable elmers wood glue. Cover in wax paper and clamp tightly.

Here is what it looks like after gluing.

And here is the final result after sanding flat. In the first picture you can sort of see how the figure lines match.

Its not perfect and never will be. But its close enough that it shouldn't ever be noticed unless I were to point it out directly. You have to look pretty hard to see it. I've asked a few people to find it and they couldn't. We'll see what it looks like after its dyed.

For now it looks like top saved and crisis averted.

[ScottR]

Awesome save! That is not for the faint hearted, and you must have some skills to pull it off. Well done! It does not hurt that it is between the pups as well. Strings will detract from what's below.

I've always been a fan of all black hardware......and I know Paulie is a fan of green guitars. I wonder if being Irish has anything to do with that?

And life do get in the way don't it?

SR

[verhoevenc]

Nice!!!! That's dedication!

Chris

[crazygtr]

I learned something new today.

[Prostheta]

Its not perfect and never will be. But its close enough that it shouldn't ever be noticed unless I were to point it out directly. You have to look pretty hard to see it. I've asked a few people to find it and they couldn't. We'll see what it looks like after its dyed.

For now it looks like top saved and crisis averted.

Amazingly good save! Sounds like good food for a frontpaged repair tutorial, don't you think?

I hope that you saved your scrap test pieces because I highly suspect that the glue will prevent dye taking straight to the patch wood. You might be lucky with only the glueline not taking dye however the patch may well contain glue within the wood, also preventing dye take-up. Since it looks good as bare wood, it might be worth considering whether a sealer coat over the Maple and shooting colour over the top is an option rather than dyeing straight to the wood. You might not see it now, but it can happily re-present itself once you bring colour into the equation.

[sdshirtman]

Awesome save! That is not for the faint hearted, and you must have some skills to pull it off. Well done! It does not hurt that it is between the pups as well. Strings will detract from what's below.

I've always been a fan of all black hardware......and I know Paulie is a fan of green guitars. I wonder if being Irish has anything to do with that?

And life do get in the way don't it?

SR

Mighty kind.

I wish there were 28 hrs in a day and two of me.

Nice!!!! That's dedication!

Chris

Dedication I could have done without. Lol

I learned something new today.

There are times when you take the time to post and ya get crickets. Makes ya wonder if anyone's paying attention. Glad someone got something from it and thanks for saying so.

Its not perfect and never will be. But its close enough that it shouldn't ever be noticed unless I were to point it out directly. You have to look pretty hard to see it. I've asked a few people to find it and they couldn't. We'll see what it looks like after its dyed.

For now it looks like top saved and crisis averted.

Amazingly good save! Sounds like good food for a frontpaged repair tutorial, don't you think?

I hope that you saved your scrap test pieces because I highly suspect that the glue will prevent dye taking straight to the patch wood. You might be lucky with only the glueline not taking dye however the patch may well contain glue within the wood, also preventing dye take-up. Since it looks good as bare wood, it might be worth considering whether a sealer coat over the Maple and shooting colour over the top is an option rather than dyeing straight to the wood. You might not see it now, but it can happily re-present itself once you bring colour into the equation.

Just sharing a repair I was more or less forced into. When you search google for something similar not much comes up. I guess it wouldn't hurt. If you think its worthy of a tutorial go for it.

Sealing and shooting with tinted lacquer would be ideal if I hadn't wanted/needed to direct dye it to enhance the grain.

I was concerned about how it would stain and if I would have a ring around it. I used stainable glue in hopes of eliminating that.

I'll post the pics of the stain soon but it took it quite well with one little thing I hadn't planned on. (But should have) I always raise the grain with water and sand back down before I direct dye. This part went off no problem. When I actuall applied dye to this I gave it a light pre wetting to give me a little control over how much this soaked up. The excessive moisture was a little much for it and the repair started lifting a bit on one end. I had to put some weight on it and reclamp while the dye dried. All was ok in the end though and it still looks good. (Whew!)

Even though I dont like using it, in retrospect I should have used an alcohol based dye.

[sdshirtman]

Here's a follow up to the repair after dying. Hardly noticeable.

I'll post another when its clear coated.

Heres something not really guitar related but I figured someone could use the info. Remember that super rusty book press I picked up? The previous owner had this sitting outside for years. Time to clean it up.

I'm sure most of you are familiar with electrolysis rust removal but for those that aren't this is a very effective and cheap way to remove rust from steel or iron. This is a great method of bringing back old tools found at swap meets and garage sales. The nice thing about the electrolysis method is it only removes the rust and doesn't harm the base metal like strong acids can. I wont go into the scientific explanation on how it works here. if you really want to know You can google it.

I'm not going to go too far into details on the setup because there is already so much info on this on the web. I really just wanted to show whats possible with this method. The materials needed to do this are simple. Here are the basics things you'll need.

1. A plastic container (So it wont conduct)

2. Arm and hammer washing soda which is sodium carbonate. Its important to note to NOT use baking soda, which is sodium Bicarbonate.

3. Some sacrificial steel electrodes (I used rebar. Its cheap and available at home depot for like a dollar per ft. )

4. Copper wire.

5. A car battery charger. 2 amps will work but 6-10 amps works a little faster.

6. Water.

7. A little patience.

Fill a container with water and keep track of how many gallons you put into it. Once full add one tablespoon of washing soda for each gallon of water. This is your electrolyte.

Firmly attach your sacrificial steel pieces (rebar in this case) around the sides of your container. Connect these together using wire. You might have to sand a piece to bare metal to make good contact. These will be your anodes and will get connected to the POSITIVE side of your charger. This is important as its where your rust will gather. Just remember red = rust.

Connect another piece of wire firmly to the pieces to be cleaned. This piece of wire can be submerged if need be. This piece will become your cathode. You can suspend this piece with wire over the bucket or just place it in there but it must NOT touch any of the anodes. If the anodes touch the cathodes the process wont work and you'll burn up your charger.

Once set up you can connect the batter charger. Remember positive to the anode (rebar) and negative to the piece to be cleaned (cathode). Plug in the charger and wait.

This is what my setup looked like. This is a big piece and I needed a large container. Its over kill for something small like a hand plane. For most small parts a five gallon bucket works fine.

And this is what it looked like an hour later. You can already see the reaction happening. Small hydrogen bubbles fizz at the top and the whole muck slowly swirls around to let you know its working.

This was pulling about 7 amps from my charger when I started it.

http://s129.photobucket.com/user/sdshirtman/media/DAG%20builds/IMG_1073_zpsbe72ab8c.jpg.html?sort=3&o=42

The next day it was pulling just under 2 amps. This means your anodes are dirty. Unplug the charger and remove them for cleaning with a wire brush. This is what they looked like the next day.

Replace the anodes back into the water the and plug the charger back in. You'll be drawing more amps now. Repeat this as needed until the piece has no more rust.

Some things worth noting.

1. This piece was pretty heavily rusted and took 7 days to do. During that process I took the piece out twice and removed the bigger chunks of rust that had loosened up to help it along.

Your results will vary depending on how rusty your piece is.

2. This precess releases hydrogen gas which is potentially explosive, so do this outdoors.

3. DO NOT use stainless steel as your anode. It will release hexavalent chromate which is very toxic. This is the same stuff that the Erin Brockovich movie was about.

Here is the mixture on day 7. There is no more churning and no more hydrogen bubbles rising from it. Its pretty much finished. the bucket in the lower left hand side is all the rust I cleaned off the anodes over 7 days. Rust that was once attached to my piece.

Heres the piece just after removing. At this stage you need to take a brass wire brush to it to remove the black oxidation that forms on it. It comes off very easily. Once this is done you have to coat it with oil, wax or paint it immediately or it will rust again.

And here is the same piece 8 days later with a coat of paint on it. The surface is a little pitted from being outside for so many years but thats to be expected. The electrolysis even removed the rust from the screw mechanism. A little grease and its ready for another 100 years of service.

Hope you enjoyed. Now to glue up a top with it!

[sdshirtman]

And a few actual guitar related pics.

This is the extent of the dye job this one is getting. Just enough to enhance the figure. Four drops med brown and one drop amber trans tint to about a half cup of water. Hit it twice and sanded back.

Third little pig in this run gets the black treatment before sand back.

Just before clearcoat.

After first coat of clear.

After a few more coats the color starts to get a breath of life and come into its own. This stage always gets me going.