Prostheta Posted May 27, 2016 Report Share Posted May 27, 2016 32 minutes ago, steve1556 said: I'm just worried that as I've spent a fair bit of time on the body so far, that I'm going to completely and utterly mess it up with a router! Well, that's what we do! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2.5itim Posted May 27, 2016 Report Share Posted May 27, 2016 I agree with pros, from what I've learned since I have started par tacking in this madness is mistakes are bound to happen but there is almost always a way to fix the mistake. If you take a look at my third build thread I have had quite a few screw ups on that body and it sometimes means changing your end goal of what you want but that isn't necessarily a bad thing in my case so far! Just don't be scared, take it slow and be careful and I'm sure that you will be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted May 27, 2016 Report Share Posted May 27, 2016 It's all well and done not making mistakes, however they're just lessons waiting to happen. Once you screw up big time, you get the chance to take a lot from the experience. Entirely why I don't recommend starting with expensive woods for first projects. I wrote off so much good wood learning myself, so I know firsthand how totally balls that all is. This is a great project to cut your teeth on though. Happy to help out where I can and great to see progress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted May 28, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2016 I know mistakes are all part of the learning curve, but I'm just trying to limit the amount of expensive mistakes (ruining the body blank, for example). I do also realise that being my first guitar, I'm a lot more likely to make mistakes by using the wrong technique and that, but I also appreciate it's part of the learning curve. I just really don't want to make a massive mistake on this build. Prostheta - that's the biggest reason of building an ash bodied Strat, if I really do mess it up then it's not massively bad cost wise, or ruining a nice piece of wood! I really want a nice mahogany bodied thinline Tele with a nice walnut top, if I attempted that as my first build and trashed the wood, I would have been kicking myself, hard! Managed to get a bit of work done on the 16mm template yesterday. I've decided not to use the 9mm MDF and go straight to the 16mm. Over the next week I'll get the back template done on the 16mm, use the router on both of them, and get them transferred to 25mm MDF sheets. I've decided to go for the 25mm sheet as my router bit is 25mm long and it means I can take small amounts out of the body on the first pass. Onto some pictures! I found the Fostner bits were crap at going through the MDF, they just seemed to get too hot and not much cutting. Forgot to support the holes with some scrap wood and got some blow out on a few holes. The front template is only roughly cut out with the jigsaw, it still needs routing, but I'll do that after I get some glasses as it was a bit windy yesterday and blew dust up into my eyes a couple of times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockhorst Posted May 28, 2016 Report Share Posted May 28, 2016 Looking very good on those templates! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted May 28, 2016 Report Share Posted May 28, 2016 You should spend more time on your templates than on the instrument in my experience. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SIMpleONe89 Posted May 28, 2016 Report Share Posted May 28, 2016 Remember your dusk mask! Mdf is nasty for lungs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muzz Posted May 29, 2016 Report Share Posted May 29, 2016 Very true about the MDF and the mask, love seeing the templates getting made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted May 29, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2016 Cheers guys. My plan is to make the templates as perfect as possible, as if there is an error on them then the guitar will be wrong. So in that respect I'm not rushing them. I've got a lot of time off work next week so I'm hoping to get them all finished and transferred up to the 25mm sheet. Don't worry, I'm wearing a dust mask. I've got one of those disposable P3 filter ones that I use for powder coating, but work is on hold until I get hold of some safety glasses, which will hopefully be tomorrow, if not Tuesday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted June 2, 2016 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2016 No progress to update on, mainly due to having a really long week at work and finishing between 1-3 hours late each day, but I did see this picture which also sums up why I haven't been able to do much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted June 2, 2016 Report Share Posted June 2, 2016 I think Houston moved to the UK. SR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted June 2, 2016 Report Share Posted June 2, 2016 Hahaha.....that reminds me of a Forrest Gump meme I came up with that seems to have managed to take a life of its own. "Life is like a box of chocolates - sometimes you get nuts in your mouth" I'm genuinely unsure as to whether I should feel any degree of pride in that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted June 2, 2016 Report Share Posted June 2, 2016 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2.5itim Posted June 2, 2016 Report Share Posted June 2, 2016 5 hours ago, ScottR said: I think Houston moved to the UK. SR No just over to the hill country! My family has been getting hit over there pretty hard lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted June 16, 2016 Author Report Share Posted June 16, 2016 I've finally found some time to work on the templates! And then proceeded to mess it up! I'm pretty sure I have anyway, but I shall explain below. Work has been pretty bad lately, and my Nan has fallen over twice, once breaking her wrist and the other time she ended up in hospital, but she is making a good recovery so hopefully that translates as more guitar building time! Decided that I'll invest in a shorter template router bit, which means I won't need to make 25mm MDF templates and the 16mm MDF sheet is plenty. It's also a lot sharper then the red ones that I bought. Had a package arrive today! After opening a package, I found it nicely wrapped up with a bow! It's a Shinto rasp that I ordered from Crimson Guitars, the guy raves about them so I've got high hopes to it. Planning on using it for the neck shaping and 2 bits on the body. The new router bit! Quite looking forward to trying this out! Had to borrow my friends router for it as the one I'm borrowing from my dad uses a bigger shank. I'm borrowing my friends router table (can you see a theme of borrowed tools yet?), which I'll put to good use soonish. I mentioned in an earlier post that I thought the fingerboard had a crack in it that looked like it had been glued. I inspected it a bit better the other day, and it's definitely cracked. Here's a few piccies. Buggered the template up slightly. Any ideas on how to avoid this happening? I've borrowed the router table off my friend in the hope it will make the next template easier to route. Also, not sure why some parts of the template aren't smooth (the 3mm template feels perfectly smooth when running my finger over it). I drew around the 3mm template onto another piece of 16mm MDF, and you can see in the neck pickup pocket where the router bit dug into the template like it did with the neck pocket. This bit will be under the scratch plate so I'm not too worried about it. My friend is on holiday so I'm going round to feed his cats and fish, while I was there I borrowed his bandsaw again and cut out the template as I think the other one maybe knackered. Satefy first! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted June 16, 2016 Report Share Posted June 16, 2016 Did you ever mention this to Carlos at Guitars and Woods? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted June 17, 2016 Report Share Posted June 17, 2016 6 hours ago, steve1556 said: Buggered the template up slightly. Any ideas on how to avoid this happening? I've borrowed the router table off my friend in the hope it will make the next template easier to route. Also, not sure why some parts of the template aren't smooth (the 3mm template feels perfectly smooth when running my finger over it). 3mm MDF doesn't leave a lot of "meat" for the router bearing to ride against. 6mm or thicker would be better. With a 3mm template it won't take much for the bearing to slip over the edge and start riding above it, cutting into the template. Maybe the piece the template was attached to was slightly warped and the template was cupped slightly at that point, allowing the bearing to run off the edge? The overall lack of smoothness of the cut can be due to a lot of things - dust and debris getting trapped around/on the bearing, vibration of the workpiece or router as it is worked, eccentricity in the router spindle and collet...I'd personally call the slight waviness in your cuts quite typical and would expect to have to deal with it during final sanding and shaping anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muzz Posted June 18, 2016 Report Share Posted June 18, 2016 Yep Curtisa you are right 3 mm is too thin for a template, Steve switch to 6mm mdf for templates and you should be fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted June 18, 2016 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2016 On 6/16/2016 at 8:43 PM, Prostheta said: Did you ever mention this to Carlos at Guitars and Woods? Not yet, I've had the wood sitting on a shelf in the garage and didn't get round to checking it, mainly because I forgot. I'm going to shoot him an email now about it. On 6/17/2016 at 1:15 AM, curtisa said: 3mm MDF doesn't leave a lot of "meat" for the router bearing to ride against. 6mm or thicker would be better. With a 3mm template it won't take much for the bearing to slip over the edge and start riding above it, cutting into the template. Maybe the piece the template was attached to was slightly warped and the template was cupped slightly at that point, allowing the bearing to run off the edge? The overall lack of smoothness of the cut can be due to a lot of things - dust and debris getting trapped around/on the bearing, vibration of the workpiece or router as it is worked, eccentricity in the router spindle and collet...I'd personally call the slight waviness in your cuts quite typical and would expect to have to deal with it during final sanding and shaping anyway. I did think what when i was trying to set up the router bit on the template that it looked rather thin, so what you say about it makes sense (and it's nice to have someone else thinking the same as me before I waste more time and money doing new templates in case I did something fundamentally wrong). It was my first ever time trying to use a router, so I was fairly pleased with how it went. I'm glad the waviness looks normal, but I'm going to sharpen the router bit before using it again. I bought another sheet of 6mm MDF as the bit I had left from the initial templates isn't wide enough for the body now, and I got a chisel, mallet and a small clamp to clamp pieces to the work table when routing. I started making the templates out of 6mm MDF yesterday using my friends band saw. Hoping to get a little bit more done on them tomorrow before work, after that I'm going away with work for a few days so it will have to wait until I get back. On the plus side, I then have 4 days off work to try and get loads done. My friend is halfway through clearing out his man cave, and as a result it took me about 20 minutes to find his jigsaw. I would have cut it before I went there but I bought the MDF sheet on the way to his. Playing around with headstock designs (I can't draw to save my life!), but I'm liking the idea of the 3 circled ones. I'm thinking of using the same headstock design on all my guitar builds. I found a good place for guitar tops as I'm getting far too ahead of myself and thinking about the bass build that I would like to do for my friend. This place is the cheapest I've found by a long shot, but if anyone can recommend anywhere else that would be great. The website is here. The other place that I've found that is here in England is very expensive for woods, website is here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted June 18, 2016 Report Share Posted June 18, 2016 Try sticking to the UK. You'll get screwed for import duties and tax from US suppliers. They might be expensive, but you only pay what you pay. Carlos at Guitars and Woods is very busy at the moment because one of his staff members has been off for over a week. He's been doing the work of two people! Did you measure whether the board was cut longer than the advertised size? I bet you that it was glue to prevent raw stock checking from breaking out into usable wood and it just wasn't cut off before sale. I'd plan out your string paths on those headstocks 1:1....some of them will be very uneven and difficult to route, or at least require thought on how to make them work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 On 6/18/2016 at 4:55 PM, Prostheta said: Try sticking to the UK. You'll get screwed for import duties and tax from US suppliers. They might be expensive, but you only pay what you pay. Carlos at Guitars and Woods is very busy at the moment because one of his staff members has been off for over a week. He's been doing the work of two people! Did you measure whether the board was cut longer than the advertised size? I bet you that it was glue to prevent raw stock checking from breaking out into usable wood and it just wasn't cut off before sale. I'd plan out your string paths on those headstocks 1:1....some of them will be very uneven and difficult to route, or at least require thought on how to make them work. I actually found that company through one of their eBay listings and it says no import or duty fees. Unless they are somehow including in the shipping cost, I'm not sure how it's done, so I was thinking that it maybe worth a punt. When I got a cheap Chinese laser cutter, I ordered a massive upgrade kit for it from a place in America, and I got absolutely screwed with import fees, and don't particularly wish to do that again. I haven't messaged Carlos yet, i received some bad news about my nan before I went away with work and that had to take priority. I didn't think that the fingerboard may be cut a fair bit bigger then is needed, so I'll get it measured today. Hopefully it's longer then I need so it won't be an issue. If I do need to contact him, I'll bear in mind that his has a much bigger workload and it may take a while for a reply. The plan is to do the headstocks on a 1:1 size before I use one for the reasons that you said. I'm hoping to get at least one of them working well though as I do quite like them. Little update, I've have some plans arrive for a P Bass build ready for when I do my friends one, although I won't be starting it yet. I've been looking at some sanders, there is one that definitely sticks out as the clear winner in my eyes (although it's the most expensive), but if anyone can shed some opinions on them that would be greatly appreciated. Option one (preferred one) - here Option two - here Option three - here Option four - here Option five - here Option six - here I realise that option 1 does the same function as option 6, plus has the belt sanding part which would be an advantage. Option 5 does look good, but I think it's easily beaten in terms or price and usability as 2, 3 and 4. I know options 2, 3 and 4 and near identical, in terms or power and specs, but I'm not sure which one would be the best out of the 3. If there is no difference really then surely the cheaper one would be the better option, especially as it's near enough half the price. I've got 5 days off work now, but I've got a lot on my plate with my nan, so if I could get the templates done and finished I'll be fairly happy with the progress. If I get any more done, I'll consider it a bonus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted June 23, 2016 Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 The sanders/linishers will prove to be complete bollocks. I've never found them useful for anything other than shaping nut blanks and thinks that you can happily do by hand for free. The Triton and the Rutlands sander look more useful. I wouldn't mind kicking that Triton around the shop for a bit for a review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve1556 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 Go on, buy yourself one of those Tritons, you know you want to! Actually, I would just love to read your review on it. With regards to the sanders/linishers, may I ask why you think they are useless? Most of them don't seem to have a plate underneath the belt part so it looks like the whole edge of the guitar body could be sanded with it, including inside the horns. Admittedly this is all guesswork on my part though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightroExpress Posted June 23, 2016 Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 I had the opportunity to mess around with the Triton spindle sander at one of my local tool shops. It feels nice and seems to be built well, but I'd have to have more time before saying it's good or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted June 23, 2016 Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 I have the Triton. Good little unit for the money. Only real issues I have is that the table can't be tilted and there's no integral fence ( can easily be circumvented with the application of a block of wood and a couple of clamps). Buy several grades of grits for it. The 80g spindles it comes with are good for quick stock removal, but you'll want something extra to give you a finer surface finish. Also get a rubber cleaning stick too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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