Blonde T/E-Type

[Charlie H 72]

Thanks biz! You are so right about that.. 

I just joined a maker space in my city (open bench project in Portland Maine) and they have all kinds of good stuff! A small CNC included so I think I’ll be going that route on a few things. I just got the body blank glued up and it turned out great. Excited to see this getting off the ground  

[Bizman62]

Without the tiny notch where the end of the boards don't quite match it's almost impossible to find the seam! At first I thought it's a one-piece blank.

[Muzz]

Fantastic start, and lovely grain pattern

[Charlie H 72]

Thanks to both of you! I’m happy with the glue joint and the way the grain lines up. Maybe I’ll make the finish more transparent than I had originally planned-but that’s way down the line. I thought I put on too little glue at first as there wasn’t much squeeze out but it turned out fine.

I cut a practice guitar out of plywood on the CNC yesterday, and although there are a few spots that need to be tweaked, I like it. Going to beef up the headstock just a little and adjust the cavities so the neck and bridge fit better. They are too tight right now. I tried to cut the body today  but the CNC was down.. such is life at a shared shop! If it’s still down later on I will just use the plywood guitar as a template. 

 

(Corners chamfered on the bridge piece with a knife because it wouldn’t fit at first)

Edited May 1, 2021 by Charlie H 72

[Bizman62]

11 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

 I thought I put on too little glue at first as there wasn’t much squeeze out but it turned out fine.

If you've applied glue all over the joining surface and get squeeze out all along the seam there's enough glue for an invisible joint. A quarter inch wide flexible glue joint is a totally different animal that has no use in luthiery.

A huge amount of squeeze out can tell about several problems:

• The extra glue can fill the join and act as a stripe where no dye will stick
• A good tight glue joint can be stronger than the wood, plain dryed glue filling a gap is brittle and can crack
• There's quite some work to scrape the dried squeeze out by hand - dry glue can wear planer blades and similar expensive power tools prematurely!
• Wiping the excess off with a rag while still wet is also messy
• Glue isn't free, so using double the amount needed will double your glue costs!

 

[Charlie H 72]

Yup-all too familiar with too much squeeze out, hah. I think the open grained wood is what threw me for a loop here. I'm much more used to gluing up closed grain stuff, so this ash seemed to suck up a lot of glue in comparison. There was maybe a 1/32" bead.. and on the back side some spots with no bead at all. but-the thing is solid! Not worried as both sides were flat, true, and had a full layer of glue before joining. 

minor minor minor upate-haven't had much time and I am waffling between some design options-probably as a means of procrastination. Perfectionism always keeps me in the design stage! But I started cutting the bridge piece from maple. It will take some trickery to get the saddle slot and string through holes lined up on the opposite side if I use the CNC, but I think the pickup route was successful. A funky little burn spot where there was an odd tool path but besides that all clean. Waiting for my pickup from wilde to drill for the polepieces. 

 

And a design question-which knobs? I like how basic the armadillo plain stainless ones are-goes with the minimalist design, but the WD ones are also very cool and are a bit shorter which I like (.5" compared to full height barrel knobs). Gonna be using vintage style locking kluson tuners in nickel, FWIW. I know its early for this but its nice to know some hardware details so I can build the finish, etc. around that. 

WD: nickel, .85" DIA, .55" tall

Armadillo- stainless, .75" dia x 1?" tall

here's a pic of them from a reverb listing- armadillo's product photos are not good. 

 

[Charlie H 72]

Hm I am running into some CNC problems-and maybe some of you good people here could help.

I’m using an x-carve, with a Dremel router set to medium speed, .035” passes at 75”/min

Im cutting different parts on different days and getting different dimensions.. what’s that about? I think I ruined my body blank today but I may try to work with it. Neck pocket and bridge pocket are too small (even with a .01 offset) and the overall shape is about 1/4” narrower and 1/8” shorter than it should be. And halfway through the cut the x axis band snapped. It must have been at the end of its service life. It looked pretty worn out. I stopped the cut in time but the last few passes were drifting which made the wonky dimensions even worse.

Is the only way to work with this machine to cut a bunch of templates on the same day from the same material? At this point I want to get off this machine sooner rather than later. Any advice would be appreciated. 

[Charlie H 72]

Oh and I decided on knobs- michael from armadillo said he’d do these guys in stainless steel: 

[mistermikev]

On 5/11/2021 at 6:39 PM, Charlie H 72 said:

Hm I am running into some CNC problems-and maybe some of you good people here could help.

I’m using an x-carve, with a Dremel router set to medium speed, .035” passes at 75”/min

Im cutting different parts on different days and getting different dimensions.. what’s that about? I think I ruined my body blank today but I may try to work with it. Neck pocket and bridge pocket are too small (even with a .01 offset) and the overall shape is about 1/4” narrower and 1/8” shorter than it should be. And halfway through the cut the x axis band snapped. It must have been at the end of its service life. It looked pretty worn out. I stopped the cut in time but the last few passes were drifting which made the wonky dimensions even worse.

Is the only way to work with this machine to cut a bunch of templates on the same day from the same material? At this point I want to get off this machine sooner rather than later. Any advice would be appreciated. 

no cnc expert... in fact I've only been doing it for a couple months so keep that in mind.   idk what software you use to run g-code... but if I was having this issue I'd first suspect that my steps weren't set correctly.  Mikro actually showed me that in mach3 there is a config that does all the work for you.  you need a very accurate dial guage.  you pick and axis... tell it to move say .85", then measure how far it moved with the dial indicator.  it will set proper steps based on your feeding it back the amount it moved.  I found that if I did this three times (since measuring over such a small length - my indicator only has about 1" of movement) I would repeatedly get the same measurement after... then I knew it was right.  hope that helps.

[Charlie H 72]

 

On 5/13/2021 at 2:47 PM, mistermikev said:

no cnc expert... in fact I've only been doing it for a couple months so keep that in mind.   idk what software you use to run g-code... but if I was having this issue I'd first suspect that my steps weren't set correctly.  Mikro actually showed me that in mach3 there is a config that does all the work for you.  you need a very accurate dial guage.  you pick and axis... tell it to move say .85", then measure how far it moved with the dial indicator.  it will set proper steps based on your feeding it back the amount it moved.  I found that if I did this three times (since measuring over such a small length - my indicator only has about 1" of movement) I would repeatedly get the same measurement after... then I knew it was right.  hope that helps.

Thanks Mike. I will have to give that a try. I talked to somebody at the shop who uses universal G code sender (I am using inventables' cloud based software -easel) and he mentioned that he recalibrated the machine for his project-but before he recalibrated it the measurements were correct for me. Is it possible that when he calibrated for g-code sender that it threw off what was happening with easel? I trust that he was doing it right because he was measuring pieces for accuracy into the thousandths of an inch. I will have to go in and try some things out. I may still just cut templates and then use a router. Would be helpful to be able to make more guitars with down the road anyway! 

[mistermikev]

well if you have it calibrated right... could be backlash... (barely understand that concept myself because I haven't experienced it).  could be an issue with your machine losing steps - many causes but one I'm told is unshielded wire.  some say that putting ferrite beads on your cables can help.  another possible issue is your couplers (another thing mikro schooled me on).  I'm not sure if you have ball screws on all axis like i do... but if so then there is a coupler that connects the ball screws to the stepper motor... these can get damaged over time or loosened over time and there is a set screw to tighten them.  I've never actually had problems with mine afa I know but then who knows what awaits me down the road.  the mech side of cnc is not a strong point for me, so barring responses from the great @curtisa or great @mikro... you might try cnczone or perhaps some of the facebook cnc groups if none of the above pan out.

[Charlie H 72]

21 hours ago, mistermikev said:

well if you have it calibrated right... could be backlash... (barely understand that concept myself because I haven't experienced it).  could be an issue with your machine losing steps - many causes but one I'm told is unshielded wire.  some say that putting ferrite beads on your cables can help.  another possible issue is your couplers (another thing mikro schooled me on).  I'm not sure if you have ball screws on all axis like i do... but if so then there is a coupler that connects the ball screws to the stepper motor... these can get damaged over time or loosened over time and there is a set screw to tighten them.  I've never actually had problems with mine afa I know but then who knows what awaits me down the road.  the mech side of cnc is not a strong point for me, so barring responses from the great @curtisa or great @mikro... you might try cnczone or perhaps some of the facebook cnc groups if none of the above pan out.

It’s still unclear if it was calibrated right across the board. The people that use the CNC at this shop run different programs. Could calibrating it correctly for one software throw off calibration on another?  And if so I will need to check calibration each time I run the machine because there is no way to know who has used it. I’ll check out the ball screws too. I’m wondering if it’s better to just go old school at this point though. I don’t imagine I will be using a CNC all that often in my near future, so this time may be better spent actually putting into this instrument. I’ll give it one more shot and see where it goes. 

[mistermikev]

4 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

It’s still unclear if it was calibrated right across the board. The people that use the CNC at this shop run different programs. Could calibrating it correctly for one software throw off calibration on another?  And if so I will need to check calibration each time I run the machine because there is no way to know who has used it. I’ll check out the ball screws too. I’m wondering if it’s better to just go old school at this point though. I don’t imagine I will be using a CNC all that often in my near future, so this time may be better spent actually putting into this instrument. I’ll give it one more shot and see where it goes. 

i can't speak to how other programs work but I would guess they are similar.  in mach3 when you calibrate it saves that in an xml settings file and loads it as a profile every time you start... so for me... as long as I start the sm profile... it will load the settings I had last changed with it.  I would highly doubt this would have any impact on other systems.... that said - also... you have to remember to hit save after you've calibrated in mach3 or those changes are lost.

[Charlie H 72]

Ok, good to know. Thanks for the tips! Hopefully I’ll have some shop time this week and I can get to the bottom of this. Or at least figure out what’s going on... 

[curtisa]

Calibration shouldn't be required that often. Once calibrated it should be good until something drastic changes like replacing drive belts, installing leadscrews with different pitches, swapping out stepper motors etc.

Backlash or lost steps might reveal themselves as parts that change shape in subtle ways in one direction only. Think circles that come out slightly oval, squares that come out slightly rectangular or repetitive motions that start drifting in one direction the more they repeat.

Go back to basics before writing off the CNC as being un-calibrated. Map out a simple square motion of known dimensions and see if it differs in size to what you were expecting. If it does then perform whatever calibration procedure is required to bring the machine/software back to spec. Then shoot the person who attempts to change it again.

Another subtle error can occur if you're not allowing for the size of the tool when cutting. If your toolpath is designed to use a 1/4" cutter and you use a 6mm one by mistake you'll end up with parts that change size - internal cavities will be 0.35mm too small and outside profiles 0.35mm too large.

Edit: corrected dimension errors if wrong cutter used.

Edited May 17, 2021 by curtisa

[Charlie H 72]

Ah interesting.. the more I put this together the more I am beginning to realize that this person miscalibrated the machine. Dims were correct before he did it, and he was calibrating to his piece, not to a ruler on the board. So there must have been something off in his file. I’ll have to talk to him. Good point about the bit too, though I was using the same one the whole time, I should triple check that it is 1/4”. I’ll get some shop time on Tuesday and I will report back. Thanks a bunch for the tips. 

[mistermikev]

1 hour ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Ah interesting.. the more I put this together the more I am beginning to realize that this person miscalibrated the machine. Dims were correct before he did it, and he was calibrating to his piece, not to a ruler on the board. So there must have been something off in his file. I’ll have to talk to him. Good point about the bit too, though I was using the same one the whole time, I should triple check that it is 1/4”. I’ll get some shop time on Tuesday and I will report back. Thanks a bunch for the tips. 

idk if it's like mach3... but in mach3 you have an xml profile and If someone else was using the machine and potentially messing with the calib I would make a copy of the config file, name it something new... and load up with my that (own private config file) from there on out.  just a thought.

[Charlie H 72]

It’s been a busy summer and I have been playing a lot of music! Finally getting to use these things I build.. fun! The charred tele is developing quite the patina-I’m into it! 

 

 

CNC issues plus packed schedule have combined to keep me away from this build, but I took another stab at it today and it’s on its way again. this time using a beautiful lightweight piece of Doug fir for the body. It’s splintery though! Will have to be careful not to chip it

a few minor design tweaks-I narrowed the body. It’s about the size of a mustang now. And I widened the string spacing-played a guitar with a wide nut and saw the light. Going 1-9/16 string spacing and 1-13/16 nut, with 2-1/4” at the bridge. 

I have been lurking—you are all up to some really good stuff!! Nice to see the forum buzzing. 

[Charlie H 72]

here are a few quick screenshots from rhino - exploring some contours. Might stick with slab too, Thoughts?

[Bizman62]

A radiused top is a working solution. It both gives you the comfort of an arm bevel and helps to avoid pick scratches as it bends out of the way both sides of the strings. Just saying.

[Charlie H 72]

Good call Biz. I think I will do something between a bevel and a radius. Real soft edges to the carve so its not creating more contours on the guitar. 

 

Any thoughts about headstock design? Here are a few quick mockups. I think its harder to do a good headstock than a good body... So much function in such a small space. kinda leaning towards a real simple 3x3 slab like a Gibson melody maker, etc. Click the pdf for higher res. 

headstockoptions.pdf

 

just realized I rotated on oof the necks by accident-oops. You get the picture though

 

Edited July 25, 2021 by Charlie H 72

[Bizman62]

The lowest left for 3+3 and the 5+1 second right are my favourites, the latter even more since it has a similar "clumsy Tele" vibe to the body. Note that 'clumsy' here doesn't mean anything negative, it's merely used to express that unlike the traditional models the outline isn't just a continuous curve.

[Charlie H 72]

Yup, clumsy tele is the idea! I like weird, ugly, ungainly shapes. I think those two options are my favorites as well. Or the second left-it’s so matter-of-fact. I may need to print them out full size, or even cut some necks out of pine to test. 

[Bizman62]

Glad I could catch your idea correctly!

Yup, the second left is nice in its minimalism. However, preferring straight string pull, how about making it a bit more wedge shaped?

Makeshift necks are a good idea, but corrugated cardboard will reveal the impression much cheaper.

[Charlie H 72]

Haven’t gotten a chance to do a neck mockup (sometime this week, maybe?) but I did print my favorites out full scale and I really like the crooked 4+2-it’s so weird. First on the left column.
 

More exciting tho-I have been talking to a woman named Dawn who makes ceramic and resin knobs for a small effects maker that goes by spiralectric fx and she just sent me a pic of the prototype knobs for this guy. Super psyched with these and she has been great to work with! I’m going with the white knob on the left.