avengers63 Posted June 11, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2022 I swiss-cheesed the center block and rigged up a ghetto-ass clamping/pressure system to glue the top on. It's too bogus to take a picture of, even by my appallingly low standards. I suspect I'll need to reinforce the joint with some epoxy. I decided to take my Steinberger on the road with me for a travel guitar. I'll be doing a pickup swap, just to try out some stuff. I ordered one of these cheap headphone practice amps to use. Space is at a premium in the back of a truck, so even a 7w Boss Katana takes up too much room. I'm seriously considering a Tascam song trainer. I'm holding off until I see how much I actually play. It might not be worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 11, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2022 I did manage to get the painting for the back printed out, laminated, and cut out. This is just huge! It'll take up prolly 90% of the real estate on the back. I've never tried anything of this scale, and I gotta admit I'm more than a little concerned. There are going to be a LOT of pieces. Each one is an individual point of failure. This is likely to mess with my nerves like nothing before. And I'm gonna love every minute of it. Â 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 12, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2022  It ain't trimmed up yet. It ain't pretty. It still needs some eopxy in a couple places because I'm not an expert at acoustic construction. But it's ON, and that's a major milestone. Ima try and do the epoxy fill-in before I hit the road so that when I get back, it'll be ready for the next step - the center block. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVA Posted June 12, 2022 Report Share Posted June 12, 2022 53 minutes ago, avengers63 said:  It ain't trimmed up yet. It ain't pretty. It still needs some eopxy in a couple places because I'm not an expert at acoustic construction. But it's ON, and that's a major milestone. Ima try and do the epoxy fill-in before I hit the road so that when I get back, it'll be ready for the next step - the center block. Looking good! Nice work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted June 13, 2022 Report Share Posted June 13, 2022 I don't think they make roasted wood that way! Looking delicious! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 13, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2022 6 hours ago, Bizman62 said: I don't think they make roasted wood that way! Prolly not, but we hobby builders are always coming up with some shoestring budget work-around. Sometimes ya just gotta try stuff and hope for the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted June 13, 2022 Report Share Posted June 13, 2022 1 hour ago, avengers63 said: we hobby builders are always coming up with some shoestring budget work-around. Truer words have rarely been said! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted June 14, 2022 Report Share Posted June 14, 2022 On 6/11/2022 at 12:17 PM, avengers63 said: I did manage to get the painting for the back printed out, laminated, and cut out. This is just huge! It'll take up prolly 90% of the real estate on the back. I've never tried anything of this scale, and I gotta admit I'm more than a little concerned. There are going to be a LOT of pieces. Each one is an individual point of failure. This is likely to mess with my nerves like nothing before. And I'm gonna love every minute of it. Â Man. I'm looking forward to this! SR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 18, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2022 My weekend is cur short. IDK if I'll be able to actually get anything done. This is a real disappointment as I've been looking forward to it all week. For the inlays, I'll be doing a "warm-up" inlay before I start in on the behemoth on the back. I'll be making a 4" hummingbird to put into the yet-to-be-designed chechen pickguard. The only component I'm sure of right now is that the body & head will be abalone. I'll prolly mix in some yellowheart as well. All the rest is TBD. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 19, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2022 I managed to squeak a little bit in today. It took a hellofalot longer than it should have. This part was easy... ...getting the bridge wings onto the center block. It'll get glued in next week. Re-sawing off the pickguard blank, not so much. The blade on the bandsaw is pretty thin and does NOT like doing 6" tall pieces. So the only other option... ...sucked. It sucked hard. It sucked long. It sucked with no boundaries. It sucked like it was it's job. It sucked like a month of Mondays. It sucked like we all wish out wives would. Fortunately, I have a Wagner Safe-T-Planer to clean it up. It's still rough as a cob, but it's level enough for this application. It's a lot like using a router on rails to plane something down. You can make it work, but it's no direct substitute for a real planer. I was really hoping to get to the hummingbird, but it just ain't gonna happen this weekend. BUT... I'm getting wifey to make a place so that I can bring the scrollsaw inside for the rest of the Summer. That'll make things a lot more pleasant than in the garage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted June 21, 2022 Report Share Posted June 21, 2022 On 6/19/2022 at 2:03 PM, avengers63 said: It took a hellofalot longer than it should have. I know longer know what should have means when it comes to lengths measured on a clock......or a calendar. The guitar just says "keep going, I'm not done yet" until it finally goes quiet. SR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 22, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2022 15 hours ago, ScottR said: I know longer know what should have means when it comes to lengths measured on a clock......or a calendar. The guitar just says "keep going, I'm not done yet" until it finally goes quiet. SR TROOF!!!!! I decided to build the neck anyway. I got some chechen because 1) it'll match the trim on the body, and 2) rosewood necks are both decadent and sound amazing. So, Sunday I was ready to cut the scarf and glue on the headstock when it all started talking to me. Y'all know how it is. "I need bling. I need pinstripes. I need a scarf accent. I need... I need... I need..." The damn thing was sounding like my ex wives. I figured I better give it what it wants before IT divorces me too. So yes, the guitars tell us what they want to be, and decide for themselves when they'll be done. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted June 27, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 27, 2022 I didn't really get anything done this weekend. I spent most of it in a  disagreement with the waifu. What little time was left I spent trying to re-learn how to do the inlays. When you don't do a thing for several years, you forget some important stuff. So the hummingbird sucked ass, I'm not gonna show it off, and I'll be trying again next weekend. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 3, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2022 No inlay work this weekend. But i did get the center block glued in and the neck blank glued up. Remember that I filled in the gap at the cutaway with epoxy. The blank is hard to see through the glue. It's alternating layers of chechen and limba. I cut the chechen strips from the same blank and made sure they went back in the way they came out. Grain matching and all that. Ya GOTTA stay consistent and pay attention to the small details like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 3, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2022 After I posted this, I looked and said "DAMN that's a lot of glue running that I didn't clean up!" But it was too late. Best I could do is scrape off the crap you might see through the f-holes. The clamps are all kinds of in the way. I'll have to do it the hard way next weekend. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nakedzen Posted July 4, 2022 Report Share Posted July 4, 2022 If there's something I've taken to heart from experience is leaving glue ups positioned so that gravity takes care of any extruding glue. Not fun. If it's something non-critical strength wise, I've used a heatgun to soften the glue again and scraped off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 9, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 Aaaaaaand it's a neck blank. I also got a couple of ebony headplates. One will obviously go on the face of the headstock and match the ebony f/b. The other is being contemplated as a scarf joint accent. I'm also thinking about a limba scarf accent. I'll prolly end up going with the limba, just for consistency. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 9, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 So I was looking around for a neck profile bit. It seems that there's only one person in the world who makes them. He's in Australia. With shipping, it's over $80. That's a big nope for me. A little more digging led me to table edge bits. I found a couple that were <$25/ea, so I popped on them. Even if they don't work out, they're likely to be more useful later than a dedicated neck profile bit. One of them looks pretty close to a neck profile. The other is just a big chamfer bit. I thought it'd be fun to rough out one of those necks that have the 3 flat surfaces - I can't remember the name for them - just to see how it feels in my hand. I prepped a couple of slices from a douglas fir 4x4 I have left over. This got me wondering if douglas fir would work as a neck. It's certainly strong enough. But the hard rings might not make it the easiest thing to carve smoothly. Anyway... I calculated the thickness of the fretboard, truss rod, and about 1/8" of beat under the t/r and came up to +/- 3/4". I roughed out the fretboard radius with a bit I already have (it's SUCH a time saver!). This would simulate the entire thickness, minus the frets. I then trimmed them up and routed them to the neck taper. This next bit is when I realized I had forgotten to take something into account. These bits are HUGE. They're meant to go around the edge of a table, not along a 3" wide stick. To make matters worse, they're too big for the router table. There's no way to tighten down the collet because the damn things are just too big. So I put one in another router. It doesn't look healthy. This could easily be one of the most dangerous things I've ever done. So I called in wifey for additional brain power. She doesn't think like I do because she doesn't do this, so she has an outsider's perspective. Outside the box is VERY useful when you don't want to lose bits of your body. She was a great help in mitigating the risks. So the round bit looked like this when it was done... and the chamfer looked like this... I'm flabbergasted at the results. I took the sander with a 100g disk and just smoothed out the tooling marks and softened up the sharp edges... that's it. I can say with absolute certainty that the round one is playable with little more than a some finesse sanding. The chamfered neck would need a little more meat taken off of the "thumb side" of the neck, but that's be an easy fix. This is insane! Had I only known about these 15 years ago! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted July 9, 2022 Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 Those large-radius bits can be deadly. I used a 19mm round over bit on a bass guitar a year or two ago - same problem, had to take the base off the router and make my own out of MDF with a larger hole to clear the bit. It's a good heads-up that a bit of that size is probably designed for a shaper table instead of a handheld router. Still, I did it at low RPM, a strong arm, and a mindful ear, and apparently you've done the same with good results.  Nice work dude! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVA Posted July 9, 2022 Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 Very nicely done. So you used the handheld router? And what did you do to mitigate the risks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGTay Posted July 9, 2022 Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 46 minutes ago, RVA said: Very nicely done. So you used the handheld router? And what did you do to mitigate the risks? Had his wife do the job... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGTay Posted July 9, 2022 Report Share Posted July 9, 2022 ... But seriously, nice job. Shouldn't take much to get it to the correct shape from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2022 14 hours ago, JGTay said: Had his wife do the job... My wife COULD have done it! She's very industrious and loves power tools. Akula had some of it - low RPM, slow & steady passes, a good firm grip, taking smaller passes instead of the whole thing in one swipe. The biggest part was how I clamped it down. My initial thought was have about half of it hanging off the edge of the table. This seemed ripe for badness, and THIS is why I brought in the wife. She advised, and rightly so, to clamp it down along the table edge. I held one end tightly with a f-clamp and braced the other end so that it didn't move but wasn't actually held down. After that, it was just slow passes at the lowest speed available that didn't try to take it all at once. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted July 10, 2022 Report Share Posted July 10, 2022 Thanks for sharing! I have several times wondered if such a roundover bit and a hand router could be used for shaping the neck. The slow speed is something I had not thought of! But I had thought about getting the thickness right by shimming the nut end as well as the steadiness by using rails on the table to support the router base. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted July 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2022 2 hours ago, Bizman62 said: Thanks for sharing! I have several times wondered if such a roundover bit and a hand router could be used for shaping the neck. The slow speed is something I had not thought of! But I had thought about getting the thickness right by shimming the nut end as well as the steadiness by using rails on the table to support the router base. We're all on the same side here! I'm positive that setting up a dedicated jig would be a hellofalot more safe than the rigged-up BS I do. But I'm crap at making jigs. If you come up with something useful, be sure to tell us about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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