High End Build - this one is gonna take a while

[mattharris75]

1 hour ago, avengers63 said:

IMHO, the best tool for routing for the inlay is a Dremel with the router base. 

If you're a stubborn idiot you can do it with an XActo knife set. Not that I would know from experience... 

[avengers63]

8 hours ago, mattharris75 said:

If you're a stubborn idiot you can do it with an XActo knife set. Not that I would know from experience... 

I've used an XActo to score around the edges of larger pieces, like block inlays on the fretboard. That works great to define the edges before it's routed out. These pieces... they're just too damn small for that.

[henrim]

31 minutes ago, avengers63 said:

I've used an XActo to score around the edges of larger pieces, like block inlays on the fretboard. That works great to define the edges before it's routed out. These pieces... they're just too damn small for that.

You could temporarily glue the pieces place and score the edges with knife. Then remove the pieces with suitable solvent. Obviously that may not work if the pieces are plastic.

[avengers63]

10 hours ago, mattharris75 said:

If you're a stubborn idiot you can do it with an XActo knife set. Not that I would know from experience... 

 

Unless it's something like this. On an inlay this big and one piece, I'd very carefully do it with my beloved scroll saw. It's just too easy not to use it.

[avengers63]

47 minutes ago, henrim said:

You could temporarily glue the pieces place and score the edges with knife. Then remove the pieces with suitable solvent. Obviously that may not work if the pieces are plastic.

I've done that before. With pieces this small & fragile, the amount of glue needed to keep them 100% stable enough to score the perimeter makes them damn hard to get back off without damaging them. Now, it's entirely possible that there's an adhesive I know nothing about that is perfectly suited to this task.

[avengers63]

 

First things first - Waifu loves me. Somewhere between sitting packed away in my basement and moving into her house, my old wah pedal crapped out on me. She not only got me a new one for Christmas this year, she managed to keep it completely hidden from me. I don't intentionally go snooping around, but we both buy damn near everything on the same Amazon Prime account, so you can't help but spoil some things for yourself. So hiding this from me was no mean feat!

Now back to business...

One last look before it's buried in the clamping plates and multiple cauls

 

Tell her goodbye 'till tomorrow and hope for the best!

 

One of the very good things about honeybutt running her business out of the house/garage is that there is ALWAYS a pile of MDF scrap available for this sort of thing.

[avengers63]

 

I took her out of the clamps several hours shy of the 24 I usually like to go. This is because 1) I know the glue is cured enough to not let go, and 2) with it being such a large, flat piece that was covered in wax paper, there would not only be a LOT of squeeze out I couldn't (didn't want to) attend to yesterday, but a big chunk of it would be either still gummy ot still gooey. In either case, I'd be able to get a bunch of it off before it dried. Some of it is peeling right off with just a little encouragement from a sharp chisel. Other bits... not so much.

 

 

 

In the end, girlfriend is still pretty rough around the edges. Fortunately, I already have a plan for what type and how much makeup she needs before taking her out on a date.

 

 

I'm gonna let it all finish air drying before I peel the picture off and sand it.

[avengers63]

 

Girlfriend is still pretty ugly without the mask. I need to sand her down, get rid of all of the various adhesive, glue, and tape residue, and even out the edges. From there I can put in the bits that never made it into the mix, like her doo-rag and the metal bra thing that is half falling off. THEN I can get to the crushed stone inlay. I'm even toying with the idea of using some dyes & sandback to get more depth in the image. For reference, here's the original piece again:

 

And just in case anyone is wondering, no, I have no intentions of putting anything into the halo. Making increasingly smaller circles that all fit in right and getting them in there without FUBARing the whole thing..... not even gonna try it.

 

[avengers63]

Mostly cleaned up, but there's a LOOOOONG way to go 

[ScottR]

Loving it John.

Also loved the rubbing of the headstock. You could frame that, it looks so artistic.

SR

[avengers63]

After sanding down the big ass inlay where it was sitting a little bit proud, I sanded through the first layer on her shoulder, exposing the glue in a particularly ugly manner.. Fortunately, I have an easy solution - rout it out with the dremmel and put another piece in. That's how I'm putting in her doo-rag and the gold crap around her torso. So that's the plan for today. Pics are likely to come later.

 

On a different note, do you remember me mentioning the secret project involving 1966 Hofner HBs, wenge, and Mary kay White?  Well.......

 

.....I fucked it up. I/m not good with the wiring in the first place, but this one is particularly bad. This thing has fought me through assembly every single step of the way. Seriously - there's not one single aspect that I haven't had at least one problem with. By the time I got to test the wiring and it was all kinds of wrong, I just gave up. I'm just gonna take it to a shop and pay for them to sort it out.

Northern ash Jazzmaster body (heavy as hell, but has a nasty mid-range growl)

wenge neck & fretboard with big-ass headstock, abalone dots

Wilkinson tuners, Fender JM bridge, unlabeled JM vibrato

Japanese humbuckers stamped "1966" on the back, thought to be Hofner. Right angle 3-position switch, 1meg dime sized pots because I couldn't find 1meg quarter sized pots with a short shaft, goofy looking chicken-head knobs, and a pink mother-of-toilet-seat pickguard.

It's a crying shame I can't get it to work right.

[ghostdive]

It's very pretty anyway, makes me want some neapolitan. 

[avengers63]

First go at the stone inlay. Per the video instructions I watched, I flooded the area first with thin c/a to seal the cavity. This prevents the c/a from wicking out into the wood later. You slightly overfill the area with stone, then fill it up with the thin c/a. It's taking a bit longer to dry than I was planning on, so ima just let it all sit until tomorrow. If I don't, I'll wanna do more. BUT... if I'm doing something wrong now, I'll just have more to fix later.

 

[avengers63]

So two things here...

1) The coarse crushed stone is highly resistant to sanding it flat. As it is coarse, once it's sanded flat (a most laborious undertaking), there are voids between the stones. I'll prolly fill them in with C/A.

2) As a result of #1, coarse crushed stone is right on the edge of not being worth the effort.

3) I'm waaaaaaay too invested in this whole thing to let this sumbitch beat me now. "Right on the edge" just means "mule headed John" has to step in and beat this mo-fo into submission. The family is best served to give me a wide berth while I figure this thing out.

Side note - the pencil lines are where I'm going to route out a line and backfill with black powdered stone. The powder is a hellofalot more forgiving than the sand-like stone.

 

[avengers63]

Making inlay channels today. Waifu helped me out with the face. There's no way in hell I'd have drawn it in right. 

[avengers63]

That last one was supposed to be posted yesterday. When I went to talk today, that one showed up as not having been sent. Oh well.

 

So no progress on the inlay. BUT...... I got a new job today. I'll be home daily instead of being out for 5 days solid. The pay is a little less, but the benefit of being home daily is worth it.

In celebration, I bought myself some lumber. A piece of white limba that can easily make 2 necks, a piece of African mahogany that will make 2 bodies, a piece of 3a flamed maple that I can get 2 drop tops from once it's bookmatched, and a big piece of bloodwood. They didn't have any smaller pieces of bloodwood, so once I get the one neck from it that I'm wanting, I'll have a LOT left over. Wifey was a little annoyed that I put the cart before the horse on the celebration, seeing as I haven't started yet, but she also understands.

I've been jonesing for a reverse headstock hockey stick neck. I'm thinking the bloodwood will do nicely for that. Match it up with a BW fretboard and MOP dots and it'll look pretty slick.

[mistermikev]

nothing like scoring some wood for celebrations!  sometimes I go to the local lumber yard at lunch just to soak up the smells and sights and reset my inner self... wood therapy is the best therapy.  

inlay is coming along really nice.  great work.

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, avengers63 said:

I got a new job today. I'll be home daily instead of being out for 5 days solid. The pay is a little less, but the benefit of being home daily is worth it.

Congrats for that! What's the use of money if you don't have time to spend it to something you really like? There's no pockets in a shroud...

[Prostheta]

What'd I miss?

[avengers63]

6 hours ago, Prostheta said:

What'd I miss?

Looks like you missed 9 months of me screwing around and poorly making a bent side monstrosity

[avengers63]

WELL THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

I was using the wrong stuff. making it much harder than necessary.

When purchasing crushed stone for inlay, there are generally 3 textures available: coarse, medium, and fine. coarse is tiny pebbles. Medium is about the size of grains of sand. Fine is basically powder.

For the black outline material, I bought medium/sand. I've been having a hard time with it because the sand is just barely smaller than the channel I'm routing. Yu can see why this would become a PITA is record time. This made me put off doing it because it was hard to do and took forever.  I ordered some more because I didn't think I'd have enough to do all the outlining I'm gonna do. Instead of medium, I ordered fine. This stuff filled in the channels like magic!

So as usual, I just made it harder on myself than necessary. This is not a new experience, but I AM fairly tired of it.

FWIW: The side of her face from the nose down, and most of the outline of her right arm is with the sand. It probably took me a half hour to get in there right and dribble the glue in. All the rest of it was done today with the powder. It was only about 20min. When you use the right stuff.......

[Bizman62]

1 hour ago, avengers63 said:

When you use the right stuff...

Thanks for sharing that piece of knowledge. Way too often finding the right stuff requires buying all the stuff that's available and testing by yourself, at your very own expense. How hard can it be to just make some samples and tell the exact measurements?

[avengers63]

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Thanks for sharing that piece of knowledge. Way too often finding the right stuff requires buying all the stuff that's available and testing by yourself, at your very own expense. How hard can it be to just make some samples and tell the exact measurements?

All I can say is that I did all the on-line research I could find about how to do crushed stone inlay into wood. They all basically said the same thing, so I bought some stone and went for it. My mistake was in misjudging what size grind I'd need, and what the end result would be. Other than that, you're dead on - sometimes we gotta buy all the options and see what works for us. In other words, fuck around and find out.

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, avengers63 said:

sometimes we gotta buy all the options and see what works for us

I just realized my post could be understood in several ways. My intention was to argue against lazy manufacturers and vendors who don't have samples. Of course they can sell more stuff when each customer buys all the options. But how many potential customers are turned away because they can't figure out what to choose and won't pay for the full set?

[Prostheta]

12 hours ago, avengers63 said:

In other words, fuck around and find out.

 

The Internet keeps saying that we shouldn't do that, or that somehow this is the bearer of poor consequences! In my experience it is simply....experience. You can't learn anything from things falling into your lap, you've got to test, experiment, compare and derive better understanding from things not going entirely how you expected them to. "FAFO" is a bit of a dumb term, or at least I see it used by people enough that it underscores how dumb and nuance-free their thought "processes" are.

In this instance, I agree. Fuck around and find out. On your own terms with the objective of raising your ability and knowledge. This is fine.