Claw Trem Pocket

[AndyTheLion]

Hi Gang

Have just purchased a bare JEM body and hoping to be able to make the tiger claw effect in the trem cut out.

Any advice out there to guide me?

Thanks in advance 

AndyTheLion

[mistermikev]

i don't think there would be any easy ways to do it... at least not that I can think of.  I would think you'd need to build a jig that is sort of like a ramp at one end that would lift one side of the router up as you approach the pull out spot.  the trick would be that you need to ramp out... and then hold the router there as you shut it down... which is a fairly dangerous/precarious position... or perhaps carefully lift it off the jig once the bit exits.  that's the best I can think of.  

[Bizman62]

19 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

I would think you'd need to build a jig that is sort of like a ramp at one end that would lift one side of the router up as you approach the pull out spot.  the trick would be that you need to ramp out... and then hold the router there as you shut it down... which is a fairly dangerous/precarious position... or perhaps carefully lift it off the jig once the bit exits.

Would a longer ramp help? One that will lift the bit off the surface...

[mistermikev]

7 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Would a longer ramp help? One that will lift the bit off the surface...

Would it help w safety?  i dunno.  it would help w smoothness of the curve... but it is already going to require a fairly long bit... and afa I know 2.5" is about as long as you are going to find and as factor in the base plate of the router, and how much of the bit would be exposed as you raise up the edge of the router my guess is it is going to barely be practical as is.  but whatdoiknow lol.

[Bizman62]

I guess we're not talking about the same thing...

I was thinking about a ramp long enough to support the router base even after the pull out spot. No need for extra long bits or other similarly dangerous things.

After reading your comment I felt like having to study the subject a bit more and found out that there's a pretty tight radius in the grooves. About 1" if I saw correctly. Not something you'd easily carve using a big hand router, with or without a jig!

For what I found it appears that there's two types of JEM bodies, those with the claw grooves and those with just a square hollow. So are we talking about the latter? Or even one without any prerouted cavities?

If we're talking about a prerouted square pool, making the grooves to a separate block to be seated might be pretty easy with the right tools. One that comes into mind is an angle grinder equipped with a disk worn to the right diameter and attached to a cutting stand.

 

[curtisa]

I've seen a couple of ways to do it. One of which was hosted here on the old ProjectGuitar.com website (Wayback Machine to the rescue!):

Project Guitar :: Do-it-Yourself Lions Claw (Jem Style Trem Cavity) (archive.org)

It's very much a manual operation though, which may appeal if you're limited with tools or experience?

 

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

I was thinking about a ramp long enough to support the router base even after the pull out spot.

A ramp won't give you the curve at the bottom of each channel. What's really needed is some kind of cradle to swing the router from horizontal to vertical, or to lift the router upwards in an arc as it exits the channel. The jig would be fairly complex to do for a one-off. Maybe this as an inspiration?:

demo of the JEM floydrose lionclaw router jig i made - YouTube

 

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

For what I found it appears that there's two types of JEM bodies, those with the claw grooves and those with just a square hollow.

To the best of my knowledge the Jem was never manufactured without the lion's claw trem cavity. You might be thinking of the RG, which was based on the Jem.

[Bizman62]

9 hours ago, curtisa said:

You might be thinking of the RG, which was based on the Jem.

Don't know, I based my comment on the result of a Google image search by "bare JEM body" which most likely aren't made by Ibanez or their subcontractors. Actually the square cavity ones looked like that on the YT video you linked to.

 

9 hours ago, curtisa said:

A ramp won't give you the curve at the bottom of each channel.

Right. I should have pointed that out more precisely after having found out how tight the curve was.