MzI

The bit dug into the aluminum table a little bit before the machine stopped itself. No the machine isnt enclosed. Its in a room. There have been some bits that have been snapped in half even though they were solid carbide and they just kinda fell down to the stock didnt go anywhere.

Its all part of the learning process

MzI

The tabs are what a fellow student suggested so I tried it. I have double stick carpet tape which I will also try at some point. Leaving a 16th or so also sounds like a good idea. The mill work we do in class doesnt call for any contour cutting so I had no real precedent going into this so many thanks for the suggestions. I am currently on hiatus between waiting for my new router bit which will be here on monday and the amount of Design work right now as my Gate Review is in 2 weeks which will decided whether or not I will graduate on time.

I do home to have my bass cut with a rough carve and atleast one korinna V if not more by the end of the semester so there will definetly be more outta me shortly

MzI

Read the description at the top then look at the pictures, nuff said

link

actually all it is is a router bit. A regular 2 inch cut 1/2 inch diameter, 1/2 inch shank straight bit, maybe 10 usd. Not exactly expensive. Ill just get another.

Pete that is a freaking huge mill, and I thought the one I was using was rather large. It can cut 4'x12'x5" as a 3 axis, more then enough for a simple guitar.

MzI

edit: The bit ended up coming out to $18 shipped only cuz I dont have the time right now to drive to home depot to see if they have one

Heres some things ive been working on since January of this year. I am currently taking a Grad class as an under grad called Digital Manufacturing and we get to use a nice big CNC mill for the course work. And of course we are allowed to use this machince as much as we please so of course I need to cut some guitars and try it out. My first thoughts have been that it takes way too much time to get the guitar set up and the cad files drawn correctly etc. Now that I have the mill figure out, man it saves so much freaking time. The first two pieces I cut were for a neck thru maple flying v. It took all of 10 minutes for the mill to cut them. There is maybe another 30 mins or so of work that needs to be done before I can attach them to a neck but still this cuts down on the actual build time so much.

Heres the pics for the first cut

links

link 1

link 2

link 3

link 4

Now after I cut out the first set of wings I had a slight problem I wanted to fix. When the machine picked up the bit, it pulled it in towards the body. So to fix that I went back into Mastercam and changed the tool path, this took all of 5 mins maybe. I was feeling rather confident and thats when all hell broke loose.

OH NO!!!!!

OH NO!! 2

The router bit ended up slipping because I didnt tighter it enough and decided it wanted to dig into the aluminum table a bit. Needless to say its time to order a new bit after all the action it has seen this semester so far. I hope to be up and running again by the end of the week because I have a nice piece of white korina that wants to be turned into a 59 Gibson Flying V.

MzI

the way I do it is take some 5 min epoxy is I mix the color I want with alcohol based dye or a compatiable paint, last time I used testors model paint and it worked fine. Then I thinned the mix with acetone to make it easier to spread and gives it a longer working time, this also increases the dry time but its easier to work and less sanding afterwards. As for Minwax poly on a guitar Id recommend not using it. Using the satin for a neck is fine it actually works quite well but using the gloss out of a can for the body not such a good idea. The last build I did I used it, I will be stripping the guitar this summer and spraying it properly. The stuff is increbily soft scratches easily chips dents and its really not that easy to fix you cant just put more poly on because the layers dont blend together they just lay ontop of each other.

MzI

send me an email and ill give you some dimensions that I have.

MzI

Honestly when I build my 58/59s I just make up all those measurements. I really prefer my own specs opposed to getting something accurate.

MzI

id recommend just getting a purple heart veneer

MzI

hey check out the pic posting rules you got way too many per post

MzI

Ive been playing around the Mill I have here at school. What we do is run the path and cut foam like regular 2 inch rigid foam before we jump up to anything more expensive that way if we screw up its only foam versus an expensive piece of figured maple

MzI

haha thats about the only thing that can bring me down ill admit it. Well that and a good nights sleep. Nah I dont have any exposed cuts or anything unless theres something I dont know about.

MzI

Its weird because my other hand was competely fine and my other fingers on my right hand were fine. I will be taking extra precaution when I actually start working with the wood. For now its sitting in the box it was shipped in until I have a chance to bring it home.

MzI

yea thats what I am thinking but it could be a localized reaction same as what happened when I had an allergic reaction to being stung.

MzI

Its weird because all I did was pick up the board with one hand and I only got the burning sensesation on one finger and not anywhere else. I did check the toxic wood list to see the different things about cocobolo. Also I have never had a reaction to any wood and ive only ever had one alergeic reaction and that was to getting stung by bees. Anyways Ive picked up the wood mulitple times since and it seems to be ok with no problems additionally there is no dust to speak of on the piece so maybe it was just my mind making up the reaction, its not totally out of question. When I actually do use the piece ill be sure to take proper provisions against getting the dust all over myself. Ill post pictures when I get back to my main computer.

MzI

I just bought a piece of Cocobolo on ebay for a fretboard mainly cuz it looks cool. Anyways, I pulled the board out to look at it and since my index finger on my right hand has had a slight burning feeling. Obviously a reaction to the wood. Although nowhere else am I having this reaction. For my question, will the likeliness of a reaction go away when I have the fretboard on a guitar, ie will it still be toxic if I dont finish the wood or if I put some lemon oil on the fretboard as I generally do for all of my guitars. If not is there a way other then a hard finish to remove the likelyhood of having a reaction other then just not using the piece at all.

MzI

One of the other strats I built was a mahogany back with a maple top, but it had a tom strings thru and hums. I did split both hums which gave it a really cool sound. I did have a kind of lp sound. didnt really sound like a strat at all, plus it was really heavy.

MzI

I made one with a neck thru, jb and jazz humbuckers, tom with strings thru, and 24.75 scale. Sounds pretty good. Nothing like a strat but I wasnt going for that anyways

MzI

I wish. Its regular old eastern hard rock flamed maple. I stained the whole thing black before I cleared it so it kinda makes it looks like purple heart. The neck is a 5 piece laminate with maple and purple heart though.

MzI

A while ago I made a custom neck thru bass that I designed. The build came out OK. There were balance problems with the neck being too heavy along with other things.

The First design

computer rendering

The Actual guitar

and now onto the new design

Im working on this for fun outside of my class work for my digital manufacturing class which is a grad level class at the architecture school I go to. My first step towards cutting guitars with the cnc will be to make a 59 Flying V. THat is just about ready to be cut sometime this coming week id assume. As for the bass. It will be a full carved top. The hard problem will be to model it in 3d computer programs. I will more then likely use autocad to create the basic 2d plan and some of the 3d stuff such as pickups and control cavity layout. And then for the carve and the rendering I will use Rhino 3d and export that into master cam to create the tool paths and then cut the guitar into foam to get an idea of how the design is. Next step will be to reverse engineer it and find anything I dont like about the design, fix it and then continue on with cutting it again until i am happy with the design and at that point I will then cut it out of wood.

Feel free to comment on the design and what not

MzI

all fixed

Honestly, that seems like a really really bad idea, just look at what is in Armor All Armor All ingredients Just the amount of silcone oil in it seems like a bad idea, I would really reconsider doing this to your guitar

MzI

Sketchup 5.0, trial version is like 8 hours still I believe.

MzI

Go to your local shop and ask for an Epiphone replacement, should run around $20 and those are the ones that will be closest to the real Gibsons.

MzI

Actually my soloist changed a bit over time after I put finish on it. There were a couple parts of lighter purple where I had sanded when I was leveling the epoxy and then after a while the color evened out throughout the whole body

MzI

oooo thread resurection, I have a Mesa Single Recto with a Marshall cab I love. But id have to stick with Mesa and go with the new Dual Roadster


MzI