soapbarstrat

I made one following the instructions in one of those "greatest shop tips" type books. I would think something identical could be found online. Probably a repeated question/topic on woodworking forums. Mine consists of a carboard tube about 2.5" to 3.5" diameter. Cardboard is probably around 1/8" thick. Beats me right now where I got that cardboard tube from. Then with a hole saw, I got two 1/2 or 3/4 thick plywood disks. Enlarged hole in center so some big 1/2 or 5/8 bolt would fit snugly through. I think maybe the disks are tapered. Put the bolt though one disk, then hollow carboard tube down over that, then pack the hell out of the hollow tube with sawdust, then put the other disk on, add washer and bolt to threaded shaft of bolt, screw the sucker tight. the sawdust compresses making the whole thing more rigid. Have to use sticky backed sandpaper to get it to stay on the cardboard disk. Then you chuck that threaded end of the bolt in your drill press. Certainly some "run-out" going on. I have kept 60 grit on that thing for years. It's one way of doing it, but I won't say it's the best way. I have some smaller standard store bought rubber/metal ones. Plus I'll even do something crazy like stick sandpaper to the outside of a hole-saw to make a "sanding drum". I think if I make another, I'll try something like staked MDF fitted tightly on a plain steel shaft.

TOS ? Terms Of Service ? Try Our Spaghetti ? Thank Ozzy Someday ?

I really don't know what the hell this RavenT's problem is. here's what I just copied from the 'interests' part of his profile: "So since I cannot get my account deleted from this site I am just going to have to do the nonos to get kick out from the bunch of you ****ing monkeys here. " Man, I thought I was bad. At least when I get pissed at the site, it's fairly obvious why.

Man, I read that first page and kept looking at this bottle of beer thinking , how much damn alcohol is in this ****!

Are we trying to see if a simple sandpaper cutting thread can go on for a couple pages ? 'cause I'm running out of ideas. How about wrapping razor wire around one of your car's wheels and backing over the sandpaper laying on your drive-way ? Speaking of cutting the hell out of your hand. Watch out on a fresh routed edge on a piece of laminate flooring. Man, I got it good on some of that a few months ago.

I didn't watch the video linked (connection too slow). But in the past I have seen an online video of Will Ray using the hipshot.

Utility knife or plain 'ol razor blade is how I roll.

Not sure how Strat friendly the complete unit is, but on the Glaser bender, the lever comes out of the neck plate. I have to say though, that Will Ray makes the Hipshot unit look very tempting.

When ironing a man's wedding shirt, one needs a special iron, which is the size and shape of the bottom of a woman's shoe. Leave the iron sit in one spot until it makes a permanent imprint, move a few inches and repeat. In the end, you have a shirt that symbolizes the groom's future.

Yeah, I wasn't all that impressed with the demo version of 'Lazer Strike' but then Wes replaced the bass line with a flute and it just came to life.

Pretty sure I heard a new tune of theirs on the radio not long ago and I thought, if you're young and naive, it'll do just fine for you, I guess. I don't like the old stuff much anymore either. Certainly the kind of band I grew out of liking. Kirk's solos have almost always sounded to me like cocaine playing a guitar. As if some kind of life is missing there. Obviously I'm in the minority, because they came on the scene in the 80's as a hardcore thrash band (I still have an Issue of BAM magazine, with them on the cover (Including Cliff), with the writing " Metallica : Top 40 that Radio won't touch". ) And today, they still play in stadiums. Look where 80's bands like Dokken play these days (little crap-ass clubs) Hard to believe i used to think of them as "Local band" (when I lived in Frisco). lame to say, but I had a friend, who was a friend of Cliff's brother (ooo whoopdeedoo !) haha.

Well, heck, if it's a metal working lathe, you can also make the best kind of plug cutters.

Your searching might be better spent on thinking of ways to make plug cutters so you can just cut dots out of all kinds of plastic. I was doing this in my early 20's, so I think it's one of the easier tasks involved with guitar making. Then again, I suppose if I had a lathe, I might try turing chunks of plastic into rods instead of messing with plug cutters. Now I remember I once went to a plastics company and asked for black a white solid plastic rods and they said they only had clear or whitish clear nylon.

Wow, yours even has a dial on it. Mine is exactly the same as this one. Talk about bare bones. Although I can't see paying $11.00 for one. I might pay $2.00 at a yard sale.

Why not practice the same technique required, if you'd ever need to remove/reassemble a board and neck on a repair situation ? I've got what's called a "travel Iron". It's a mini clothes iron about 3-1/2" wide by 6" long (damn old, probably 70's, but works fine). Quite nice for fret-board removal and it doesn't want to tip off the board nearly as easily as a full sized clothes iron. Plus there's no little "steam holes" on it like most full sized clothes irons have, so no holes for sap, oils, dirt or glue to get in there where you can't clean it out easily.

Bah ! If I were to go that stone-age with it, I'd just go one notch down and use an adjustable wrench, then see what feeler-gauges fit in the opening of the wrench's jaws. Guess the digital calipers use too much power to be able to use that solar technology like many calculators do. Man, those solar calculators are impressive. I had forgot I even owned one. Was in a drawer for 10 years. Rediscovered it, and tried it out and works fine, even from man-made light.

It's hard for me to keep track of what weird quirks each of my calipers have. I have 5 of them. 4 are digital. The 2 I bought in Europe don't have numbers pop up when it's turned off, but they still seem to drain batteries too quickly. One of them is modded to read fret-wire tangs, but with the mod I made, you don't have to file any burr off the end of the fret, it by-passes the very end of the fret. That one was given to me as a gift, but I came up with the "bypass mod". My first calipers are some kind of high-tech plastic, made in Switzerland, dial reading, the depth reader is totally inaccurate with no way I know of to correct it. They were, by far, the most expensive of all of them. $30.00 from LMI way back in the early 90's. They are now my "throw around" calipers. For years I kept them in a case when not in use. These days I just toss em around like they're junk. I'll even put them into my portable open top tool box when I go do home repair jobs, with other tools banging around with them.

I think on those Horror Fright ones, they really never go off all the way. Actually on mine, I can shut it off with the button switch, but then if I move the jaws, damn numbers pop up on the screen ! Yeah, like in a horror film : " Ok kids, it's gonna be alright. I took the battery out of the caliper monster, so everybody can rest easy. OH NO, IT'S STILL COMING AFTER US ANYWAY ! "

The metal one has the depth thing at the end, which the plastic one doesn't have. Another thing : $19.95 is more than you should be paying for the metal one. It's very often on sale for around $16.00 (maybe even less, sometimes). Another thing : If you don't want to be buying new batteries often, take the battery out after every use (yes, PITA, but will save you enough $$ to justify doing it)

Ok thanks. I'm so unfamiliar with metric measurements, that I didn't realize those were more right on the money.

Yes, they do. Now if we could just find a way to get those guys to talk to *us*. Didn't use a diamond bit. I bought some toothed round carbide bits. One of them is what I would describe as "double cut". But right now, I can't remember which one I liked better (the single or double cut)

What ? !!! Me giving advice to the "tool man" . LOL ! Yeah, bought some little round end bits from McMaster. They go on the Dremel. You know how the stock Dremel router base accepts two steel rods for an edge guide ? Well, I rig up some really long rods in there instead. Radius caul is clamped down to a jig (well, I put two counter-sunk screw holes in all my cauls, so they can be bolted down- in order to mill the radius into them). Then like a little moving, milling compass, I rout that groove in there with the Dremel. BUT, I think the way I do it is too complicated. What I should do is use that same Dremel router base like a little router table and make some kind of little piece that surrounds the ball-cutter bit most of the way, or half-way, so that just a portion of the ball cutter is sticking out. Then you just work your caul across it and it's got that "safety stop" to make the depth the same across. That Stew-Mac article actually shows something like that, except more basic (they seem to rely on the ball-cutter bits shaft acting like a depth stop. I think that would allow too deep of a cut). I guess I should also mention that my "stock" dremel router base has a base I made, which is larger than the stock one, plus it's square, so it is like a little router table when turned up-side-down. Heck, this is the kind of thing I usually only share with certain people off the forum.

Jason, does that caliper have a decimal option ? I'm wondering if it's just rounding off to the 1/8". In other words, are those cauls right on the .125" mark ? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if StewMac gets brass stock in slighty different thicknesses. I should have guessed 3/16" is thicker that what they're selling, because the ones I make are 3/16" and I always thought they looked thicker than what I saw in StewMac ads.

I did it when I was starting out, because that's sort of what I was "taught". Then I started *not* doing it, and got results so good, I didn't want to mess with a good thing, and trust me, I go all the way in demanding the best playability in a guitar. I think some guys do it, to help with "kick up" in the board that might develop years later. And that certainly happens ( I have a 15 year old MIM Fender which has done just that). But when it does, I figure time for a refret. Like time for your car's brake discs to get turned on a lathe.

I'm assuming someone else will come along with a better answer. But, there's an article in Stew-Mac's "Trade secrets" on how to build the "jaws" press, and as far as the dimensions of the cauls, it says : " These shoes, made from 3/16" X 3-1/2" X 3/4" flat brass bar stock, are the easiest to make". Then again, that article was written before they actually started selling the Jaws and cauls. So size of cauls could have changed for mass-production purposes. I would think StewMac customer service would tell you the exact dimensions if you asked.