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Phil Mailloux

Blues Tribute Group
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Everything posted by Phil Mailloux

  1. D was a no brainer for me when I decided to get equiped as its also the cheapest option if you have the power saw. I got the bore of the stewmac blade recut to 30mm to fit my sliding mitre saw and made a little indexing table to clamp on it.
  2. Demonx, I checked out your site and saw you're in VIC, if it helps, for tax purposes you need to earn more than 20k a year from your hobby to have to declare and register your business name (sole trader). Mine's been registered for several years and i'm being told I should be better off getting rid of it as I make just under that from it. @Restoration AD I fit exactly 5 of your 6 points, I don't have any children so... Its good to see i'm not the only one in this situation. i love building guitars as a hobby but the business and stress side of it are often way too much, the old romantic idea of being a full time luthier doing your craft which I had when I started building 8 years ago is now completely gone, I much prefer my day job to the daily stress of building and answering countless emails of customers regarding every tiny little aspects of the build. I still love it as a hobby though but rarely get the time to do a bass for me, as a matter of fact, I don't even own one of my instruments expect for the two first ones (unsellable). I need a break for some quality me time with my tools
  3. When you're doing it full time I consider myself a pro builder but I still call it a hobby business because it is, even though I built 8 instruments from scratch per year for three years in a row, I get the full stress of a full time job away from my regular day job, all in my spare time... It'll always stay a hobby business for me, I'd have to pump out over 60 basses per year to make the kind of profit required to replace the day job. No way in hell I'd want to do that many, its way too stressful lol
  4. That looks like the one, thanks for the link. Too bad the pics are missing though.
  5. I think I remember seeing a tutorial or a build thread somewhere on PG a few years back on installing LEDs in a fingerboard. I can't find the damn thing with the search function. Anyone knows where it is by any chance?
  6. Paper space can be A0-A4 and a few others, go to the page manager option under "file" to check out which size page you've got as a default on your file and change it to A4 if it isn't
  7. Then he needs to use the scaling icon in model space. On the screen he posted: on left of the drawing, right side column, 8 from the top, it looks like a square with a small square in it. You'll need first to calculate the dimensions it's at right now and the dimensions you want it because you'll have to enter a number in the command line. Select the whole body, click the scaling icon, click on a corner or the body, you'll then be able to blow the body up or down. You need to enter something in the command line to rezise the drawing to exact numbers. If you want to scale it down to half the size you have onscreen type in "0.5", twice the size would be "2" etc... You'll need to calculate that first and put it a precise number to get it exactly as you want it. You'll probably want to use a number you can relate to such at the length of the body (20"?) EDIT I should have re-read the thread before typing all that *roll eyes* that was answered on last page. Post #17, he already as it to size in model space he wants to know how to scale it in paper space which is my answer in #25. Let us know if that worked for you Cam.
  8. If he's built it to 1 to 1 scale in model space then he can scale to full size on paper space and print it out in 4 sections from 4 sheets. You need to have the Viewport toolbar on your screen. To do that right-click on the light grey areas under or next to any of the icons. So right-click->ACAD->Viewports The Viewport toolbar will appear on the screen. Double-click inside the paper space area then go to the Viewport toolbar and choose the scaling you want, you obviously want 1:1. The drawing will automatically blow up to full dimensions.
  9. This is model space, you need to open it up on paper space. Paper space is the white pages you get when you click on the tabs at the lower left corner (layout1, Layout 2). Double click inside the viewport. At the bottom of the page you should have a box where you can choose the scaling, you obviously want 1:1 scale. The body will blow up or down to the correct scaling. Just drag it inside the viewport to show the first corner you want to print and print it. You might want to check out the options on the plot preview before ou print to make sure the scaling is all good. Also, the oldest version of AutoCAD I ever used is 2004, you mention having 2000, so that might be slightly different.
  10. It depends which standard you're using. If it's ISO-25 it should be cm. If its AS1100 (you're in Australia) it's mm. Whatever you're using, just check it by going on paper space and select an A4 sheet, bring the drawing in view and select 1:1 scale once it's pulled up (or down) check if your drawing is the dimensions you want it. If it isn't use the scale function to make it bigger or smaller. Once done check again in paper space. If its good print it out, then move the body in a different corner of paper space to print out the next body corner. Print the 4 sheets of the 4 parts of the body, sticky tape them together, cut-out, glue on masonite or mdf and cut, file and sand until you've got your template.
  11. Updating a 3 year old thread I finished building this bass about 2 weeks ago. It was on the backburner for a couple of years because I was busy building custom instruments for a couple of customers. I handbuilt two musicman pickups built to pre-EB specs, although for a 5 string. They're connected in series with a two band Aguilar pre. I used scraps of the top and back to match the headstock, wooden pickups covers and electronics cavity.
  12. I just checked out their website and I have to say that I was a bit shocked at their prices though. $17,500 for the 24 week class In their defence, that does include a free room for the duration of the class plus material for four instruments (including an archtop!) What did R-V charge for their 5 month class?
  13. Here's the Galloup video I was talking about. It's 30 minutes long, shows his shop/factory in detail and talks about his school. The school part though starts at about 23 minutes into the video.
  14. You definitely are. From your posts though, I'd reconsider Roberto-Venn if I were to go since there's so many school's out there. I recently checked out Bryan Galoup's school on their website. I have to say I liked what I saw. They seem to spend a good amount of time teaching you about as much repair/building/management. There's a couple of youtube vids going around about his school too. It seems interesting. Jon, which school are you thinking of going to?
  15. Interesting couple of posts from Elysian Guitars. I'm surprised at his opinion of lutherie schools. I've never been to one myself but if I had the cash (and no wife and no mortgage) I'd seriously think about it. Even though I've been building instruments for more than 5 years and have collected a humoungeous library of lutherie DVD's and books. The way I see it these schools will teach you at least how to work in pro workshops, time management, business side of lutherie, how to build jigs, how to eveluate the quality of instruments ect... These are all things that would be very hard or very long to learn on your own. What I'm missing in my own development as a luthier is someone to answer my questions. And I'm not talking about "how do I install a truss rod" type questions but business, quality and "jigs to make your work go faster" type questions. You'd get a right answer from a pro that's owned his shop for 10+ years. I've learned the most in this craft by just looking at a couple of pro shops and how they used their jigs and how the shop was setup. Building a guitar is the easy part. Doing it cost-effectively is the hard part.
  16. Looks good Jon, is that one of the basses you started more than a year ago or is this a new build? How's the lutherie school thing, you starting soon?
  17. This is what it looked like once I had the neck done and had done the shaping of the body. I wasn't happy with the shaping and wanted to do a nice carve to it so I've been playing around with that for the last few days. This is the last pic where I'm at right now.
  18. I haven't posted pics here in an eternity, more than two years from the posts I can see in the thread This bass is the longest build I've ever done. It's been 2 and a half year already. There was a lot of interruptions during that time. It will very soon be done though. I give myself less than two months at this point. Well at some point a year or so ago, I glued the top on the body. This is a set neck bass. So I cut the shape of the neck joint into the top, glued first the neck on the body then squeezed the top through the neck onto the body to glue it. I started shaping the neck (months) after that.
  19. That crimper is pretty impressive. I'll have to mod myself one like that
  20. Any CNC that cuts metal parts have oil all over them. I'm not sure it would be feasible to cut wood parts on those. Jer7440, great Les Paul file, I've been playing around with it in Inventor. It looks really good. Good job on it.
  21. I also used the sanding stick with the grooves in it after filing the crown. I often end up sanding by hand anyway. It feels more natural to me. Its one of those tools that you wonder why they came up with it in the first place when its so easy to do it by hand.
  22. Thanks for the replies guys. Just to make things worse I broke down and bought the Ebay file barely 5 minutes before Guitar2005 posted his first reply I pretty much regretted it right away. Especially after the second reply when he mentioned he loved the cheap stewmac one I was looking at... I have two necks on the workbench waiting to be fretted so I guess I'll give my own review of this file when it gets here for future reference. Rob, thanks for the elaborate reply. I read the other thread too and it was very nice to hear all the points of view of these files. I've done my crowning in the past with regular small rectangular files and it was about time to get a dedicated tool. For me, the jury is still out on those things. I might still get a set of triangular /Cant files at some point and try it out and I might also get a more expensive Stewmac diamond one. At this point I'm broke and need to get those two necks done. In a few months I might be able to get some decent tools in. First, let's check out the quality of the Ebay stuff
  23. That's where YOU come in. If you're here I assume you know something about guitars. You'd be the one sitting next to dad telling him how deep the pocket need to be. I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem if told how high or low to go. If you're not sure about all this yourself then you better drop that project until you have learned enough to build a guitar yourself. i.e. you don't run before walking, meaning you have to know how to build a guitar before you can get a machine to do it. I think you need to give a contribution to download these files. DWG files can be opened by Solidworks
  24. Most of the drawings you'll find are 2D which is no big deal if you know anything about CNC's. You need to open those up in a CAM software and then extrude the paths and program them. If your dad is familiar with all this then you need to spend some time together programming it together. It's not easy. If you don't know anything about it it'll be a steep learning curve. I'd suggest to take a class if you want to learn more or spend a good amount of time reading up on cnczone.com
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