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ddgman2001

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Everything posted by ddgman2001

  1. ddgman2001
    EMG doesn't make a 5-string J-style pickup. You'll have to go for the soapbar style EMG-40 size and have your bass routed. You might consider installing a pre-amp and keeping the old pickups intact. EMG makes a couple. Sadowsky is the gold standard of Jazz pre's.
  2. ddgman2001
    Bosch +1 I have 3 Porter cables, 1 DeWalt and 1 Bosch. The Porter Cables all have significant runout. The Bosch has the best runout specs and seems the quietest.
  3. ddgman2001
    What's Thorn's background? He seems to have a lot of experience for the number of guitars he's built under his own brand. Great work, great eye.
  4. ddgman2001
    Good points. For us the lease payments on a Haas would have put us out of business in no time. If you're company is grossing $400K+ per year, you should have no problem keeping up with the payments. Not to hijack the thread, but I've a quick question for jer7440. If you were building guitars on your Haas full time, how would you go about locating your fixtures on the table? Would you use something to index the fixtures and use a common home point, or would you re-set your home point with every fixture change?
  5. ddgman2001
    I've never used a Badger larger than an airbrush, but I do own both of those types of Chinese knock off guns. They're good for rough work. For fine work, you'll need to spend more.
  6. ddgman2001
    Hi Keith, we use a Shopbot. It's OK if you're really good at setting up machines. Their Forum is the best. Lots of help. Which is as important as the machine itself. Check out their site www.shopbottools.com and forum www.talkshopbot.com Look for posts from Gerald Dorrington. He's pretty much the smartest, most capable guy on the whole forum and he's not too far from you. He sent me a link to your website once. I love your guitars, I'm going to have to buy one sometime.
  7. ddgman2001
    There used to be a company marketing a fret lube. I think it was packaged in a felt tip pen. You just painted the lube on the fret top. Does anyone remember the stuff, what it was called, if it's still available? TIA
  8. ddgman2001
    If I understand things correctly, the three fender washers are stacked to create a grooved wheel?
  9. ddgman2001
    Now that I think of it, the 1" tooling plate might be the better way to go all around. That way you've got something flat to work with which could shave a day or two off your setup, and best of all, you set it up once and she's done.
  10. ddgman2001
    In order of budget. Two layers of mdf glued together. Sand out the bumps and warps with a fretboard leveler. Have a grid made out of heavy steel rectangular tube (like a tic tac toe board). Bolt an mdf top and shim flat and square. Check ebay for a 1" slab of aluminum tooling plate. Maybe Klingspor. I think they have the taped seam. I use them on my edge sander, but they are still bumpy on they hard drum for fine work.
  11. ddgman2001
    Shellac gets sticky when it warms up.
  12. ddgman2001
    Nice score. You'll want to make a new table with at least 12" of table in front of the bit to support bodies when you're profiling them. How's that Rigid oscillating sander? Do you get a bump everytime the belt joint goes past? Or does it feel smooth like a drum sander?
  13. ddgman2001
    Sculpy is interesting stuff. Although once baked it is quite brittle, it never gets really hard so would have to be cleared over. I don't know how much it shrinks, but even if it's a fraction of 1% that would make a tight fit impossible. I looked into it as an inlay material a while back and gave up.
  14. ddgman2001
    I don't have it in front of me right now, but I think it's issue 174. You may be able to find one at a smaller store that hasn't got the new issue yet. Essentially the author says two things that I found interesting. 1. Make sure your tires are in really good shape because... 2. You leave the fence parallel to the miter gauge slot and adjust the tracking to control blade drift. I tried it and it works great.
  15. ddgman2001
    The best re-sawing article I've seen yet is in the new Fine Woodworking. It completely dissagrees with everything I've ever read about setting up a bandsaw, but it works beautifully.
  16. ddgman2001
    I've heard of car guys doing that with success. I tried it on a bass and wound up having to strip it off.
  17. ddgman2001
    How does it wear? Compared to lacquer, how does it stand up to fingernail scratches? I've been thinking of using it for satin finishes.
  18. ddgman2001
    I'm itching for a bigger saw too. I used to own a 26" with a huge table and have not enjoyed my Delta/riser block since. We do 80-100 basses per year and I still can't justify the expense of a larger saw - we need a larger compressor etc more. We could double our production and still be using the 14". Just my opinion here, but if you're making solid body guitars and you don't have a pin router, I'd recommend saving for that before upgrading your saw.
  19. ddgman2001
    For 7/8" thick wood you'll need a year to air dry. Do some searches on Fine Woodworking's site. There's great potential for cracking, warping and built-in stresses.
  20. ddgman2001
    The problem for internal routs is lowering the bit into the work. Any radial armsaw I've seen uses a hand crank. That means you need to have the bit spinning, hold the work with one hand, then reach for the crank. That's an accident waiting to happen. Real pin routers have a foot feed that lets you hold on to the work piece with both hands. They're pretty safe all things considered.
  21. ddgman2001
    Try and visuallize how you would hold the work piece as you lower the bit. Unless it can be done easily with one hand or a foot. If you can't do this easily, you'll need a friend to help you for internal routs. Something like this strikes me as a good system for sheet stock like routing decorative edges by using a fence or routing dados with a straight bit. You might be able to profile rout a body, but a table router would be more solid. You could install an overhead pin system on that (or just buy the Lee Valley unit).
  22. ddgman2001
    It's not ideal and your chuck might fall off mid cut, but when I didn't have a router of my own, I used to rout with a drill press.
  23. ddgman2001
    Keep in mind that the capacity of a drill press is half of it's rating. i.e. the chuck to column distance on a 9" drill press is only 4.5" and 6" for a 12" press. Most of the critical holes on a body are located closer to the center. So in my experience you need at least a 16" press to cover everything.
  24. ddgman2001
    Scalloping gives you a really nice intimate feel with the strings. You really feel like you have much more control over the strings. Bends are much easier since you can get a nice grip on the string and there is no FB friction to speak of. I don't find them to feel any faster, if anything maybe a little slower. As mentioned above, you need to use a light technique to keep chords or any note for that matter in tune. This is a technique you should follow anyway. You don't need much scalloping to get the results. 1/16" is a good place to start.
  25. ddgman2001
    Yes. Just vent the fumes to avoid a fire, wear a respirator to avoid lung and nervous system damage and test on your particular finish to make sure it doesn't cloud or soften it.
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