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verhoevenc

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Everything posted by verhoevenc

  1. If/when I get this stuff down I'll likely be doing more tops with various colors, to learn, than I'll have use for. So I'm not opposed to the idea of some sales to recoup my investment. Yes they'd be cheaper than what we see online. But no I don't plan to become a manufacturer hahaha. Chris
  2. IMO, no. It's a bit labor intensive given you have to source the wood, cut to billet, dry in over at 200 for 24 hours, do first round of stabilizing, sand, do second round of stabilizing, sand, resaw. But $600-$700 intensive? Not as far as I'm concerned. I was able to gear up for about the cost of one of his tops. I'll spend about $40 per color choice on top of that to start off (I've come up with a trick to do the large pieces and minimize the amount of juice I have to stock at any one time) and that $40 will do numerous, numerous tops and then the leftovers will do tons of pen blanks and stuff from scraps (which also go for top $$$ on eBay). Chris
  3. Nope, hadn't given it a try. At this point I'm taking one experiment at a time haha! Look at californiawoods.com or the Alpher Instruments instagram channel for some ideas on the figure outcome. Chris
  4. I'm getting into using only 3 bolts myself. Holds just fine and really opens up possibilities to make a comfortable, ergonomic, bolt-on heel. Awesome work as always man, Chris
  5. The answer, from top to bottom, is: 4, 3, 2, and 1 hours in the green soak bath. Which may seem odd since the top one doesn't have that much green, and the bottom two are so much cooler!? Well here is what I believe I learned from this experiment: 1- yes, soaking does work to pull in some color (at least with buckeye) 2- no it will not take and be as vibrant and aggressive as a vacuum'd color 3- I don't see much impact on the length of time for these thin 1/8" pieces. It seems more like there was some threshold for penetration (under an hour here) and beyond that it was a wash 4- the biggest single determinant of how the two colors affected the wood was the wood itself. The two larger pieces had more grain diversity in terms of burl, eyes, natural color differences, etc. and therefore the result was more dramatic; not because of process differences, but because of the wood itself. My take away here is that I still think the soak, although it does work, is a lesser-desired method for dual-dying than doing a short vacuum of one color followed by a full vacuum of another (stabilizing in between obviously). Chris
  6. So I actually had the results already when I last posted but I hadn't taken pictures or given them a wipe to see the color yet. I'm home sick today and this felt like something small I could do between bouts of self-pity so that I didn't feel completely useless. I'm going to post 4 pictures. All 4 are buckeye burl pieces that, oven-dried, were soaked in green, stabilized, then vacuumed in red for 2 hours and stabilized. The only difference between the 4 pieces is how long each sat in the green soak bath. The answers are 1, 2, 3, and 4 hours. See if you can guess which is which: (This was actually one piece... I just broke it. If you flip them they fit back together into one big one) Chris
  7. Yes sir! Pretty happy with the stuff so far! I've read a bit more up on the process and it seems the one I let "sit and soak" and didn't love my results... I probably didn't let it soak for nearly long enough. Apparently the soak method works without vacuum but just takes a lot longer. I'm oven-drying some buckeye scraps now to re-test this. Here's why: For each color that I have to completely submerge in a full vacuum... since the chamber is a cylinder... I have to have a lot of the juice in that color on hand. I fill empty space in the chamber with PVC pipes that I've capped at the bottom end, and then cheap marbles from the dollar store (cheapest place I've found,,, beats all of Amazon's options) for the even smaller waste space. However, even with these space/juice saving methods I'm still looking at having to keep 1-gallon+ for each color I want to pull vacuum on for a guitar top sized piece. That gets pricey over time! Especially since this stuff does have a shelf life! Being able to do a soak on the first color (without vacuum) instead means I can keep a much lesser volume of that color since I don't have to fill anything but a flat rectangular tray that the top fits in. Another thing to consider is that marbles have a large surface area... and you can try and drip-dry them... but they're still going to hold onto a decent amount of the juice in the end. Which means I need to keep a batch of the marbles (about $50 worth) per color as well! The PVC pipes I can spatula the juice off of and not waste as much, but again they don't fill voids quite as effectively as the PVC-pipe/marble combo. When I have the results of a better soak trial I'll let ya'll know. Chris
  8. Oh! And I used almost a 1/4 oz of alumilite dye red in under a half-quart of juice. I feel more red would have helped here. The green got a 1/4 oz in just over a half-quart of juice and I feel this could have done with a little less dye. Chris
  9. So apparently I'm in experiment and learn mode lately as I can't seem to pull myself from trying out new tools and techniques! NOTE: any stabilized wood you see here is for sale. PM me if curious on pricing. There's some information on the web about this process, but in my opinion it left a lot of unknowns out. So I figured I'd let ya'all follow along with my learning. I'll start by saying I stabilized stuff normally first. I followed the cactus juice website instructions to a T with one caveat: when kearningto just stabilize with clear juice I tried both oven-dried and "normal everyday woodworker dry" wood. Yes, drying in the oven helped. I will do this all the time moving forward. But the goal wasn't really to stabilize wood, it was to do the multi-color dye process! I bought a HUGE vacuum chamber large enough to do guitar tops, so that's the ultimate goal. Let's start with the visual and talk from there: From top to bottom we have: - Mildly curly Oregon myrtle (oven dried) - two curly maple blanks from the same piece (oven dried) - curly ash (normal dry) - burled holly (normal dry) - four pieces of buckeye burl thins from the same burl (oven dried) All pieces (unless otherwise stated) went through a 30 minute vacuum pull in red cactus juice, then sat in it without vacuum for an hour. Once I did the by the book resin curing and sanding they went back in for a 1.5 hour vacuum pull in green juice and then sat in it without vacuum for about a day cause I got tired and went to bed and then work. You'll notice, especially with the buckeye burl, a lot of variety. I'll start there. The two pieces on the left were totally submerged in the cactus juice for both colors. The piece on the top right had its round half dunked in the red for the non-vacuum soak only. The bottom right had its round half in the red soak for the whole process. As you can see, just soaking without vacuum didn't really add much red at all. I have to say the most visually stunning pieces were fully submerged for both colors. No question. As for the pen blanks we'all start at the top: The myrtle took on almost NO red?! Maybe cause it wasn't dried until after the red-resin curing process? Doesn't explain the holly... but it really took on no red and any red it did take on was only surface deep like standard dying. The maples turned out nicely. The top one only had on end stick in the red process hence only red on one end. It did pull it up slightly higher than the juice level in spots though. Again, I think the fully submerged piece for both colors looks better. The ash, although aesthetically not my favorite, really highlights how disparity in grain density and direction (curl) affects the color retention. Lastly, the burled holly provides some contrast to the "it wasn't oven dried" issues on the myrtle. It took up both colors just fine! And came out pretty stunning. From this first experiment I feel I learned a few nice things: - I validated that, as everyone says, the more figured the wood the more color diversity you will get. - a 30-minute vacuum pull appears to be plenty to set a primary color. - wood density has a HUGE affect of color uptake! Just look at the grain of the ash and also how much faster the soft buckeye burl took on the red than the harder maple/Holly/myrtle! You definitely have to factor this in to get the results you're trying for. More later as I continue to learn. Chris
  10. I finally talked to a person there... seems the one year my machine was made they used some linear bearings that a few folks had issues with. I've pulled them and tested them one-by-one as suggested and am thinking we may have found the issue. Some seem to be binding, which may exert just enough back-force for some losses. Chris
  11. So this is actually a continuation of an issue I had awhile back (and believed I had fixed). That thread (now being continued on the Shopbot forum as well), can be seen here: http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/showthread.php?23276-Drifting-Skipping-Axis&p=193636#post193636 However, seeing as how that's purely Shopbot folks, not general CNC'ers, I figured asking around here couldn't hurt. Background: Awhile back I was milling a neck... got to the last 20 seconds of the last cutting operation and it decided to (as I finally figured out) lose some steps on the Y axis like this: It was kind of hard to figure out because due to my table size I mill my necks on a diagonal line... so this could have been lost Y steps or jumped X steps. The best solution I found on the forum was that my dust collection hose (which ran very near my stepper motors) wasn't grounded and might have led to some static discharge messing with the steppers. So I grounded the hose, moved it's location, and all seemed to go well since then. Enter my lunch break today: I set the replacement neck for the one that the machine destroyed above on the table to radius a gorgeous african blackwood board and head out to get my lunch. I come back and low and behold the machine has lost a bunch of Y steps leading to this: It's really funny that both times this has happened it's been to the same guitar's, attempted, necks... and also when I've finally regained enough trust to not sit and watch it work. It's like it knows, laughs at me, and screws stuff up just to teach me a lesson in hubris. This is frustrating because having a CNC I can't trust to do what it's supposed to do without me watching it really defeats the purpose of having a CNC! Now I'm scared to put anything on it!It feels like I have Schrodinger's CNC: it has both destroyed and not destroyed my work until I check on it.Please help! Chris PS: As you can see here, I went ahead and reran the fretboard radius path and it worked fine (albeit I should have probably lowered the Z a bit). Makes sense as this path has worked on an identical neck before...
  12. Don't get me wrong, this is super cool. I love the color choices, everything comes together really well... however, the title got me more excited. I'd really like to see you do a true offset. Like in the jazzmaster, teisco, etc. style. Talkin' out-of-the-norm pickups, floating tailpiece tremolo, double-cut offset body. Challenge accepted? Chris
  13. Here's a guide to using CNC along with resin casting that opens up all new WORLDS of possibilities. One of the absolute best technical reads I've had in a long time! http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ Chris
  14. Side note: I ended up going with a Shopbot Desktop. It's large enough to do my style of bolton necks milled on a diagonal since the bed is only 18x24". I was able to get it used (lightly) from another luthier on craigslist for a steal (I think like $6k if I remember correctly, with the spindle upgrade). Check the used market! May allow you to go higher quality than new... and a lot of non-professional CNCers don't really beat up their machines too often I'd imagine. Chris
  15. On my Instagram @raygunguitars I am giving away one of our import line t-style Model1 guitars. Are you a vet or in the military? Go check it out! Chris
  16. I built a body for a guy that slapped one of their necks on it. Didn't feel too odd for the few minutes I played it. Chris
  17. Take a look at the true temperament frets. Apparently that's what truly accurate frets should look like to be perfect at each fret, for each string, etc. Straight frets, fanned frets, we're all playing with errors here. Chris
  18. 3/32" could be cool and are the right size. Pretty pricey though. Chris
  19. I'll be interested to see how this goes as I have one of those bridges from a purchase when I first started building... will likely never use it... but curious to see how it holds up. Chris
  20. The former. Looking to say "here's a humbucker, hopefully in series, that captures more of the bass strings or more of the treble strings." Chris
  21. Or if Mac you (at least used to be able to) get Rhino for $99. Chris
  22. I came across this tutorial (and a billion others if you YouTube "faux opal") and thought that this could make a cheap inlay material for those wanting to go cheaper as well as maybe save some shell-based life forms? I'd likely approach it for inlay materials like this: 1- Do a .040"+ layer of pure clear in a square flat container 2- After that dries do another thinner clear layer with the flakes 3- Do a final layer of backing color The reason for the multiple layers is so that you can sand a radius into the board without going through the resin and into the flake material. Chris
  23. MAkes me not want to trust anyone else's drawings and have the bridge in my hands each time; which is annoying! Chris
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