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I've heard they can be slow and unresponsive sometimes. I use Bedlam Creations and am very happy. Chris

Didn't read the whole thread so I hope I'm answering correctly but: Yes you can bend a spalted maple top... however I'm a little weary of the idea since it seems like you already flooded it with CA. I'm not sure how that will affect bending. That said, regardless of whether you have a vacuum bag or not you will have to bend the top to almost perfectly match the arm contour before hand. The bag will only hold it down for gluing. The bag pressure will not bend it for you; period. I do my bends in, preferably, 1/8" tops that I I clamp to the body, then I get a heat blanket and place it over a wetted section to be bent. When it starts to give with hand pressure I will bring in some squeeze clamps. I also make sure to support the top-most flat section with a block all along that spot the bend starts; you don't want it putting in some bend above where it should. Best, Chris

You'd have loved my 30th bday party last month then. Had a full keg of easy-drinking Goose Island 312 for "the crowd" and a 1/6th keg (about 60 beers) of Le Chouffe in the "back room" for the VIPs hahahaha. Chris

I feel ya @demonx. I was playing with inlays yesterday... Cut a piece out of some Pickguard material and it dropped right into a cavity of the exact same size in ash. Then I went to go do some real inlay... I just the pieces out full size and then cut out the pockets with incrementally smaller and smaller 'versions' of a 1/16" bit. By that I mean everything was cut with a true 1/16" bit, but I would set up the CAM to think it was 1 thou smaller, then 2, etc. so the bit would cut a larger pocket. Ended up needing to tell the machine the bit was 10 thou smaller than it is before the pieces would go into their pockets in wedge!!!! 10 thou! It was 0 thou in ash.. Never would have seen a lot of this stuff coming before I got in there and started testing. Chris

I'll play ball again this month. Given that I've finished a lot of guitars the past little bit it doesn't seem fair to throw in one every month for the next 6 months. So this month I present for your consideration two interpretations of my Model2J design; a vintage inspired version and a thinline. Specs both feature: Hipshot open-back locking tuner Fender 2 3/16" spread adjustable mustang bridges and USA jazzmaster tremolos 1 11/16" bone nuts Schaller style locking strap buttons 25.5" scale set neck 1 meg volume, 1 meg ton, 3-way selector, and traditionally wired rhythm circuit in the upper bout Mid-60s Styled M2J Specs: Alder body with tobacco sunburst finish Age tinted maple neck with Amazon rosewood fretboard and white binding and dots Amazon rosewood headplate and backstrap Tortoise shell pickguard Loureiro jazzmaster vintage-wind pickups M2J Thinline Specs: Semi-hollow (center block) swamp ash body with Mary Kay white finish Curly maple neck with ebony board and block MOP inlays Mary Kay white headstock White/B/W thinline styled pickguard with "stealth installed" 3-way selector switch Curtis Novak widerange humbuckers in jazzmaster pickup housings Hope you enjoy! More details and pictures at http://raygunengineering.com/Galleries Chris

What's "reasonable" in the UK? I have another set of electronics I have no idea when I'd use that I might be willing to let go @Andyjr1515. Chris

I second the "pearloid pattern" question. There's no way you're getting away with not doing a tutorial on that! Chris

Sorry for the slow responses... life has been busy. I ran these tests awhile ago but am just now getting around to posting them up. In the below when I use the term "offset" I mean the line, in all directions, was moved inward or outward. Therefore, the width of a neck, or pocket, would be double the offset amount. I cut 3 necks: One full sized neck out of pine 2x4 to exact width, no "final pass" One .010" undersized offset pine neck, no "final pass" One full sized maple neck milled .010" offset oversized and then finalized to exact width in one final full-depth pass I then took some scrap ash and cut the following routes: .010" offset undersized : Nothing fit this pocket Enlarged to a full-width pocket in a single finishing pass: Only the under-sized pine neck fit Enlarged to a .010" offset oversized pocket in a single finishing pass: The maple neck fits in and I can slip two thicknesses of standard weight paper in next to it The undersized pine neck fits, but has TONS of slop and wobble as expected. 4 thicknesses of standard weight paper seems to be the slop amount here The standard sized pine neck also fits decently well, only 1 thickness of paper will slip in there I mic'd the paper at .0035" thick. This leads me to, I believe, the following answers: The "final pass" concept leads to a better fit, but it's not perfect still. Since the maple neck and final pocket both had finishing passes and can still fit 2 paper thicknesses... This means, to me, on each side of the next I left .010" extra and can fit a .0035" paper in. So .0065 of over-tightness/undercutting. This undercutting is shared by two parts, so a total of .00325" per cut. To me 3.25" thousandths seems like a fairly decent amount of undercutting?! If anything I'd expect OVER-cutting since this is a LONG (read 2" cutting length) 1/4 endmill. I'd have expected some deflection there. This is especially annoying as the Shopbot desktop claims a resolution of .25" thousandths, a whole 3 thou better than I'm apparently getting. Thoughts? Chris Note: This was an extremely interesting read. Apparently climb cuts (what I've been using almost exclusively) are prone to undercutting. Meanwhile, conventional passes do the opposite, the pull the bit in an over-cut: http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/showthread.php?22362-Parts-0-050-quot-to-big-in-X-and-Y&highlight=undersized

I believe you are correct Scott. I too in my head remember reading many places that flatsawn is more stable and stiff than quartersawn... IN MAPLE. That's the kicker. I believe this is a specific quality of maple's, not a generality. Chris

I use that exact stuff (their bronze and their copper) for patina'd finishes. I just tested some for continuity... nothing. It does not appear to be conductive enough. That said, this is their "type B" formula. Perhaps you'd have better luck with the "type C" that has higher metal content? However, I wouldn't hold my breath, personally. Chris

Rockin' builds so far! I really need to get to my headless idea soon too! Will be really interested to hear more about these Mera headless pieces. Out of curiosity. What size offset did you find worked well for the male vs. female parts of the inlay? Chris

Hmmmm... This is news to me. Guess I'll have to give this a go! Chris

There is no light finishing path. But I've tried this with both actual wood, and 1/8" Luan ply and get the same result. Something tells me faux little pockets and necks in 1/8" Luan don't need a final finishing path. Also, if CNCs require that... why isn't that the standard method of cutting as far as programs are concerned. That seems like I'd have to run two tool paths (PITA); one to cut the pocket, another at full depth with an offset vector. Chris

No, I have not reached out yet. However, this isn't slop; it's TOO tight. Also, I bought both the machine and bit kit (although the kit was unopened) used... So it's a little different. i have no mic'd the end mills, which I should probably do. Although admittedly I'm not 100% how to do that on something that isn't a solid circle shape and still get accuracy to the thou. Chris

Full disclosure, I finished this awhile ago... It just took me forever to get around to taking the glamor shots. The Variax circuitry has always intrigued me and I finally got around to building a guitar with it. This instrument is the ultimate studio beast! The classical T-style woods and electronics give the player access to one of the most recorded guitar sounds of all time. Throw that together with the ability to dial in, on an independent circuit and output, anything from a Les Paul to a Dobro or SItar and the possibilities are endless. Last but not least the comfort of the neck can't be beat. I've always loved the feeling of the Fender Tele Plus' neck and have reproduced that carve here to make playing this guitar a delight. Neck: Wood: Lightly figured hard maple Fretboard: Bocote Scale: 25.5" Radius: 10" Nut Width: 1 11/16" Carve: Matches a Fender Tele Plus Headstock: Standard 3-a-side in ebony with maple wings Inlays: Black 1/4" dots and brass surrounded black side dots Tuners: Hipshot open-back locking Body: Wood: Alder Pickguard: Pearloid Width: 13" Bridge: Gotoh modern with ghost saddles Finish: Seafoam green satin nitro Electronics: In-house made T-style pickups with standard telecaster volume/tone/3-way. The instrument also features a completely isolated Variax circuit with independent output that runs on phantom power. Best, Chris

So this is weird. I did some tests with both the 1/4" endmill I got with the Shopbot starter pack, as well as one I bought elsewhere. The shopbot bit is definitely not as exacting as the other bit... pretty disappointing since they sell that as a bit kit to help folks starting out... However, even with the other bit I can't mill the neck and pocket to be exact matches! I'm finding... and yes I realize this is going to sound huge cause I think it sounds huge... that a .010" offset (aka: .020" total difference in neck width compared to pocket width) gets me a tight fit. In my head this sounds like insane amounts of slop for a CNC machine... but the odd part is it's not slop, it's the "exact milling" is TOO tight!? Am I missing something here or do other folks experience this too? Chris

I'm fine with a soak/boil for wood that isn't wide. IMO, and take this with a grain of salt cause I haven't tried it, I'd be worried about cupping on wider pieces like acoustic sides, etc. Plus, I've never had any issue with just wetting it and bending (pipe or bender) so why bother with the boil/soak method at all? Best, Chris

Sorry, no time to read this whole thing but I BELIEVE I get the gist of it. I actually have a video on wood binding. I wouldn't really "steam" things. I'd be more inclined to buy a piece of steel pipe with a cap on the end, throw a BBQ charcoal lighter into the non-capped end, wait til water boils off it when dropped on it, and bend as per usual (see video). Obviously, clamp that hot pipe in a metal vise! Best, Chris PS: SOrry if I got what ya'll were asking for wrong in my quick glimpse. Running out the door!

That's what my original thought was @MiKro, but the index holes were purposefully placed equidistant from the center line so as to avoid that issue. I'm going to re-try it here again soon... but right now I'm thinking it was probably some user error or something... maybe something I did to set the XY zero off or something. As for the cutter... it's a brand new cutter from the Shopbot folks' starter pack. That'd be pretty BS if they send out off-sized cutters to new users in their starter pack (which is supposed to help folks by being easy!) Chris

Well I'm onto testing out neck cuts. So far I'm really happy with my results! The one thing I'm not happy with is their fit into the neck pocket. Neither neck, despite being from the same drawings I'm 99% sure, will fit in the pocket I milled into that body!? One neck is full size exactly, one neck I undersized by .010" to see if that helped. It didn't. Granted, this is the same body that had the weirdness where it didn't line up 100% after "the flip over." But what still strikes me as weird there is that the pocket was milled in one operation... I can't see how the issues I had with the sides matching up perfectly could possibly cause that. I guess tomorrow I'll mill a bunch of pockets and see if that changes things? Best, Chris

Loving the headless design! I need to find some time one day to work on my headless idea Chris

Prostheta, read the bit under the pictures. I left 1/4" in the center of the body that I'll route off by hand later. That kept it attached firmly to the rest of the blank while milling which is where the locator pins were. The misalign is not what you're seeing in the last pic. You're seeing that 1/4" left area that I just band sawed to detach from the rim once done CNCing. Chris

Yay! More tests! Building a fully functional guitar from cheaper materials will be the true test of my knowledge IMO. I did this last night. The only issue is my cuts from the back were slightly off... Nothing I can't salvage and save the build from... But before real builds happen I need to figure out why! Something up with my index pegs? Zeroing of the Y? Who knows. The nub you're seeing at the edge isn't the off-cut from flipping, it's the 1/4" I left that held the body to the blank which was bolted down. That'll get routed off in one quick pass. Chris

I can also now verify that the quality works just fine with a .063" channel and .060 binding. So the width of the channel can accommodate a little play without detriment to the quality. Chris

Well first let's get the CAD/CAM difference out of the way. Yes, the drawing solutions within CAM softwares are usually much more simplistic and easy to use. However, that's cause they're extremely limited! I would never even dream of trying to design something as complicated as a carved top within a CAM package. Not in a million years. There's a lot to learn with Rhino on youtube. For some reason this seems to be the program a lot of guitar builders use for CAD and it also has worked well for me. I can't comment on other programs as I liked Rhino from day one and have stuck with it. As for modeling an LP top, here's generally how I would start out: 1- Draw my guitar outline shape 2- Figure out where I want the "highest points" of my carve (usually under the bridge) and draw a line points up the Z axis there equal to the height I want my carve. 3- Draw some curves from the top of the line from #2 to the far edges of your upper and lower bouts. 4- Do that same thing from the top of the line in #2 to the center-line-end of your body 5- And to the centerline-end at the neck 6- Play with the "rail revolve" feature using the line from #2 as your center of rotation, your guitar outline as the rail, and your curves you drew in #3 and #4 as your profile curves. 7- Repeat steps #3 and #4 (but this time connecting to the line you drew in #5) somewhere around the waist area. 8- Use the outline curve and the curve from #5 to do a Sweep-2-Rails function using the curves from steps #3 and #7. Once you get that far you should have a pretty decent idea as to how to various functions needed to do a carved top model in Rhino work. Obviously there are a TON of ways to achieve this... that's just how I've done mine. Hope that helps, Chris