tirapop

So, you want to build up the thickness of the body, at the neck with layers of wood? Think about the loads on the neck where it joins the body. There's a big prying load that wants to peel it off the body. For those built up laminations, that puts the glue line in tension... not a good thing. A glued surface is strongest in shear (the forces trying to slide the pieces along each other).

That's how Fender made this:

All you really need is a sharpened spoon, a broken hacksaw blade, and a handful of sand... you're all a bunch of spoiled momma's boys.

I get the opposite impression about fit. Unless you get the dimension exactly right, you only get contact on either the sides or the bottom. Neither of which will have as much contact area as a conventional bolt-on... if contact is the be all and end all of tone as Anderson suggests, you're losing something. It would take less precision to get a good fitting conventional neck. As far as hiding any gaps, it would be easier to cut shoulders on the base of the neck (like on some set necks) and overhang the fingerboard.

I like spalt. For some reason this stuff looks kinda like oriented strand board to me.

Richard Thompson plays a custom Ferrington. It has a P90 in the neck, a Strat middle, and a Broadcaster in the bridge. No tone, but, a volume pot for each p'up. Looks like it also has a Strat style 5 way... don't know how that's wired. My idea for a Tele: P90 neck, Tele bridge; reversed Tele controls (switch at the tail end); blender pot for the neck and bridge; a master volume pot. That master volume would be a push-pull pot. That switch would go to a reverse wound middle pickup, buried under the pickguard. Switch off, you get all the twang and growl of the single coils. Switch on, you get noise cancelling of a humbucker and a mellower sound... That's the theory, anyway.

Southpa, I know what you mean, "When the Levee Breaks" was buzzing in my head when I was listening to the news on the radio. I've also been running Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" through my head. He does a great solo version on a KCRW compilation disc.

thegarehanman, I've got to join in on the pile, with my engineer hat on. I've seen scholarly papers that show the string trajectory at antinodes and they move in ellipses, they move in figure 8s. Studies were done using stroboscopic lighting, to "freeze" the string to make its motion more clearly visible. Citing high school physics is condescending and naive. A string isn't a simple oscillator. What makes that cool sound we like is all the overtones. The string vibrates in it primary mode: nodes at either end of the string and the antinode (max displacement) in the middle. But the string also vibrates at the first harmonic, the secondary mode where the nodes are at each end and in the middle (12th fret on an open string) with antinode between the nodes. And so it goes with the second, third, fourth harmonic. And the string is alternating through all those vibrational modes. This isn't a simple pendulum. Pendula don't make stutter steps in their swing. Think about the end conditions. The strings are bent over a nut and a saddle. There's a moment that puts the outer part of the string in greater tension. The string isn't symmetrically supported. When the string vibrates, the tension on the string isn't uniform along the length of the string. As standing waves run up and down the string, coming in an out of phase with other standing waves, the string gets more slack in places and more taut in other places. What would keep the vibration in one plane? Inertia? Well, any little chunk of string you care to look at will be moving through wider and narrower displacements as different harmonics express themselves. As such, the inertia will be increasing and decreasing. There isn't enough inertia to ensure that the motion stays in that plane. It's like a bullet fired from a smooth bore. There isn't enough inertia to prevent bullet from tumbling in flight. What initiates the tumbling? Non-idealities and non-linear behavior that exist in the real world. Guitars are swimming in them: non-symmetric end conditions, strings that aren't completely uniform, plucking that introduces other load components, air molecules grabbing at the strings.

Drak, I thought you were going to stop deleting your posts. I can understand wanting to retract something, but, going WOD on your posts just messes up threads. Can't you just quote yourself and say "I take this back... shouldn't have said that... maybe I was too harsh here..."?

www.woodrat.com

Have you been to the GuitarNuts site? The Strat Lover's mod sounds interesting.

Taunton Press, "Power Saws and Planers: The Best of Fine Woodworking", has a reprint of an old article on building a plywood framed bandsaw.

Metalicaster

I-beams have flanges to increase their bending strength and to keep the compression flange from buckling. When you need strength/stiffness in the other direction, you go to an H-beam (wider flanges) or a box section. Swedish, like I said, beam web is there to carry shear loads. If you have pure bending, then yes, it's just there to separate the flanges. The squat carbon rods in examples 3 & 4 are probably short to maintain some edge distance to the back of the neck. No, they aren't the most efficient, for resisting string tension. But, the do resist twist. Twisting forces are smaller than the string tension forces. That's probably why the rods are set so far apart from each other, compared to example 2, to provide more leverage to resist twist. The truss rod is there to adjust for bowing from string tension. Yes, Wes, you need to use some care when finishing graphite... but, there are a lot of conventional guitar building materials that require as much caution. Check out that link on DIY carbon motorcycle parts. Much of the finishing is troweling on more epoxy to fill pinholes and build up a smooth surface. They're just sanding epoxy, not fibers. Depending on how you capped a neck with carbon, you could do it in such a way that you weren't removing any fiber.

If you dig back in the relic threads, I think Kiwi brown shoe polish is the preferred method for "aging" pickguards.

Martin Short on SNL!

Howdy GBT, howdy Wes, GBT, like I said a thru thickness laminate (perpendicular to the fretboard) isn't the most efficient way to stiffen the neck, but, it does stiffen the neck. Notice the orientation of the carbon rod (example 1) in this stewmac diagram: What thegarehanman proposes is to make that carbon rod taller (stiffer to string induced bending) and narrower (maybe less stiff, depending on the thickness). Remember increased height increase stiffness by its cube, much faster than you lose it by reducing thickness. If you have a flexible steel ruler, you can do the quick science experiment at home. Orient the ruler the way the laminate would be (perpendicular to the fretboard, parallel to the floor). Now, try bending it the way the strings would, making the corners on the edge furthest from you move together. Stiff, eh? You might be able to get the compression side to buckle (bow out of the way). But, laminated in wood, it wouldn't buckle and would be stiffer still. Wes, you can wet lay-up carbon to the back of a guitar neck pretty easily. A couple of carbon DIY fab links: making a graphite tube (makes wrapping a guitar neck look easy); making a graphite spar for a model airplane (notice for the wing bending loads they make the flanges graphite and use foam for the web); making motorcycle parts The idea isn't to make a stronger neck, just a stiffer (more stable) neck. I appreciate the guys who can take drawings and make them into hard parts. Analysts just check to make sure things are strong enough. You can blame designers for making thing difficult or impossible to build. thegarehanman, have you seen what the polished edge of a graphite laminate looks like? They aren't pretty, like the face of the laminate, that's shiny and looks like woven silk. The edges of the laminate look matte and you see the ends of fibers and lengths of fiber weaving over and under those fibers perpendicular to the edge. Thin glueline or not, they probably won't enhance the appearance of the neck, when you take a close look.

Hey Wes, I make my living as a structural analyst. I get to say how big the I-beams are. When you stand on a I-beam, that's supported on it's ends or cantilevered, your weight puts a perpendicular load on the beam. It's called the shear load. That load is carried in the web of the I-beam. Your weight also will put a bending load on the beam, called the bending moment. The bending load puts a compression load on the top of the beam and a tension load on the bottom. Picture the beam sagging. The length of the curve on the top of the beam is shorter than the length of the curve on the bottom. The top is getting squished and the bottom stretched. The transition from squished to stretched is continuous through the height of the beam and somewhere in the middle of the beam, it's neither squished nor stretched. So, at the top and the bottom of the beam, that material is getting stretched/squished the most. Adding more material there resists those stretching/squishing loads. That makes the beam stiffer. Think about a truss bridge. There's a lot of air where the web of an equivalent I-beam would be. The beams at the top and bottom of the truss are doing most of the work in resisting the bending moment from vehicles crossing the bridge. In a guitar neck, there's no shear load. The bending moment comes from string tension. The strings are reacted by compression in the neck, along its length, and a bending moment. The most efficient use of graphite to stiffen a neck would be to put it on the surfaces that are getting stretched/squished the most. A layer under the fretboard and a layer on the back of the neck would be stiffer than equal amounts of carbon in a carbon rod or a through thickness laminate.

GBT, Laminating the composite perpendicular to the fingerboard would add stiffness to the neck, resisting string tension. It's not the most efficient way to add stiffness, but, it does. To resist bending, you want as much material on the top and bottom as you can (think of an I-beam). The taller the beam is, the stiffer it is. For a rectangle, the area moment of inertia (a measure of geometric stiffness) is width X (height cubed)/12. You can see that adding height is more efficient than adding width to increasing stiffness. The material in the middle doesn't add much to the stiffness. If the height were one, eighty percent of the height (0.8) would add only half (0.8^3 = .512) of the total stiffness. Again, that's why I-beams look like I-beams. If the laminations are through the thickness of the neck, taller than what a precured carbon reinforcing rod is, it can be made as stiff or stiffer than the rod.

I can see the appeal of a guitar that appears to be vintage. As far as the economics, if it's cheaper a real vintage guitar then it makes sense. But, guitars are all about fashion, right? When the Stones go out on tour, Keith Richards was plays a relic-ed Tele. They're disposable and replaceable, and spares vintage guitars from damage and theft. So, if a fan wants to own the same guitar Keith does... sure why not?

Iron veneering as seen in Fine Woodworking Magazine. So, you were trying to veneer to separate pieces of veneer to a body? I don't know if veneer tape would work with the iron, to hold the pieces together.

After you boil your jacket, it might not have the same nice looking worn finish. Gluing it to a thin pickguard is probably your best option. Perspiration and body heat might undo any stiffening you've boiled and baked into the leather, letting it pucker or sag in spots.

Just throwing this out there... not speaking from experience. Some people who make composite parts (fiberglass, graphite), will speed up the cure with heat by putting the part in black plastic (bag or sheet) and leaving it in the sun, tossing it up on the roof. It's summer in the Northern hemisphere and dogs die in hot cars. So, make a box (maybe folded up out of scavenged sheet metal), paint it barbecue flat black, make vents for the volatiles to escape, cover the vent holes with furnace filter material to keep bugs and dust out. Cheap. Too low tech?

I've got "The Fender Stratocaster" book by A.J. Duchossoir. He says that up until '82, the contours were marked on the body from a pattern, rough bandsawed to shape (following the line), and then smooth on a large belt sander. No CNC, no fancy tooling, in the hands of factory workers. He also says in the '70s, some workers didn't even trace the patterns. In general, '50s Strats had deeper contours. '60s Strats tend to have shorter back countours. The early CBS Strats had much shorter back contours. After the mid-'70s the contours were "drastically reduced as to become quite faint compared to the original 1950's configuration." There are pictures in the book, sampling contours from the '50s to the '80s. There's also a pic of the blueprint for the '62 Vintage reissue. You can also start googling Strat pics and see what you like.

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