unclej

oil finishes are definitely my favorite. i use them on my guitars, on my sculptures and on some of the wood jewelry that i make. i'm a big believer that wood should be seen and felt in as close to it's natural state as possible. several years ago i read an article in a wood turning magazine about an old world furniture finish that could be applied easily on a piece while it was still chucked up to the lathe. it's a homemade concoction containing equal parts of linseed oil, varnish and turpentine. you mix it up in a seperate container and let it sit over night. flood the piece you're finishing and let it sit for fifteen minutes or so then wipe clean. let it set for a few hours and repeat. once you've achieved a smooth, consistent finish let it cure for a couple of days. generally speaking when you can't smell the turpentine any more it's cured. then i apply a couple of coats of minwax hardwood floor paste wax and buff. done deal. over the years i've experimented with other formulas. my ex-business partner makes custom short scale basses for a living now and uses equal parts of poly, linseed oil and paint thinner. works just as well and seems to cure a bit faster in my opinion using poly or varnish in your brew gives you a harder finish than using tung oil by itself. the turpentine or thinner of course thins the mixture and allows it to sink deeper into the wood and cures from the inside out instead of just sitting on the top. if the finish starts to look a little dull you just apply a new coat of wax and you're good to go. like the old commercial said, "try it..you'll like it."

it does sound like the brushes have worn out or perhaps broken. that would explain the rattling sound. you can replace them for two or three dollars and it's easy to do.

i use aluminum nuts on the lap steels that i make and have made them for raising the strings on acoustics to be used for dobro type playing. i honestly can't hear any tonal difference in them and any other material that i've used.

is that "my very first" as in you built it? if so you're my hero at least for today. question for those of you turning your own knobs...where are you getting your inserts to make them fit over the pot shafts? turning them wouldn't be a problem but making them with a set screw for solid shafts seems like a bit of a problem so i'm assuming that you're using split shafts and friction inserts,

this method depends on your being able to move your rip fence to either side of your blade and having enough room on the left side to run one of your pieces through. it also depends on your having a straight edge on the outside of each piece so that it will run true on the fence. 1) tilt your blade about two/three degrees off of straight up so that you're cutting a slight angle. 2) set your fence on the right of the blade. 3) set it so that when you're running the wood through it's just taking a quarter of an inch or less off. 4) run the right hand piece of wood through the saw so that it's oriented with the top surface facing up and the edge that will be at the neck pointing away from you. it's important that the top surface is up so that if there is any slight tear out or burring due to the cut it will be on the inside of the guitar. 5) move your fence to the left side of the blade setting it so that it cuts a small amount off of the right hand side of the left hand piece of wood. run that piece through oriented the same way as the right...top surface facing up and the neck edge pointing away from you. if your blade is sharp you now have two mating edges that basically overlap each other and the resulting seam is almost invisible. you have to take care when clamping not to put too much side to side pressure on the wood. the right hand cut wants to act as a ramp and the left had piece will want to slide up it. by cutting this way you've also created a slightly larger glueing surface than with a ninety degree cut which theoretically should make the joint stronger. like anything else you'll want to try this setup on a couple of small pieces of scrap wood and see if it works for you.

i've been turning for about ten years now and i will tell you that it can become addictive. i'm sure jester will agree that once that wood starts spinning and you get into the zone the time goes by without you ever knowing it. that being said take some time and do some studying about how to safely turn, how to sharpen your tools, how to SAFELY turn, how to maintain your lathe and how to safely turn. be just a little bit afraid of it at first. wood spinning at the rpms that a lathe can create can hurt you. this is an extreme example but i had a friend who actually lost his life turning. he was turning huge rough form bowls on a custom made lathe..bowls made from 2-300 lb. stumps with gouges that were 4-5' long. a 75lb. chunk of one of them flew off and through his safety cage and nearly decapitated him. but even a lathe the size of your can hurt you. ok, enough of that. go to www.woodturnerscatalog.com you'll find some great books ranging from beginning turning to very advanced stuff. go to the "projects" section and you'll find a wide variety of supplies for simple, easy to turn projects. check out the confetti lights, the oil lamp inserts and the potpourri lids. these are fairly simple projects and with christmas coming up you can make something for everyone on your list. they'll be thrilled the first couple of years but after that they begin to think you're just being cheap. anyway, i hope you really enjoy the learning process. it's a great past time and when you get your skills in line a great way to make a little extra money. good luck j

do you own a table saw? if you do i'll tell you about a simple cutting method that insures an almost invisable joint.

i've run into this many times..someone with a tube type or solid output jack on their guitar is cutting out when the cord moves. in most cases i just replace it but today i had one come in that was hard wired into a small box pre-amp and i was out of replacements anyway. the contacts had lost tension so i took one of my wire picks, one with a 45 degree angle on the end and ground it down so that it was short enough to fit into the barrell and got the side contacts out enough to make a big difference but not perfect. so my question is do any of you have any secrets about this repair that you'd care to share with me? inquiring minds want to know.

i use a good bit of red cedar in my sculpting and it's a pretty soft wood. i'd be just a bit worried about the tonal qualities of it though the main parts of your guitar would be mounted to your cherry wood if you're doing a neck through. if the tone turns out a bit soft or muddy you should be able to fix it with different pups. it should be visually striking so i'd say go for it and let us know how it turns out. good luck with your project.

hot rails work pretty much like any other pickup. go to the home page here, click on tutorials, go to electronics and then pickups or wiring diagrams...i can't remember which right now. there's a color code chart for a lot of major manufacturers..pick out yours and go to town. good luck.

if you have a compressor just blow it out. if not take a paint brush and brush it out. some 0000 steel wool might remove it or get a tack cloth from your local hardware store and rub it down with that. unless it's bonded somehow to the wood it shouldn't be too hard to remove. good luck with your project.

you might go to dimarzio's site and check out their specs for their pups that will fit your guitar. they're very informative about outputs, tonal qualities, etc. they may even have short sound clips.. good luck with your project.

for a one time job like that i'd buy the proper sized..non-carbide router bit and then clamp a straight edge to the body blank for the outside edge of the router base to run along. one careful pass and you're done.

i do a lot of sculpting with oak and even though your wood is much lighter.. if you take the figure out of it the grain is consistant with the live oaks and spanish oaks that grow wild around here.

ok, i know that i'm old school and stupid so i don't often use a mask and out of all of the woods that i work with walnut is probably the one that irritates my sinuses the most. at that it's not terrible..just stops me up a bit but if your lady has asthma it really might iritate her.

matt..i've used walnut in several guitars and love it. it's a great wood to work with..cuts and sands nicely and even though i almost always use an oil finish i don't know anything that would keep it from taking a poly or lacquer finish just as well. as for sound..i love it. in my last build i put in a humbucker/single coil/humbucker. the humbuckers were a dimarzio paf fred and paf jo and the single coil was a fairly high output dimarzio. i was going for a blues/jazz sound and nailed it. as a dense wood walnut is great for sustain and if you put in some high output pups you should get a screamin' bright metal sound..assuming you like that sort of lthing. i personally think you're gonna love it. good luck with your project unclej

thanks for a very informative answer! i suspect it was the moisture in the sawdust as opposed to the bone. the bone has been inside my shop for several years and the sawdust was fresh. and i did "dump" a bunch in at one time. again, thanks.

ok, not a guitar question but i know a lot of you use ca glue for a lot of applications..inlay, glueing purfling, etc. and i have too..lots of it. and i've never had this happen before and am curious as to what caused it. i make a lot of wood items for sale from jewelry to oil lamps. today i was at my shop and my eye landed on a big ole cow leg bone that i had been saving for some damn reason for the last few years. i cut one end off of it and liked the way it looked shape wise so i cut a 1/4" maybe 3/8" slice. i decided to fill the hole in the center with a variety of sawdust and solidify it with ca glue and then sand it down and see what it looked like. i placed it on a piece of waxed paper and filled it then saturated it with glue. within seconds it started smoking..not a lot but enough to notice. when i picked it up and felt the back and it was warm. i've experienced this warming with epoxies using a catalyst but never with ca glue before. anyone got an idea of what the reaction was or more specifically what caused it? thanks

rather than designing a whole new guitar and then having to build it you might take a hint from the lowly banjo. if you have a beater acoustic laying around that you wouldn't mind a couple of holes in make a smaller arm rest, get an L-bracket from your local hardware store and mount it from the side of the guitar. i imagine that a rest that was just a couple of inches wide and 8 to9 10 inches long would do the job nicely. then if it gives you the results that you're looking for you can build a guitar from scratch like the one in your drawing..pattent it, get filthy rich and we can all say we knew you when.

there are almost too many combinations..on my last build i wired a mini toggle on/off/on for each pup. the neck features humbucker/off/single coil. the bridge is standard humbucker/off/reverse polarity and the single coil features on/off/out of phase with whatever else is on. i think mathmatically that's 27 settings. the truth is that for a performance guitar it's almost too much. as a studio guitar i can make this one sound like almost anything on the market. if i had used on/on/on switches my brain probably would have exploded.

if you decide to use inserts check with your local hardware store first. i make my own "bridge doctors" for customers that have acoustics bellying up and use the same type of insert that you're talking about. they're relatively cheap, come in a lot of sizes and you save the shipping costs.

do any of you gentlemen happen to own a heritage guitar built in the last 5-6 years? if you do i'm in need of a couple of measurements from the headstock. first the width of the nut..next to length of the headstock from the point on top in the middle to the nut and lastly the width of the headstock from the left and right points on the top of it. if noone has one i'll call heritage..just thought i'd ask. thanks unclej

and putting them in backwards won't just fry the cap..it can and will cause them to explode sending flaming schrapnel all over your work bench and will also burn pretty good sized holes in your favorite hawaiian shirt..at least that's what i've heard.

if there's a set rule for this i've never seen it. first.. understand that bending a fret before you seat ii is just so that the ends of the fret seat first and thus won't pop free when you seat the middle. if you go with that then any radius that allows the ends to seat first is ok. i bend all of mine by hand with a plyer that stewmac sells for that purpose so none of them are exactly the same and they really don't need to be. just bend one a bit and install it..you'll get the feel for it fairly quickly.

with the understanding that each piece of wood within a species can sound different i have to disagree with the "good for a bassy sound" assesment. this was my third solid body walnut guitar... CASCADE and it's a great sounding, very versatile instrument. i contribute that to the pickups as well as the wood. i wouldn't call walnut a neutral wood..it seems to me that it can be a bit on the bright side and it definitely contributes to good sustain. this particular guitar has a dimarzio paf joe and a paf fred and a pretty hot single coil that i can't remember at the moment. it goes from very jazzy/bluesy to country twang to rock with the flip of a toggle. aside from the tonal qualities you're gonna love working with it. cuts well and sands even better. not a great deal of worry about tearout while routing. i've used an oil finish on all of mine and it accepts it very well. i just cut out a body blank from my last piece of a 10' plank that i bought and am looking forward to working with it again. good luck on your project.