jer7440

Alder and ash are more typical strat materials.

Thank you very much! Been wondering about that for a while

This may be a stupid question , but, Does aanj actually stand for something? Something something neck joint maybe?

Do you plan to carve that thing?

They both look the same as mine which wasn't hardened steel and drilled out fine with normal drill bits.

That's what I thought. I think they leave them soft just so you can modify to fit your needs. Even plain old soft cold rolled steel would easily hold up to the small amount of pressure that press can create.

If you are creating your own arbor as Jay5 did, you could just make it the appropriate size and shape to fit the HF press. And, being a cheap import job, I would be suprisied if that arbor is hardened.

Jay5,

You're the man. It's like you've been reading my mind. I've been just looking through the stewmac catalog and saying to my self " I can make that way cheaper". Thanks for doing the homework and posting your excellent results.

Thats cool man! Alot of things stewmac has can be made quite easily by the budget minded luthier. If you check at like harbor frieght or some other discount tool places, you can find the little press that stewmac sells for about $30.

Here's a link for anyone interested

small press

I think stewmac wants about $90 just for the press. The press on the stewmac site looks about identical to the harbor freight one.

Asm- Actually that is a Haas VF-3.

The material is MDF, probably not an ideal tone wood but good enough for my prototype ( I didn't want to blow $50 on mahogany until I knew what to expect).

In these pics that has been lightly sanded with 150 or 180 grit paper. When it is finally sanded to my liking it's off to some people I know for a TOP SECRET experimental finish.

Yeah I have a legal copy of Mastercam for work, so that works out nicely. But solidworks sure does look interesting....

Kevan- I'd love to see what you come up with, knurled frets & all.

My bad, Godin must have edited that out before I read the setchs' reply

Shame it's a full inch too narrow for a Les Paul style guitar... That's why the first example is such a rarity

?

That piece is 14 inches wide. The board I cut my prototype LP out of was only 13.5". It was a pinch but it fit.

I just don't know how a highley figured piece of maple will respond to the 3D surface process.

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That's how PRS does it.

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Then I should be golden

Thanks BigD and Johnsilver,

I hope to try cutting some real wood soon. My biggest concern is tear out. I just don't know how a highley figured piece of maple will respond to the 3D surface process.

Hey guys,

Here is part of a neck that I did in Mastercam solids.

I know this screen shot sucks, but its all I have right now.

When I made this I started with these dimensions: Width and thickness at the nut and width and thickness at the 12th fret. Using these numbers and the appropriate dxf scale template I created wire frame at the nut and the 12th fret and then used a loft function to extrude the "playing part" of the neck.

Then I took the 2D outline of my head stock and placed it at the end of the neck extrusion. I rotated the 2d geometry to the appropriate headstock angle (17 deg), and extruded that outline for the headstock thickness.

Now the transition between the 2 took me forever. Mastercam wouldn't let me just do a variable radius fillet, it just kept puking on me. So, I ended up having to create 2D geometry in the correct 3d space to "cut " what I wanted. I also had to create a curve that I wanted my "cutting tool" to follow. This turned into alot of trial and error until I came up with something I thought was good enough. I could sand it the rest of the way.

Would this have been easier in SW? What about creating the carved top? Would you have to create the "negative geometry", or does SW have some sort of freehand kind of thing?

Great thread by the way!

Looks pretty cool but most of your pics don't work. Would love to see some more details.

Holy crap that's nice. Sucks to not have any cash flow when things like that come along.

How does this guy sell so cheap? Other sellers on the bay would have been over $200 for a piece like that.

Kevan,

Could you expound a little on how you create things in solidworks? I have mastercam, and that has a primative solid modeler in it, but it is tedious to use. I tried to use it to create the LP surface in my avatar, but it just couldn't do it. I ended up having to create it all out of individual surfaces. It took way too long.

How would you do something like and LP top in solid works? Do you have to create a bunch of geometry in 3d space, and use that like cutting tools (thats kind of what I had to do in MC.)?

Any extra info you could give would be great.

Mushy, If you are looking to CNC just 2D shapes, any cad program that will output a dxf file will get you where you need to go.

It says 500 but it is probably millimeters not inches, 500mm is about 19 5/8 inches.

The body blank (mahogany part) needs to be about 14"(355mm)wide x 18"(457mm)tall x 1 1/2"(38mm) thick. The maple cap is typically 3/4'(19mm) thick. Your neck will depend on whether or not you cut the neck out of a solid piece of wood or if you use a scarf joint for the headstock angle, and laminate for the heel thickness.

Very nice. Can you give us any details on how it will be painted? Also I wondered how you like that bridge?

I finally got some better pics Man do I suck at photography Any way check it out I think these show the carve of the top a little better.

guitar top1

guitar top2

And here is one with my neck blank that I just haven't had time to cut yet

with neck

Seems like it should work. As long as you do your measurment and set up on a good level surface you should be fine.

Looks good, I like your headstock design.

My only problem would be no bandsaw to resaw with