Batfink

Great news Kevan, someone mentioned it on the Hamer fan club board and searching for it brought me to Project guitar some 18 months ago ! I'll start hassling the Alparts UK post haste...... Jem.

I think most people recognise Melvyn Hiscock's "build your own electric guitar" as pretty well required reading. Jem

Gregp, much as i hate to recommend them if you're going to be inlaying more than just one fingerboard i'd invest in one of Stewmacs router bases, avoid the Dremel one it's crap ! Oh, and as for the score line i suppose i go down around about .75 mm, it's your guide line so it's best not to lose it half way through Jem.

Ciao Gian, I will attempt answer your question with my limited experience I will agree that to inlay to such a depth (3.8mm) is deeper than i'd like to myself. Consider most pearl used in inlay is between 1 and 1.6mm. If you have a scrap piece of the pearloid i would try to sand it down to around say 2mm (obviously don't go too thin or you could sand through the pearloid when you radius) and see how it looks, this is a much more manageable depth, and depending on how the material is it may be best to sand from the back of the piece so there is minimal sanding of the face of the perloid when you radius the board. As for the purpleheart stem. You could thickness down to 3mm before you start or you could even lay it as it is and near level this before you inlay the perloid and start to radius. As for cutting out the stem i have no previous experience as i've never inlayed wood only pearl, stone and metals which i cut to fit between the fret slots using the frets to cover the joint. I would say it would probably be easier to inlay it as a number of pieces rather than one whole piece purely as it will be easier to handle as shorter pieces and also it will be easier to remedy if your cavity is slightly off in places. Hope this helps, Jem.

must be an english thing cos I've NEVER heard that before. News to me too over here Paua i order and Paua i get ! Jem

Bernie Rico was an inspired luthier and to my mind was at the forefront of late 70's early 80's design, lets face it, at the time there was very little else going on. The fact that the BC Rich name has found it's way onto imported guitars is no worse than anyone else doing it and as for design, well again lets face it, you'll either love 'em or hate 'em, they're not like a poncy PRS where you could play anything from a jazz gig to a thrash metal gig and no one would blink an eye at. Jem Oh, just to add: Ibanez...I really love the original Korina Iceman...that could have been a classic design if it hadn't been taken over by the KISS army One of the few guitars i wish i hadn't sold, especially now when i realise how rare it was...DOH !

Oh, Fretware ! Jem

Craig, got a mail from JoAnn on friday. Thanks, Jem.

Thanks Craig, I'll be persistant, lets face it we ALL need business Jem

From the 'Abalone from Ebay' thread... I do have one problem and that's recon stone. Masecraft only sell bloody great blocks of it (well, they seem massive for an amatuer like me) and Rescue Pearl don't seem to want to sell to as they don't reply to my mails. Anyone else i can try...Craig, help ! Help would be appreciated as buying it in the UK works out to around $32 / oz Jem.

Theres also Luthier Suppliers (David Dykes..Sussex) and North Higham Sawmills in Norwich. You can get most things over here BUT you do have to look pretty damned hard compared to the US. Jem.

technically you need a neck angle no matter what bridge your using, News to me. Jem

Not that i'm any great expert but inlay's and materials from Taiwan and the surrounding are in no way as thick and uniform as we in the west have come to expect. If you look at the history of inlay there seems to be two very different school's of practice between the west and the east and this includes not only the methods but also the materials and techniques employed. As far as Ebay goes i'd avoid anyone who is from Asia, not because they are trying to rip people off, which i don't think they're intentionally trying to do, but what they sell is not what we expect. Over the past couple of years since i started dabbling in inlay i've brought the vast majority of slab from MOP Supplies, Small Wonder and David Dykes and never really had any major headaches with any of them although each has thier pro's and con's. Jem. PS: I do have one problem and that's recon stone. Masecraft only sell bloody great blocks of it (well, they seem massive for an amatuer like me) and Rescue Pearl don't seem to want to sell to as they don't reply to my mails. Anyone else i can try...Craig, help !

Masecraft is, to my limited knowledge, one of the biggest supplier of recon stone for inlay but, again as far as i know, they only sell by the block not slab so you'd have to have a way of cutting it. If you look at the suppliers links i'm sure someone there sells by the slab. Jem.

Misguided or what !!! I've used nothing but Ernie Ball's since i started playing in 1981 and 99% of my playing since '87 has been with either OFR or Schaller Floyd equiped guitars. It's quite scary that pillocks like that can make such absurd statements over the internet and get away with it. Jem.

A nicely balanced inlay as usual Craig. I'm with you on recon stone though, i've only recently started to use it and the first cuts were "whee, this stuff cuts easy followed by.....bugger, this stuff sometimes cuts too easy" Jem

Total fretboard replacement ! Jem

It's on here somewhere or one of the links off of it. http://vintageibanez.tripod.com/iceman.html Jem

Craft Supplies coaurse is making from a kit. Totness are the mainly recognised, also check out Bailey's in Scotland.

What Kahler do you have is the first question ??? If it's a cam operated one then the tremsetter will be of no use but if your Kahler is the later Floyd rip off (Spyder / Flyer etc) then you can use the tremsetter. If you can't tune the thing to E (440hz) then the springs need to be looked at as they're putting up too much resistance for the gauge of string and the overall set up of the guitar. If it's a Floyd then release the tension of the claw screws a turn or so and see if it's any better, try again and again and again.......... Also take into account what gauge strings you're using as most Floyd type's don't like 8's very much at all, try 9's or a hybrid set of 10's. If it's a cam operated Kahler Pro then the tension can be adjusted via an allen key on the side of the unit and again try a turn, probably anticlockwise but don't quote me as i haven't played one since the 80's, and see how the tension settles. Jem.

Depending on what you're building, if it needs a head angle why not scarf joint it ? Jem

Or David Dykes (Luthier Supplies) 01435 812315 Jem

"Hi I have a 88 hamer californian. In that time Hamer used nitro to finish the guitars. Now, this guitar has crack lines like in a glass!! " Hey, didn't we tell you over on the HFC to live with it !, out of 17 nitro'd Hamer's i've got 9 of them have checked, nothing to do apart from re-fin or live with it. If you do try to fix it you'll end up with a bigger mess than you started with. People may say you can fix it but in 20 years i've never seen one that didn't look worse off for someone trying to 'fix' it. Hell, people pay thousands nowadays to get new guitars "relic'd" like this. Jem.