Houdini

Hey PunkRockerLuke I noticed you are from muscatine, I used to live in Nichols and went to high school in West Liberty for a year, just wondering how everyone survived the tornadoes. On the topic at hand, a good quality auto spray paint such as duplicolor would be good for a guitar. As a million other posts on this forum suggest, there are all types of ways to apply it. You should search all of the other posts to see how to prepare your wood and how to apply the paint properly. You can have the best most expensive paint in the world, but if you don't prepare the wood right, the guitar will look horrible. I and many others on this forum know this from first hand experience. So, for a low tech, cheap (by cheap I mean you don't have to buy spray equipment, the paint will still cost you a few bucks a can) solution, go to an auto store such as Auto Zone or O'Reillys (I think Wal-Mart even sells it) and buy some quality lacquer paint. It works great for guitars and is probably the most forgiving. The only drawback it that it takes forever to cure.

Wet curing wood sounds interesting. I have never heard of that, I guess they use salt water to dry out the wood???, kind of like using a brine solution to cure meat. I don't know too much about violins, all I know is that you cant beat a good sounding Stradivarius, or down here in Oklahoma a great sounding fiddle!

If anyone is interested, there is a program on the history channel today and later tonight (2 Apr 06) that is called the "Ice Age." What does this have to do with instrumets? Well, there is a segment about halfway through the program that talks about how the mini ice age that occured a few centuries ago may have led to the unmached quality of sound and tone that is produced by Stradivarius violins. It goes into how the ice age affected the wood that Stradivarius used and talks about growth rings amongst other things. May be of interest to someone. Check your local listings for times of the program. It will probably be repeated several times through out the week, so you may be able to record it and just fast forward to the Stradivarius violin section. This section comes on right after the program talks about the Irish potato famine.

To add on to what mattia said, you can easily make a jig out of a 2 inch block of wood. Take a block of wood (approx 2 inch thick and 6 inches long, or whatever the distance is between the two outmost tuners plus a little bit extra) and make sure that it is squared up on all sides. Then attach a fence to your drill press, if you dont have a fence, just clamp down a straight edge. Measure out how far apart your tuner holes will be and mark that on the wood. Then you just easily slide a squared side of the wood along the straight edge and drill holes at the appropriate spacing. This should line them up perfectly. To use the jig, clamp or tape it (with double sided tape) to your headstock, lining up the tuner holes where you want them to be. Then take a hand drill or a drill press and a good quality bit (preferebly a brad point since they make clean holes) and use the jig as a guide to guide the bit straight. You should end up with all of your tuner holes in line. To improve the quality of the jig, you can buy drill bushings like mattia was talking about.

Here is a great website that I have been looking at for Stanley Planes: http://www.hyperkitten.com/tools/stanley_bench_plane/dating/ Has all types of goodies about stanley planes.

I tried sandpaper on the bottom of the nut, and it worked like a champ. Gave me an exact fit. All I did was cut a piece of narrow sandpaper with a razorblade the size of the nut. In this case 1/8" and glued it to the bottom of the nut with a few drops of superglue, then used it as a sanding block. When I was done, I just peeled off the sandpaper. Why didn't I think of this before, it would have saved so much frustration. Thanks for the inputs guys.

Thanks for the help guys. I just thought of another idea as well. Glue a pice of sandpaper to the bottom of the nut and use the nut as a sanding block to square the bottom of the slot. Thanks for the help.

I can't seem to find anything on the forum about seating a new nut into a new fingerboard. I've built the neck for my new tele and am in the process of cutting the slot in the fingerboard to fit a 1/8" nut. The problem is that I can't get the nut to fit squarely on the bottom. When I put the nut in the slot, you can still see light between the fingerboard and the bottom of the nut. My guess is that the bottom of the nut slot is not perfectly square and instead of having perfect right angles there are little round edges that prevent seating the nut properly. I have tried a small file and razor blades in order to try and square up the slot, but to no avail. The fingerboard is already attached to the neck, so I guess trying to run a sawblade through it is out of the question. Anybody have any ideas, or should I bite the bullet and buy a stewmac nut seating file. Anyone used one of these before?

Just a reply to what mledbetter was saying. Minwax sells both a sanding sealer for various oil based finishes in a yellow can as well as sealer for acrylic based finishes. If you use acrylic based auto paint for the body I would suggest the acrylic based sanding sealer. This stuff is in a black can and is relatively new so all hardware stores may not carry it yet, but you can get in online and probably have lowes or home depot order it for you on their next shipment from minwax for no shipping????

I was searching through veneer on Ebay and came accross Waterfall Bubinga. I've never seen it before, but talk about beautiful wood. Here's the link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...8187386321&rd=1 This link is for 156 square feet which is a little much, but I thought I would throw it out and maybe someone would use it as an Idea for a guitar top.

Yeah, I bought the glue a few months ago. Thanks for the help guys, I guess I will just have to build a bigger coat on it.

Yea, my joins were pretty good and I used plenty of glue, I'm just scratching my head trying to figure out if the glue could shrink that much after it dried, or if the lacquer somehow was eating it away. When I prepared the surface of the wood before lacquering, it was nice and smooth. It wasn't until I started painting that a groove appeared where the glue line was.

My mistake, I thought it was Elmers glue, but I looked at the bottle again and it is titebond.

I want to see if anyone else has this problem. I used standard elmers wood glue to glue up the blanks for a tele body I am making. When I finish the body with lacquer based paint and finish (i.e. Krylon acrylic paint/lacquer) it seems to eat away the glue. The reason I am saying this is because when I start to wet sand the guitar, the join line always seems to reappear and feels like a little groove in the guitar despite having been sanded flat before finishing. Is my problem that the glue is dissolving, or is there a better glue to use besides standard wood glue?

I'm thinking about using my lathe as a buffing machine and was wondering if anyone here has tried it and had good results. I'm trying to figure out if there are attachments available for a reasonable price (the ones I've seen are $90 for that I might as well just by a buffer)or if there is a good way to make my own. I couldn't find any thing using the search function about this, so I thought I would start a new topic. Maybe someone will have a revelation and come up with some good ideas. On another note, how would you compare buffing with a buffing wheel to a random orbital sander buffing pad?

Big D I appreciate the comments. I am trying to learn a lot from this forum, thinking about what I say before I say it so I don't look too much like a moron. I'm new to guitar making, but have been woodworking for a while and have a few tricks up my sleeves here and there.

You probably could use wax paper as long as you make sure that you don't get any sharp edges or crinkles (is that even a word) in it. I know this doesn't apply to guitars, but I probably wouldn't use wax paper if I was doing something more complex such as a moulding for a doorway or wall. The wax paper won't form to the shape very well.

Now I'm no expert on curing paint or top coats, but I saw this article at: http://bertram31.com/proj/tips/hot_box.htm which talks about building a heat box to cure finish/paint 75% faster for only $10. Thought I might post it and ask some of the experts which types of paints/finishes this would work well with.

I know people have used Bondo before to make cusotm sanding blocks and was wondering how well these hold up. Does any one know if the Bondo is durable or if it will crumble and warp/break with any type of pressure? I'm trying to find something that is comparable to the strength of wood at least. I was also considering using an epoxy resin such as what is used on boats FYI: If you want to make a sanding block using Bondo: I got this technique from Taunton's Complete Illustrated Guide to Finishing by Jeff Jewitt. Great book on finishing, although I haven't tried this particular techinque yet, it looks pretty good. Begin with a 3 to 4 inch long section of a moulding or fretboard or whatever shape and apply a thin coat of furniture paste wax to it to act as a mold release. Using scrap wood or cardboard, make a 4 sided rectangular box to act as a form for the bondo. Put the fretboard shape into the form with the fretboard side facing up. Mix up the Bondo and put it into the form making sure you don't leave any air gaps. Overfill the form with the bondo Take a block of wood that is slightly larger than the form and drive 3 screws into it so that the heads project out of it about 1/4 inch. Press the wood with the screws into the bondo. The screws act to hold the wood block to the bondo. When you press the block into the form, make sure that some of the bondo squeezes out. This will ensure that there are no gaps between the fretboard and the bondo. After 5-10 minutes when the bondo becomes rubbery break the form off of the bondo and take the fretboard shape off. Let the bondo cure. If it distorts, put a piece of fine sandpaper on the fretboard shape and run the new bondo sanding block along it a few times. When the bondo is dry, spray some truck bed liner (available in spray cans at hardware stores) on the form to act as a cusion for sandpaper. Now just use Pressure Sensative Adhesive (PSA) sandpaper and attach it to your form and you have a custom sanding block.

Try this maybe: Since most spindles for drum sanders are made from rubber, consider using a non-permanent spray adhesive such as Elmer's spray or 3M spray and attach the grit of sandpaper you want to the spindle. If you let the glue on the sandpaper dry for 3-4 minutes before attaching it to the spindle, it should peel right off when you are done using it. Then when you are done, peel the paper off and clean off any excess glue/goo with some mineral spirits or acetone. This will take the glue right off. Just be careful that the spirits/acetone wont eat the rubber, it shouldn't but read the warnings on the back of the can.

After much intensive labor finishing a body, I ended up having to strip it down because of some paint peel this weekend. The course of action I took was to first take a finger plane (you can get one at any hardware store for $10, mine is made by Stanley) and use it to peel the finish and paint off of the body. This takes about 5 min. It worked pretty well, and got me down to the primer and bare wood. Just plane the paint as if you were planing wood. Make sure the blade isn't too deep though or you may gouge the wood. After that I used Crown paint and varnish stripper and let it soak for 30 minutes. It should goo up and strip off easily with a plastic scraper. If the plastic scraper doesn't work so well, try scraping with a sharp razor blade.

I would like to start a thread and see where everybody gets their wood from. I have been thinking about places to find lumber for free or cheap instead of always going to a lumber yard or ordering over the phone/internet. I recently contacted some local cabinet makers in my area about obtaining their scraps. Usually when professionals like these have scraps, they are fairly large and may be used to make guitars. Some places I came up with to find cheap wood: 1. Contact the local cabinet makers/woodworkers in your area. A lot of them (usually the higher end guys) have some exotic woods that they use and you may be able to get their scraps for inlay. At the least, they may be able to get you a wholesale price on some quality stuff. 2. Visit garage sales. My dad recently obtained around 200 board feet of red oak, walnut, cherry, and basswood for $70 at a garage sale. Talk about a steal. 3. If you are military (I am) go to the base hobby shop and pick through the trash. I have found some pretty nice pieces of wood in their trash can. If you are not military see if your town has hobby shops/framing shops and pick through their trash. You may be suprised at what you find. 4. Ask local contractors if they have any scraps you may use, or go to a new home building site and see if there are any scraps of wood you can take (with the contractors permission of course). 5. Find an old barn. I'm from Oklahoma, and there are old barns everywhere in the state aching to be torn down. The wood is usually pretty good. 6. Search Grandma's attic. There is always stuff up there, so why not old wood. 7. Old furniture that people throw away. Strip the finish and you have pretty good wood. Just thought I would start a list and see what everyone else comes up with.

Hey, Thanks Brian for the info, I forgot to say that you need to have the arbor machined. As for the website price, I would just call them and ask about the discount. I'm pretty sure it is a nation wide discount, since the flyer I received is a national flyer. If it helps, the ad is for a Central Machinery 1/2 ton arbor press Lot No. 3551.

Hey thanks for the advise. I will try the superglue approach and see how it works.

I just got finished painting/lacquering my guitar body and noticed that there is a small flake of paint that peeled off the top near the neck pocket exposing the wood. I still have the flake that peeled off and was thinking about re-attaching it with some acetone. My plan was to place the flake back in place and then try to "glue" it in by dropping some acetone on top so that the paint will dissolve and hopefully blend in with the surrounding finish. Just want to see what you all think about this so I don't end up ruining a larger area .