Doc

The Stew-mac stuff should work great. Thin it down a whole bunch "cause you don't need a whole lot of color, just some toning. There are a ton of walnut acoustics out there. I personally play a walnut Tele knock off most of the time. It has an oil finished face and and the back and sides are satin nitro.

Walnut is probably the most rewarding wood to start out with once you get past the cost. You probably will need to hit it with some stain, 'cause I agree with Mattia that modern walnut is a little bland and cold without some help. If you can get some Behlen Solar-lux or something similar, hit it with something with just a touch of red or orange, like American Walnut.Or even a Light Brown Mahogany. Oh yeah, if you get any splinters dig them right out. A lot of people react badly to them. And wear a dust mask when sanding the wood. It's not as nasty as ebony but it is an irritant.

If you don't want advice I'd suggest you don't ask for it. You didn't give anyone here a clue as to your setup or experience and many of the other newbies who post here jump into stuff the is dangerous without your vast experience. I personally have no feeling left in the first part of my fingers, due to a lack of repect for the stuff I've worked with for so long. I'm just trying to save some of you guys the learning curve. That said, I am not aware of any difficulties with crossreaction with urethane and properly cured PVA or aliphatic resin glues. I'd be hesitant to use it over hide glue. The manufacturers started pushing the stuff to us furniture guys about 15 years ago and While I don't personally know anyone who uses urethane I am guessing that if there was any major problem the word would be spread pretty far. The two main problems faced with wood finishing are the porousity of wood, which shouldn't affect urethane, and the seasonal expansion and contraction. Metal also flexes, not as much as wood. The swelling question? Again I've never heard anything about problems. Jeremy at LGM guitars is the resident urethane god. PM him. Oh, have a nice day.

US routers used to come in three sizes: 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2". In the late '60's 3/8" bits and collets sorta just disappeared and 1/2: stuff took over for commercial and heavy duty. You can still find some 3/8" but it's pretty rare. Sears used to sell a ton of it. Most of what you're paying for when you buy a more expensive router is the quality of the bearings and the guality of the motor windings. Also, some for the quality of things like the fittings. The first two affect the durability and accuracy, the second the safety and "toss it against the wall" factor. I have a couple of cheap routers that I use for one thing only. I keep a 1/4" diameter straight bit in one set up to cut the slot for cabinet backs, for example. It doesn't require a lot of durability or precision. If you take small enough bites you can safely do any of the routing asspciated with guitar making with a cheap router and cheap bits. The problems comes when you get in an hurry and try to cut a pickup cavity in a couple of passes. I have a 3hp Elu and professional quality bits and I still only step down a maximum of maybe 3/8" per pass. If your router slows down noticeably while you're cutting you're straining it and the bet too much. Something to remember: When you slow a motor down from its rated speed it draws increasingly more current. This is just how physics works. This makes the sucker heat up faster and wear and burn out faster. Your bits also heat up more and heat is the enemy of sharpness.

It came both ways, flat and corregated. That's a pretty good price for an early Stanley. Don't listen to the cheapskates here. A beat up plane takes me maybe 8 hours to restore to real working shape and some are messed up enough that they're just looking at planes. Look at the tool collecter web sites and e-bay. You'll be hard pressed to fing a good to excellent No.7 for that price.

The nice thing about finishing guitars for us furniture guys is that they aren't very big. Maybe four square feet. The bad things are that they have a lot of edges, which are tough to deal with and they get the crap beat out of them. One of the things that you have to worry about with things that get beaten is intercoat adhesion. This is why I don't like one part polyurethane. It has intercoat adhesion problems all by itself. When you switch back and forth and sandwich stuff in between coats of other stuff you always run the risk that they won't quite bond together and you'll get chipping and flaking. Maybe even the whole coat peeling off. It can also make it harder to rub out without problems. None of these are good things. I always try to use the same type of product all the way through if possible. I'd use whatever the hardest part to deal with in your finishing scheme is all the way through. If your color only is available in one type of finsih use the same thing for your clear. If you are primarily concerned about the performace of your clear find a color in that formulation and go with it. Etc.,etc.

What you need to worry about first is the reaction of your body to the harsh chemicals. Not being nasty, how much experience do you have with spraying? Do you have a spray booth? What kind of breathing equipment do you have. If you spray this stuff in an improper (non-spray booth) environment you can get sick as a dog, and the long term effects are pretty disastrous. This is not just over reaction. This stuff is nasty. It does produce a quick-cure hard shiney finish, but it has it's drawbacks like anything. This is a product for professionals and not hobbiests. I won't use it and I'm a semi-retired professional. Not 'cause I don't know how, but because I am not set up to do it, and I just don't like stuff that's this environmentally unfriendly.

Jay, Now do yourself a favor and upgrade the puppy by getting a Benchdog miter guide insert, routing a slot for it and screwing it in place. This allows you to make all kinds of nifty jigs and also lets you do some operations more safely. People forget how much damage a router can do. Don't get complacent! Grim, Step away from the bad blue-green tool. Look at a 3hp Porter-Cable or Milwaukee. Just my experience, but a lot more bang for the buck. Makita's seem to work best in their advertising, which is top drawer.

Try McFeeley.com for all of your high end fastening needs. It's who most of the furniture makers 'i know buy from. They are also a good source for square drive fasteners.

Look for the same thing on ebay. They are cheaper there. I am relatively sure that they all come out of the same Chinese factory. I have heard the various criticisms (bitchy complaints mostly) about these kits but I've put a couple together and there is usually nothing wrong with them that can't be fixed with basic woodworking tools and skills and a little patience. The folks here can help you work your way to a respectable finished product. You are not gonna get a Gibson/Fender/Gretsch/PRS, but you'll learn a lot and get a good ax pertty cheaply. Remember to add in the cost of a decent set of tuners 'cause the ones in the kits are almost unworkable dogs.

What did you finish it with? If you used lacqer you should be okay. The worst you'll have to do is throw another coat at it and wait. I've done this to furniture pieces literally hundreds of times. If its polyurethane of any kind you're most likely out of luck. You've cut down through the top coat and are into the bouild coats. Sometimes they'll polish out without the transition showing butusually you will have to scuff sand it out and recoat it. If you have to do this make damn sure you do a really good job of sanding or you'll get adhesion problems.

I'm guessing none of you are buying from a wholesaler who sells to the trade. I just bought 8/4 walnut for, if my memory isn't failing me, $4.96. Honduras Mahogany was running maybe $7.75 for 8/4. This is kiln dried and less than 10%. Maple was the most expensive thing there in 8/4 dimension and it was running about $8.25. I bought 350 bf of 4/4 hard maple at $3.86 bf and maybe 15% of it was medium to heavy striped figure. I got one stick of birdseye. I do usually buy a total of 150 bf at a time. Any time I have to buy some 4/4 for a job I pick up a stick or two of thick stuff and stick it in the rack. This is all FAS and undressed. If it's dressed it's maybe +.50 for s2 and +$1.00 for s4. Oh, a bf is a board foot. This is 12"x12"x1". FAS is "firsts and seconds". This is the best grade of commercial lumber. It has a limited number of knots and flaws. S2 is surfaced two sides. S4 is surfaced four sides.

The best tool to protect your back is a checkbook. Take a check out and write it to a temp service. The last time I had to move my shop I got four guys the size of refridgerators and we loaded, moved and unloaded in five hours. Considering the cast iron critters that you have I wouldn't want to think about moving all of that crap in one or two days using my back and friends. They just don't make beer and pizza that good.

$16 an hour isn't all that bad. I haven't broken down what my shop costs me an hour to run after rent, 'lectric juice, phone, water and sewer, insurance, wear and tear on tools, tool maintainence time, dumpster, and the odd unexpected bill. When I was making a living I think I averaged just under $20/hr for 40 hrs/wk, and that was about 10 years ago. Overhead is a beast.

Back about thirty years ago we had a co-op type operation in Richmond. I wasn't part of it back then but I seem to remember that the first time someone injured themselves on a lathe it was doomed. There were also issues, I think, with who pays for something when it breaks. I let folks use some of my tools with the understanding that if you break it you fix it, unless it is something that is old and creaky anyhow. You also bring your own bits and blades. Recently a live center died on the lathe and the guy turning simply took it to the machine shop and had a new bearing pressed in. I can't imagine what insurance would cost for something like this. I know that I have to carry liability insurance so that I can sign a lease on a shop even if i don't do a splinter of work for anyone but myself, and the stuff ain't cheap. It costs me over $100 per month and doesn't cover stuff like breakins. The military shops don't have to worry about liability 'cause you can't sue the Federal Gov't. Anyone out there a lawyer or insurance person?

I usually either get pasted or ignored when I wadein here but here goes. I made a living woodworking for twenty or so years and most of my work was done with hand tools, a table saw (Delta Unisaw 5hp) an Inca bandsaw and routers. Before my last shop partner died last year I think we had, no lie, over thirty routers between us. Probably more. Everything from ancient Sears 1hp that were set up with a straight cutter to do only one thing to Elu plunges and old variable speed Porter Cable 3hps. I would recommend that you get either a Porter Cable 1 7/8 horse kit with the two bases or the Bosch 1617 touted in the last post. There are lots of dead routers in our dead tool box in the corner. There are no Bosch or Porter cables routers in there, except for badly abused laminate trimmers. I am a tightwad and expect my tools to last damn near forever, to work as well tomorrow as today and when they don't I want them to be rebuildable for a reasonable price and to work as well as they did new. Those two makes really fill the bill. My main router is a 20 year old Elu 3hp plunge, but they are really expensive and the new ones don't have the reputation of my old dinosaur. I have Milwaukees and they're okay. The bearings get funky if you rout a lot of Corion or other solid surface stuff, and I do. I have had only negative experiences with the Japanese companies repair systems and parts availability and pricing. I have a Hitachi and a Makita that I inherited from somewhere. They don't get much use. I'd recommend building your own router table. There are scads of plans in the woodworking magazines. you can buy the router lifts by themselves and all of the channels and parts to make a professional fence. (Fine Woodworking has run some good reviews of them.) The advantage that adds to the cost savings is that you can make it the size that works for what you do and fits your shop space, not what the manufacturer's design guys think that you need. Bench Dog stuff is top drawer. I know the guys who run the company and feel good giving money to people who give you what you need for a fair price. No corners cut with their stuff. Hope this helps.

Do yourself a favor and go to the M. L. Campbell website. Click on "What's New" and look at the tutorial on how production shops do crackle finishes. They have distributorships all over and will sell in small quantities for just about everything that they make. The majority of distributors in anything resembling a city (Richmond has 185,00 people) do custom tint work. In the past I've done crackle finish with wet-on-wet fast-over-slow stuff, but it's nice to use a system developed to do this tricky finish..

The majority of the planers that get discussed here are not up to the task of planing highly figured, brittle wood. I currently don't own a thickness planer that is up to the task on a predictable basis so I use a drum sander. I build twenty or so commission pieces of furniture a year and the bulk of them are figured wood. Nasty brittle figured wood. For really fussy customers. Thickness planers have a doo-dad called a chip breaker. It has springs that hold it tight to the wood and prevent tearout. Most non-industrail planers are a little light there. The stationary Taiwanese units were really bad in this regard when they first hit the country 25 years ago, but they have improved by leaps and bounds. This is why the older Grizzly's, etc are so cheap and do such a bad job. The high speed portable planers with new blades do an adequate job, but look out as soon as you get a little wear on the cutting surfaces. There is no such thing as a wear guage. Instead you just plane till you ruin a board. Williams and Hussey (look 'em up on the web) makes an open side molder-planer that you can set up to thickness plane up to 14" wide stock in two passes. I had that and an 18" helical head c.1960 Delta in the shop until the guy I split it with died on me last year. (His estate sold everything, one money, to a tool hustler.) They both would sail through any type of wood, glass smooth. The W+H is a really versitle tool only limited by it's width. They run about 2 grand.Also lets you run off trim and stuff for your house or custom builders. (That's how you can pay for the sucker) For cheap, get a decent portable planer (Dewlat, Delta, Rigid Etc) and a Performax drum sander. Plane it close and then sand it to size. The two together will set you back less than $1500 including stuff like outfeeds, stands, and wheels. Oh, Rich, I'll trade two thickness sanders for that old Delta with the 18" helical cutter head. Can we do it tomorrow and where do I need to truck them two?

First, what kind of gun is it? Sort of like a good gun is like sort of like a Ferrari and wondering why you lose every race. "It's got four wheels and a motor!!" You're probably shooting too close. At least for me. I hold back about 10"-12". Are you laying down full, wet coats? And like the previous post are you using a bit of retarder? I shoot a lot with an HLVP turbine, which most of the finishers here hate, and with properly thinned down and retarded finish I have very little orange peel. I've also gotten a cheap HVLP gravity feed and ditto. For really critical stuff I have a Bink's No7 which is older than most of you all, but I hardly ever need to use it. I wouldn't recommend using water as a test fluid. I'd use something compatible with what you shoot, like lacquer thinner. Also shoot a test pattern of thinned lacquer on a piece of clean plate glass. Depending on the lacquer, the temperature, the humidity and the gun you may have to thin it down 50-50 or more. It only matters if you're in a hurry or are trying to make money. Neither of these is real compatible with beginning finishing.

Koch's book isn't as good as Hiscocks overall, but it has a lot of good information and some of it is in areas's that Hiscock gives short shrift to. At least for me it was good to have two sources that agree almost all ofthe time and have different strengths.

The only drawback I see from the pictures is that you will be limited in how thick a board you can cut. It doesn't look like you can use a riser block which will increase the depth of cut by 6". It is really hard to judge the quality from pictures. Bandsaws are probably the most tempermental of shop tools. (this is arguable so don't jump on me guys) If the wheels are off it can be nearly impossible to get the blade to track and the cut may never be 90 degress to the table. It will also throw blades and drive you nuts. I would get out the phone book, look up a couple of local furniture makers, they'll be easier to find than luthiers, and either phone them or go by and ask them what their opnion is. Woodworkers in the states are usually tool junkies, and the ones that I know are perfectly happy to give you some free advice. It is still interesting to me to see the limited number of tools available in some countries. Here in the US hardly anything is made here, but we sure are lucky with what is sold here.

My first project was a Saga tele. I figured that I would rather start from scratch for the finish so I stripped off the sealer they use. I've got a full professional refinishing setup and this was the hardest stuff to get off completely and evenly, outside of 100 year old 1/2" thick paint, that I've ever hit. I wound up pretty much just soaking it for three of four days in Kleen Strip K-S-3, which eats epoxies and polurethanes for breakfast and scraping it. (It is even pretty resistant to heat guns.) Doing that would probably dissolve the glue and screw up the veneer. One the good side, That is a damn good prep surface to work with as it comes out of the box. A little fine sanding and you're ready to coat. Saves you the most, in my opinion, problematic part of the process. Sealing and filling. Stuff's hard as a bowling ball but will accept most coatings. Spray it with a tinted clear and be happy. I'm sure that you could get the sealer off, but what I've seen of the grade of maple veneer that Saga uses you're just not going to get the results that you see posted on this site no matter what you do to it. You can get a perfectly repectable finish with the stuff from Re-Ranch. What do you want for $150?

I know that someone will say tht this is not a good idea, but here is how I've made router templates for twenty years. I use 1/2" baltic birch plywood. This is the multiply stuff that comes in 60"x60" sheets and is made with no voids. Get an industrial hot glue gun, not a hobby gun. Rip a piece as wide as your cavity. Rip a couple of 3 or 4 inch wide pieces as long as your guitar body.. Cut some three inch pieces off of the first rip. Glue the pieces that you just made to the two rails. (the second pieces) Leave gaps as big as the holes you want. As long as you can measure and use a square you wind up with a template that is absolutely spot on with clean staight edges. So you want to put "ears" on your pickup cavity? Use rails the width of the ears, crosscut them and glue them to a second course of outside rails leaving a space in between them the size you want the cavity to be. Curved pieces can be cut on the bandsaw and glued in place. Industrial hot glue guns are more than up to the task of making a template that will hold up to production routing. You can also do the same thing with 1/4" ply and laminate a second solid layer of plywood over it. Then use a pattern bit (bearing over the cutter) to recut out the openings. This gives you an abusable template. I can make a jig to rout out two humbuckers in about fifteen minutes, and half of that is double checking my measurements and drinking a Dr. Pepper while I make sure I'm figuring stuff right.. I apologize for not having the computer skills to post pictures. If someone can steer me to a tutorial I 'll one up a demo.

If a big horse router kicks on you you're taking too big a bite. I use an old ELU 3 hp plunge for about 75% of my work and I've never had it bite me. I take lots of shallow cuts. I have however had the living crap cut out of me when a large roundover bit poped out, hit the floor and bounced up and climbed up my arm. I rout a lot of Coriaon and other solid surface products and if you get lazy like me and don't clean out your collet religeously this can happen. I like the new Milwaukee routers. Lot of bamg for the buck, I've got one of the 1.75's with the wrap around grip that I use for edge detailing. I've used their big plunge and it's also pretty good. Everything Bosch makes, I think, Is well worth the bucks. Fein and Festool both make really great tools but I won't think about one until one of my other big ones dies, and the ELU is going on twenty years old and showing no signs of dying. I've had it rebouilt twice. New bearings and brushes. I can't think of a single Japanese tool maker that I would recommend for a router. I know the Ryobi's are cheap but I have found the even cheaper Chinese knockoffs to be just as good.

My opinion only, but one of the most useful hand tools is a pattermakers rasp. This is a hand file that has a flat side and a rounded side and the teeth are irregular so that you don't cut the parallel chatter grooves that a metal file will give you. Nicholson makes two sizes. I think that they are No.s 49 and 50. Mine are thirty years old or so and because I don't abuse them still cut like crazy. I saw some on a woodworkers site the other day and I think that they are about $50 or so, but I find mine absolutely indespensible for shaping. For a router, Porter Cable makes a kit with a straight and plunge base in a nifty carrying case for about $200. I picked up one and it had a free edge guide thrown in. It's right at a horse and seven eights.