Doc

First comment. That particular model of planer is, in my experience, a dificult to use, problematic nightmare. Got one and it sits in a corner as areminder that name brands like Delta don't necessarily guarantee quality.

Second comment. There are plent of do-it-yourself plans available on woodworker's sites to make drum sanders from industrail pieces parts and plywood. I'm guessing that the speed on a planer is a whole lot faster than the speed on my Performax. The latter is slower for a whole lot of reasons. Two of these are that it helps to have both of your eyes and most of your fingers to do this stuff.

What was that old Saturday Night Live skit? "It's a dessert topping!! No it's a floor wax!! No it's both!!" Yeah.

Back up to the first comment.

Why are you trying to use 1/4" shank bits?

They are going to give you chatter no matter how good your collet adapter is. Especially when you have them chucked up in a beast like that thing you have. The only way to keep them cutting clean is with eensy tiny little whimpy passes which defeart the purpose of having an 800 pound monster that sleeps by the door!

I can't think of any profile that I can get in a 1/4 and not in a 1/2".

The cost difference when weighed against the performance is negligible at best.

I'm a cheapskate and even I spring for the 1/2".

The only time I use 1/4" stuff is in a laminate trimmer, which can't sling 1/2' stuff.

Just curious.

Thanks for the replys guys.

I have to get in there and replace the plate 'cause when I looked closer it's cracked along the line of the string holes.

I removed the 1/2" diameter brass inserts by putting a 3' long bolt in them one at a time. I wrapped the body of the insert inside the guitar with a piece of leather to protect the threads and clamped a small vice grip to it. I heated the bolt with a small torch until the glue softened. then I backed the little sucker out. This way the threads cut in the wood of the top didn't get trashed. I going to make a new bridge using the old one as a template. I've modified a couple of butter knives that I'll heat up on a hot plate and work under the old plate to lever it out.

The do-dad from Stew-Mac looks neat but I wonder how much it will affect the sound. When it's right this is a really wonderful sounding instrument. This was made back when Gibson seemed to still be motivated by things other than the bottom line alone.

I tried to force a thin palette knife under all of the bracing and it all appears to be solidly glued, so that problem isn't there.

I'm going to make clamping cauls out of some 1/4" aluminum and see if gluing in a new plate flattens out the top.

My, my, my. Testy and contentious! Well, it is a full moon outside.

Get out the sander and erase your mistake.

I do a lot of veneering. There is, as was posted above, no way to keep glue from popping through pores if you use too much and you have a pourous wood. Squigglygrained wood is almost always pourous.

The wrong glue will always cause trouble. I recommend white glue as the easiest most forgiving for the beginner. You can also get if off if there is squeeze out using acetone.

Polyurethane glue is good for stuff that gets wet a lot and not much else. This is just my opinion but I've tried it and had numerous aggravating problems with it in other applications. Naasty messy ooky foamy sticky goo.

Contact cement is great for Formica. It doesn't however give you a rigid enough glue line for wood veneer. It also reacts with solvent based finishes. The same pores that let the glue ooze out let the finish solvents ooze in. They can make the glue expand and bubble and you get big nasty blisters in the surface. Usually when you're halfway through the final clear coats.I've used it myself way in the past and have had numerous long term problems I've had to redo.

If you seal the veneer first you are goining to have trouble because the glue will cause the veener to expand on the contact side and the finsh side will not move as much. You may actually get some buckling. I know this sounds weird but believe me it can happen.

if you want a good "cheat" here goes. Roll a thin even coat of yellow glue(like Titebond) on both surfaces. Let it dry a couple of hours. Take a clothes iron and iron the two together. No I don't do this myself, 'cause I have a vacuum press, but a friend of mine built a Federal style sideboard out of crotch mahogany. This stuff is a bear to work with and he got beautiful flat results with not a speck of bleed through. It's sitting in his dining room today and looks great after ten years. My first reaction when he asked about doing this this way was "Say what??!?", but it does work. Especially on something no larger than a guitar body. Fine Woodworking had a article describing this techinque a couple of years later.

As a general glue comment, the guy I apprenticed with taught me to spread glue on both surfaces with a credit card. Squeegee it thin enough so that you can just see the wood through the glue. Any thicker and you're wasting glue and causing yourself trouble.. The drawback is that you have a very short open time. You need everything ready to go and a spare pair of hands, "read: experienced helper" when you are ready to go, and have done a dry run first to make sure everything is there and fits. This goes for all glue ups not just veenering.

I've fiddled with a couple of Sagas now and it isn't unusual for the slots in the nut to be too deep. This makes you have to set the saddle too high and causes intonation problems, at least for me. I put a drop of CA on the slot and recut it after it's dry. This may not be the way most repair guys do it but it has worked for me.

I'm not really sure that a lot of the reported differences aren't mythologies. Wood dried to 7% shouldn't perform any differently no matter how it gets there.

That said, James Krenov, who is one of the heavy hitters in contemprorary funiture design, feels that there is a very noticable difference in the appearance of air dried lumber. Most of the folks who post here seem to use a lot of heavy stain colors and/or colored finish so it isn't as noticeable as on minimally stained and oil finished furniture, which is what Krenov favors. Check out his book "The Improbable Cabinetmaker" sometime. He addresses a lot of the generic techniques common to all woodworkers and is a pretty interesting author.

I've noticed a little difference in air dried cherry and walnut, especially if you finish with blades rather than sandpaper. Chisels, planes and scrapers seem to just leave a cleaner, clearer surface with air dried lumber. May be just wishful thinking but it does seem to look a little better. I've used some air dried hickory and pecan an seat-of-my-pants felt that the weren't quite as brittle as the kiln dried stuff.

It does take a long time to air dry rather than kiln dry. The last walnut I had anything to do with stayed in a friends oven like attic for three years before it was usable, and this was rough cut to 6/4.

The most important thing with any lumber if you are concerned with long term performance and flatness is to stick it with a moisture meter and make sure of the content.

It also helps to dress your stuff to size and let it sit no matter how it was dried. Put "sticker" boards under everthing so that the air can get around all sides, and let it rest for a couple of days to a couple of weeks so that the moisture is even throughout. This is expecially true with the really thick 8/4 stuff.

I did this not too long ago.

Put a piece of paper over the neck.

Rub it with a pencil so that you get a pattern of the holes and the outline of the neck.

Cut out your template.

Put the template in the pocket.

Mark and drill.

You should make the holes a scootch larger than the screws and you should be okay.

Take a look and see what ebay has in the way of old Stanley planes. Parts are readily available and they are a good basic plane.

Record still makes decent new planes.

Lie-nielson's while not cheap are wonderful. If you look at old Stanley catalogs and figure what a carpenter makes a week the price of a new Lie nielson isn't much diffferent from what a 1900 Stanley- Bailey cost when new.

Lee Valley makes planes that are a little less dear and are very close to the L-n quality.

I've seen the Groz's but never used one.

Rule of thumb: if a plane doesn't look well finished or feel good it probably isn't.

Do look at the Fine Woodworking article.

My old shop partner used to bring in the invariably orange Chinese made tools from Harbour Freight all the time. For what they cost the only thing that any of them lacked was longevity. If you use them in a production setting you will kill them guickly. Someone who builds a guitar a month is going to get plenty of service and their money's worth. Just use the thing like you have some sense and you'll be okay. I use an Elu 3 hp plunge, but I do a lot of solid surface work. It pays for itself there. if I was just buying my first router and was not doing every day all day production I'd consider the HF. Do check it out as soon as you get it. They seem to be really okay or instant junk without much in between.

As long as the oil is dry you should be able to go over it with poly. I'd cut the first coat to 50-50. There are a lot of furniture guys who use a mix of oil, beeswax, solvent (mineral spirits) and poly as a finish. All of this stuff is compatible.

I've got a walnut tele knockoff I made with a 1/4" thick tiger maple mounting plate. I have two standard length pots and a three way switch mounted in it. I haven't had any trouble with it, but I'm not real hard on my toys.

I've had to pull the bridge off of my FT-79 Epiphone. It had sunk down on the neck side and pulled up on the bottom side enough so that it cracked near the saddle. I've kept a wet sponge inside the guitar for a month and it has flattened out a little. How flat does the top need to be? It now is sunken in on one edge about a 1/16 and is raised up on the other about a 1/16. It doesn't seem to be moving anymore. I can get inside and pull the plate and replace it but I'd rather not if I don't have to.

Any advice?

First I haven't ever built anything musical out of Polonia. I have built a couple of funiture projects out of local stuff. It's also called coffeewood. If you live in the Southern US you can spot it in the sprigtime because it has clusters of purple flowers that look a lot like wisteria. It's a fast grower and will grow on rocks and hillsides. It'll also take root on roofs of abandoned buildings and trash the maonry with its root system.

This is used very heavily in the Orient. A lot of it is harvested and sold to eastern rim buyers and shipped overseas.It is used, so far as I know and have been told, to build traditional wedding or dower chests espcially in Korea. I've had two Korean customers who ordered chests for hteir daughters weddings. They wanted the traditional material but not the traditional design.

The stuff looks a lot like swamp ash. The first time I saw a swamp ash body I was sure I was looking at Polonia. It is fairly open grained with a stripey pattern to the grain. From a woodworkers perspective it's pretty easy to work with.

I know a lot of purists look down their nose at them but I like the Veritas sharpening jig. It speeds up the process and, at least if my case, allows me to put a really accurate flat surface on the face of my smaller chisels. The wide ones are easy, but I use a 1/8" and a 1/4" a lot and I've always had trouble getting them right freehand.

I also use diamond lapping plates. They have gotten cheap, although not as cheap as sandpaper. I sharpen with them dry and then wash off the residue with water after I'm done.

There are probably some posts in the search function about the plusses and munuses of shellac. That said here goes.

The only real drawbacks to shellac are that it isn't water or alcohol proof and it also isn't particularly scratch resistant. You can develop a beautiful pale gold to amber to garnet colored finish that is a breeze to repair without a huge amount of work.

I would plan on putting a final coat of something like lacquer if I was going to actually play this instrument in anything other than a quiet home setting. Even with a coat of wax beer dissolves shellac. So does enough sweat.

That goes for anything that can be called a craft or an art. People have this insane idea that just because you aren't trapped in a meaningless job moving papers from one pile to another you should be happy to work for peanuts or even maybe for free.

I was a professional cabinet maker for 25 years and fortunately woke up early to the cold reality that our culture truly undervalues people that create the worthwile parts of our culture and overrewards the etherial and ephemeral. Witness what we pay teachers as opposed to basketball players and movie actors. I went back to grad school and have a day job that leaves me with enough energy and money to do only the work that I truly want to and feel is worth putting my name on.

Ask yourself if you can live with a second job for the immediate forseeable future and accept that a lot of your free social time will be luthier or woodworking time. If your answer is "that sounds like a great life to me" then welcome to the unoffical worldwide brotherwood of folks who live to get splinters in their fingers. One day you'll look back and see the things that you have put out there making people's lives a little more colorful and interesting. Piles of paper just don't seem to do that for me.

Once upon a long time ago when I still had all of my hair most fretboards were rosewood, like 95% of them. Leo Fender gave us maple fretboards. Really high end stuff had ebony 'cause it was ungodly expensive compared to rosewood but looks really neat with MOP or abalone in it..

Today maple costs as much as cherry and walnut is a deal. Rosewood is not coming from the same places because of irresponsible resource management. Some ebony is extinct for all intents and purposes, but some varieties aren't bad in availability or price.

Today the labor involved in making the finished product is most of the cost, so there is little difference in the final toll. A couple of bucks means little to a hand or custom builder. If you make 1500 guitars a week, like the monster plants, $3 a fretboard means close to a quarter of a million a year so it does matter to them and thus lots of cheaper rosewood fretboards.

Kleen Strip makes some really nasty stuff called KS-3 that will eat through the can given enough time.

It'll eat right through Imron and other catalyzed epoxy type finishes in no time. Polyurethane doesn't stand a chance.

It will also eat the skin off of your butt if you sit in a amall spot of it. You won't even know it's happening until you take off your jeans.

I'd bag the "use the central vac as a dust collector" idea and get a dust collector. The whole house vac will die a quick death and they're a whole lot more money than a Jet or Grizzly collector. One of my customers tried this in his garage shop and the poor sucker (the vac not him) died in about a month at a cost of about $700.00. The sales guy said it just isn't designed to pull that much stuff for extended periods.

I'd look at getting a decent 14" band saw with a riser kit. I know some guys who run small furniture shops and guitar shops with no table saw anymore. They rent saw time from me when they have something that is a tablesaw only job and I'm sure I'm not the only cabinet maker around who does this sort of thing for folks.

I saw someone discontinuing downdraft tables online. Either Grizzly or Wilke Machinery, can't remember which now.

I'm going to disagree here. Polyurethane is a little harder than varnish but it looks a whole lot more like plastic. If you like that look, okay. Polyurethanes like Minwax or Varathane are a great floor finish. Your guitar will look the same. The Poly that is oohed and ahhhed over on this site is catalyzed Polyuretane and not ever the same thing.

If you can get decent varnish, use it. Start with a couple of sealer coats of shellac. Rubbing out the final coats will involve a lot of elbow grease and probably some pumice if you want a high gloss shine, but it is worth it.

I've got pieces of furniture out there that are thirty years old, have seen a lot of wear and tear and still look great with a shellac and varnish finish.

The only two reasons I switched to lacquer were speed of drying time and repairability.

If you get hold of old Jet equipment it's like old Grizzly. You better have as much time in fixing and figiting as I do or you're gonna hate it. The early Tiawanese stuff was truly hit or miss with more misses than hits.

Today the stuff comes out of a few factories and isn't that different one brand to the other IMHO. There's one factory over there that the guys make a thousand for one company, change uniforms and make another thousand for someone else!!

If you ever get to the IWF show in Atlanta on even years you can walk around and see everything made anywhere and compare all of them.

I'm having to bandsaw shop myself because Inca has apparently gone out of business and nothing on my venerable saw is standard. Even the cool blocks are unique to it.

The budget minded should look at Grizzly, Jet and Bridgewood from Wilke machinery. I had a Bridgewood 18". It was in 1986 and it was like all import stuff then. We had to tinker with it but once we got it right it was great. Still cutting aluminum in my old partners shop.

I have no experience with Rikon. The prices seem pretty attractive.

I'm leaning towards a Grizzly 14 with a riser block. I need to resaw faces, but I also do a lot of other work on the bandsaw that a lot of folks do with a tablesaw. I just like bandsaws. The Inca takes down to a 1/8" blade and does scarily precise work and will turn around and reaw.

Go for the extra bucks and get the ball bearing guides no matter what you get..

The guys around the corner from me have a Jet 18 that I set up for them and I can't critisize the beast. Defintely not like the old scrap they used to sell. Took me about an hour and a half to tweak it out.

Do yourself a favor and take a look at the Wilke machinery site. They do a great job of checkout and prep before shipping.

I'd love a Laguna. They are head and shoulders above the stuff I've listed above, but I'm trying to not put much more money into the shop and I'd need one of their 20" monster to do everything I need to do.

The spray cans of Zinnser:s work great. Just remember to not try to spray for more than a short time. The tip will cool down and it'll act funny sometimes. Use lots of light coats to avoid runs, and let the body warm back up between coats to avoid hazing.

Go to the Certainly Wood website and browse through the various veneers available. Since you're looking at a design with a flat face you can glue a 1/28" layer of veneer over your mahogany base.

You could paint the "zebra stipe" detail on with analine dyes, but it wouldn't come close to the real stuff.

Definitely check out the Re-ranch tutorial.

I've got two suggestions.

Get out your yellow pages and look up:

1) Automotive paint suppliers. They will have a whole bunch of the stuff that we use to do this stuff. Lacquer, Sandpaper, Gun stuff, etc.

2) Cabinet makers suppliers. They will sell stains and lacquer finishes specifically for wood. If you can't find these guys at first call a kitchen cabinet shop and see who they deal with. Most shops are run by friendly rednecks like me and are perfectly happy to steer you to a source.

Where are you located? If you don't want to post it for all the world to see em me and I'll dig out some of my literature and see if I can steer you to a supplier.

Long ago a guy I worked for taught me a neat trick. Everything that can freeze goes into a great big plywood box at night. There is a 5W refrigerator light inside. It burns almost no electricity, but it keeps everything warm. I haven't had a shop with heat in I don't know how long, but my glue stays good. It's also nice to not have stuff thicker than maple syrup even if it doesn't hurt it to freeze so I keep epoxys and such in there.

If your aliphatic type glue is either separated or lumpy it worth the $14.00 a gallon to pitch it and buy new. Any doubt throw it out.

Glue line failure usually doesn't happen until you're completely done and you've delivered the ____ to the customer.

Another thing to remember is that if your wood is too cold or the whole thing gets below freezing before the glue dries you are screwed.