Buter

Any reason they appear to cut out body shapes from all of their bookmatched sets? I may order a few sets so if anyone from the UK wants to get in on a bulk order to save shipping, let me know. I'm in Jersey and, quite often, customs doesn't grab my shipments. At least there's no Brown/Darling gratuity (VAT). Cheers Buter

Hi guys I love using my plane as well, although ya'll are probably a bit better with yours than I am with mine. If I would have had a big jointer plane, I probably never would have made this little contraption. Speaking of planes, I find it useful to take a planed edge and put a squiggly pencil line down the face and then put it on this little sanding plate - it's amazing how many times I thought that I had nailed it with the plane and the sandpaper/glass told me I was wrong. I also find this thing useful for pulling a piece off of the table saw and making sure it's true in a matter of seconds. As kammo said, I sometimes attach a straightedge to my workpiece and use a flush cut router bit to get a good straight edge. The more ways of doing a job, the better! Cheers Buter

My current shop would need to be drastically altered to make room for a proper, full size jointer so I had to come up with another way to get accurate joining faces. My solution is quite simple but so far has given excellent results. Like all of my other jigs, simplicty is the key to this one. It is nothing more than an 18mm MDF base with a piece of 10mm laminated glass on top that butts up to a 90 degree fence with a small rebate to let the glass slip under the fence. Cut off a piece of 60 or 80 grit from a roll of sandpaper and you've got a perfectly flat surface with a right angle fence to keep the 'jointed' surface square. Here you can see the little rebate (easily made by putting a 6mm piece of birch ply (great for aking skateboards btw) on the face of the oak I used for the fence and just leaving an appropriate gap) for the glass/sandpaper to slide under to make sure that you have sandpaper for the entire face. If you're wondering about the quality of joins you might get from this, here's a picture of the first body I joined up and it looks like a factory join (not that I'm biased or anything). Nothing groundbreaking but it's effective. I hope this might help someone. Cheers Buter

Thanks guys, compliments from the two of you are well received. It's funny how some of the simplest ideas give us the best results. My next jig is going to be an adaptation of your conical radius Jig, Mk. I hope that it turns out half as well as yours. Cheers Buter

Hi Badger nice build, IMO small inlays would look great on that fretboard because it's got a nice grain pattern but isn't too 'busy' as some of the nicer fretboards can be. Plain would still be cool, though. As a general fretboard binding question ('cuz I haven't done one yet but am considering it), how are most of you doing the corners - angled mitres or overlaping joins? Cheers Buter

I've just rebuilt my shop and included a router table into one end of my assembly bench. I'll be getting another router at some point but for now, my only decent router is doing a bat impression. I was working on a new neck and needed to do a scarf joint for the headstock but didn't want to unbolt the router so I took the opportunity to have a cold one and ponder on the situation. What I came up with has probably been done before and is nothing ground-breaking but for nothing more than some scrap MDF 4 screws and some glue, it gave me a perfect joint easier than any other way I've ever done one. Set the max depth of cut you want on the router and then you don't have to move it again, just move the workpiece down in the jig. This jig is dead simple and works a treat. I'd love to be able to use the method that Perry posted but workspace/budget would have to be altered to get a big jointer. If you wanted to get fancy you could make an adjustable one pretty easily but I like simple things so I'll just make a jig for whatever angle I need. Cheers Buter

Hi Doug Can you let us know how you get on with the 24"x24" bag? The reason I ask is that I just measured my LP and the shortest length I would use on that would be around 30", and that is assuming that you have a bag closure method that doesn't steal too much of the bag's length, I'm not sure how much excess length you need for the double pvc tube type seals. Also, you need to allow significant excess so that when you pull vacuum, the edges collapse on themselves instead of putting more pressure on the seams of the bag. This is something that doesn't really make itself apparent until you put something too big into your bag and have one of the sealed edges let go. I just laminted two necks the old fashioned way (clamps) and I wish I'd used my vac press to do it instead. If I have to re-do two neck through blanks I won't be a happy bunny but I'll post up the pics to show how I would lam a neck with a vac. Thanks for posting this, Mike. Cheers Buter

This should be the mantra of this forum. Its the bags that can be costly. Tell me about it. Buying a custom, premade bag can require a visit to a mortgage lender. This is an old thread on Swaylocks and it will cover more than you would ever possibly want to know about vac-bagging from home including how to make your own bags. The main info starts on post #13 but, if you have the time, there's loads of good posts by other users in the thread, not just the original poster. If you're creative, you can probably find everything you need to build a bag in your own house. Once you get to grips with vac-bagging you'll wonder how you ever got along without it! Cheers Buter

Venturis work well but they can make a hell of a racket, you need a compressor and you either need a completely airtight bag with a non-return valve or you need to keep running air through the venturi to maintain the vacuum which is very noisy. I've built hundreds of skateboards by using the suction side of a fridge compressor as my vacuum source. These compressors can be had quite cheaply from a small appliance repair shop. These things can be left to run for the entire curing time of your adhesive and are nearly inaudable. Another option is to order a manual vacuum bagging kit from Canadian skateboard company Roarockit. Not the cheapest option but if you're new to vac bagging a very sensible starting point - plus you can make a board to skate around your shop! cheers Buter

Just went on to the MLCS site for the first time and I will be ordering a few bits to try out (destroy). They have a great 'how-to' section that I'll come back to when I get a chance to pick up a few pointers. While I was having a quick peek I found this little video showing a good method for reducing tear out. Cheers Buter

It certainly works with stain, but I have never used tru oil. I do this with maple and birch skateboards. I can get razor sharp lines by masking the area that will remain unstained and make sure that the tape goes over the intended 'hard' line. Take a straight edge and a sharp razor blade and cut the tape on the exact line that you want the stain to begin and make sure that the blade scores the wood - you want to split the wood fibres to prevent seepage. Then I use a cloth soaked with stain and put on very light coats, building up the color over days. Get too greedy and you get to sand it back down and start over. Again, I've only done this with skateboards and never with tru oil, but it's worth seeing if the technique will work for geetars. Cheers Buter

+1 FWIW - I'm also beginning to build my own necks and I just picked up a levelling bar from a local, small engineering shop for a tenner. If you have a similar shop or an iron monger (whatever you call a shop that sells metal stuff) near you go and ask them for an offcut of stainless steel or aliminum square tube. I got a 10" and a 24" piece, took them to my modest little shop and put them on the glass/sandpaper leveling board for two minutes and I'm willing to bet they are truer than the $68.46 model you can get from StuMac. Cheers Buter

Thanks, Gents! Two blanks in clamps as we speak. This is me just sticking my toes in the water so I'll post up the results near the end of the month, beginning of next month. Cheers Buter

Thanks Wez 'n Wes Wez - Thanks for the pic, definately worth 1,000 words. Am I correct in saying on your latest build (I think) you cut the headstock and the neck as one piece instead of scarfing? I would have thought that a laminated neck wouldn't suffer from the short grain breakage problem but, again, wouldn't mind a bit of confirmation. Cheers Buter

'Mornin I normally just sit in the corner quietly and learn from you fellas who know what you're talking about but I can't find a definitive answer to this question (yeah, there's some good stuff to be found with our little friend, Search, but this answer evaded me) so I have to ask the first of what I can only assume will be a multitude of stoopid questions. When laminating a neck, which way should the grain be oriented? Do I plane the laminates to thickness and cut to width like in A or plane the laminates to the laminate width and cut to neck thickness like in B? I'm pretty sure that I already know the answer to this one but being wrong is one of my more persistent character flaws. Is a scarf joint for the headstock still preferable on a laminated neck or is it ok to cut the headstock angle into the blank? Great forum and I hope to contribute some useful stuf in the coming months. Cheers Buter

Very nice work. I also love the inlays for the new guitar. My only thought is that if you do the inlay as you've shown (probably just for illustrative purposes) your lovely ladies will be upside down for anyone looking at the guitar as it is being played. Just a thought; again, nice work. Buter

Hi Neil Have you considered using epoxy mixed with graphite powder for laminating your veneers? Any visible glue line would be black as could be. Cheers Buter