brian d

I can send you some - I have 2 sizes -one of them might be the FWG110 which is the EVO version of the FW57110 (I ordered it a while ago and can't remember for sure what I ordered). I'll measure it when I get into the shed later today. You're welcome to some, but it might take a bit longer to get to you from Australia. PM me if you need it.

You can also dissolve some of the plastic binding in acetone in an airtight jar overnight - the resulting goop is perfect glue for gluing the plastic binding to timber and will even fill small gaps seamlessly.

Very nice. The issue of softness may not be from the finish - spruce is very soft, so you need an extremely hard finish to override this. Great job.

Nice jig. I just hand slotted a couple of fretboards last night using templates printed with wfret. What a tedious job! What size hole does the stewmac blade have? Would your system work with this sliding mitre saw? Or do you know of cheaper sliding saws in Melbourne? Cheers, Brian.

Hi Chris, Loving the paisley material. As you can see from my avatar and guitar designs, paisley is a big influence on my design sensibilities. How about white PVA glue - not as strong as Titebond, but it dries clear. Make sure you document and post the process so we can learn from, and be inspired by your work.

RAD, any idea why it doesn't do well with lams? Everything I've thrown at it so far - from body blanks, to neck lams to acoustic sides - has come out beautifully. FWIW, when I'm close to final thickness, I run the piece through a few times without further adjustment of the drum height. If I don't get to final thickness then I adjust 1/8 turn (equivalent to 0.2mm according to the instructions). I still use the planer (mine is 8" combination planer/jointer) to get close to final thickness if the blank is way thick - the drum sander will do it, but takes more passes.

RAD, any idea why it doesn't do well with lams? Everything I've thrown at it so far - from body blanks, to neck lams to acoustic sides - has come out beautifully. FWIW, when I'm close to final thickness, I run the piece through a few times without further adjustment of the drum height. If I don't get to final thickness then I adjust 1/8 turn (equivalent to 0.2mm according to the instructions). I still use the planer (mine is 8" combination planer/jointer) to get close to final thickness if the blank is way thick - the drum sander will do it, but takes more passes.

Random thoughts- very influenced by my own situation and limitations FWIW -really good hand plane isn't that much cheaper than second hand drum sander (at least here in Australia, a good Veritas smoothing plane is just under half the cost of the 16/32 you posted) -time it takes to learn to use hand plane properly compared with your hourly rate -ease to keep faces of timber parallel on drum sander compared with hand planing -planer (and sometimes even excellent hand plane work) won't handle highly figured timbers as well as drum sander -for that model drum sander in particular, paper changes are really quick and easy (less than 2 mins to change grits) OTOH, hand plane is more "sensual", not noisy, not dusty and certainly more satisfying when (for me "if") you get the desired result. Because this is your income, somewhere in the decision has to be a calculation Return on Investment - how much time you will save and how much that time is worth, potential lost $ if you get tearout on expensive figured timbers. Hope this helps.

I wanted to spend my building time building guitars, not tools (limited time in the shed after work and family), so buying a ready made drum sander was a no brainer for me. I need a drum sander because my skills aren't up to getting the body pieces flat enough without it....no way I'd get anything close to the accuracy of the drum on the Performax if I built one. I'm sure that Craig's woodworking chops are superior to mine, so it might be worth his while to DIY.

I got the Performax 16-32 drum sander second hand recently here in Australia for cheaper than the Grizzly 15" planer. Should be even cheaper there as it's a US made product. I couldn't be happier with the unit - like you I found I couldn't get body blanks as flat as I'd like for laminating - it's a breeze with the drum sander. If that's still out of your price range, they make a 10-20 unit that will do up to 20" in 2 passes. If you can I reckon it's worth going for the bigger one - much less hassle setting up if you do it in one pass.

Amazing guitar. I just looove blackheart sassafrass, and your design and workmanship have really done it justice. What did you end up using for pore filling?

All the entries were strong in design and execution - nothing that could really be classed as "pretty wood" (esp. not blue quilt). I say the theory stands.

Well done to both. This was certainly a month that had many who deserved to win. It's a shame it couldn't have been a 3 or 4 way tie.

How about inlaying the whole thing into a light coloured timber, then cut around leaving 1/2mm or so of the light as an outline, then inlay that into the dark timber fretboard?

I'd have to disagree with dpm99 - this month I'd like at least 3 votes. Haven't voted yet as I'm stuck between (in order of appearance) Black Beauty (simple elegance, organic carve), the Comicaster (fun, eye-catching, truly unique), and the Victorian Muleskinner (artistic, organic, all just works together). It's certainly a tough month to be in the competition.

You've really hit the mark with the dye job on the quilt. With the "pop" and depth of the quilt and the colour it reminds me of the ripples in a swimming pool just after an attractive bikini-clad lass dives in.

Many times an original thought has been thought of before. My latest is to use a P-Bass pickup for a uke type instrument. I know that it has been done with part of the pickup like this but I was thinking of using one half as the neck pup and the other half as a bridge pup running as a humbucker when wired in series. I'd like to pick your brains about wiring such a beast. A bass pickup usually uses 250K pots, a humbucker for more guitar type instruments usually has 500K pots....which would you use for this configuration where it is a bass pickup but being used as a non-bass humbucker? For switching, I was thinking about either a mini-toggle for "coil splitting" either way which would act like a 3 way pickup switch (bridge single/humbucker/neck single) OR push/pull with series/parallel (less choices, but maybe better ones?) OR mini-toggle with series/one coil/parallel (is being able to split one coil and not the other worth having an extra switch?) This is all new territory for me, so any advice would be appreciated.

Hi Menapia, I am admiring the input jack on the back of this guitar. So much so that I started another thread asking how to do it until I remembered that it was here that I've seen it recently. So...how do you do it? While I would love a full tutorial, any tips, potential pitfalls etc. would be appreciated. Brian.

Thanks for the replies, guys. Wes, thanks for the tip about the type of jack needed. I've used similar before, but I'm looking for an alternative where the body carve doesn't leave enough of a flat at the edge to use it. I thought I'd seen this style of input recently on the forum, and then remembered where - Menapia's Power Strat Thingy. I'll shoot a question to him on that thread. Cheers, Brian.

How do you do an input like on the Ibanez S series eg. ? Thanks in advance.

Interesting article about neck joint type and sustain here . While "ease of reset" may be a personal issue, I'm firmly in the bolt on camp for that. Even while building, tweaking the neck angle for more ideal saddle height after first string up has been easy to do. I can't imagine having to steam a joint open to do that. Maybe if I did it a few times I'd change my mind, but I'd be concerned about regluing a joint that has already been glued and unglued. Not sure how multiple glueing and ungluing would affect the strength of the glue joint.

We've all seen different neck joints, but the Nigel Forster Archtop is right out there! From what I can see in the pictures (and I'm only guessing past that), the neck extends all the way to the saddles, and the vibration couples to the soundboard via its contact to the bridge. I'm guessing that the sound transfer to be amplified to the box works like a tuning fork which makes whatever you touch it on ring out. It would be interesting to see how the soundbox contributes to the electric sound - I would expect that the neck could be played "off-the-box". Very cool concept - wonder how it works?

Hi Ray, Happy Cup Day! If you're not trying to change the worn in look, a few coats of shellac will help protect the worn area without affecting the tone of the guitar. Shellac will work well with nitro, if in fact the current finish is nitro. Cheers, Brian.

Well done all. I voted for Air-In-Fall - beautiful work, Chris. There's an elegance in acoustics that sometimes overcomes the "sameness" of the shape to other acoustics. You've certainly done that here. Loved the maple leaf inlays - really have a feeling of gently drifting and floating down. Thanks for your explanation of the changes in bracing too.

Hey Chris, I visited the site 4 or 5 times, always the same background. (Just went on again a few times... now I'm getting the 3 different backgrounds) Chris, my wife uses Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo to remove backgrounds from photos - I wonder if that would help with the rotated photos? Brian.