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donald k wilson

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About donald k wilson

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    arlington, vermont

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  1. Ward, looks like you are on the right track with the curves now. My only thought would be weight. I have a Washburn delta blues (335) that I play alot. It is a true semi hollow body, not chambered, and still gets a little heavy in prolonged sessions. My archtop is easily half the weight. I'm working on a reduced weight center block/feedback supressor for 335 style guitars right now. At any rate, your project looks good, you could "lose" more wood from the the center block chambers w/o sacrificing structure if you don't want to get into bending sides. You can also drill lots of holes all around the edges and in the center core if you don't trust thinner sections. Keep plugging away. dkw
  2. After building both archtops and flat tops I dont think archtops are that much more complicated. Carving the top maybe but there are several straightforward ways to get thru this process. Drill press, router, grinder attatchments, chisels and planes... The neck (fretboard) is not attatched to the soundboard, the bracing is much simpler, the bridge is adjustable for intonation not glued, and adjustable for neck set, string height and neck angle. All potential problem areas in a first build flat top. All guitar construction requires attention to detail, if you can do that and have patience for a carving project you could do an archtop for a first guitar, lots of people have... good luck, dkw
  3. Hey all, sorry I didn't reply sooner, been busy and not paying attention... Ward the turbocad functions took a little bit of fiddling to fine tune. I start with surface deform which has elasticity stretch and bend inputs so you can develop the curve or "arch" . I start with a full 17" top profile and reduce it in scale to allow for a 1/2 " perimiter "flat" Next experiment with surface deform settings until I get a curve resembling the arch I'm looking for. Turbocad has a drafting pallet which creates sections of the solid for verification. After I have the curve I want I go back in and fine tune the shape using deform to point. Again there are elasticity, stretch and bend settings to fine tune but this function allows fixed control points and isolated surface modeling for small adjustments. I have worked up several guitar tops based on an archtop I own, two sets of plans I bought, and my own sense of "curves". The turbocad settings are very intuitive, the more you play with it the better it gets... Using the turbocad language to interpret your curve it looks like you have a very rigid surface, (no elasticity), deform to point in the center of the lower bout and no tangent edge relationship (flat or recurve) Instead of an arch you have a cone... You need to relax or inflate the surface so it arches tangent to the control point and recurves tangent to the edge. I cant really read the control functions in the screen shot but it looks like you have the menu options to do these things. Just experiment and compare you'll get there. Buy Benedetto's book its well worth the $$ and there is a set of full size templates you can take control points from. I'll keep watching, just post back if you have any other questions. Good luck garry, I'm not really sure on the hours, I worked part time little bits here and there (some bigger) over about 4 months. Lots of r+d time... I'm building two more right now and keeping track of the hard hours so I have a baseline. I use turbocad and bobcad back and forth, both have their proprietary version of cad file but import export pretty cleanly with dxf. bobcad generates the toolpath files as .tap. I use a shopbot cnc with a 3hp columbo dc controlled spindle, 4'x8' table 8"z axis. Shopbot has a very user friendly program and converts .tap (generic g code) to their.sbp proprietary controller language. I have been using this setup for about 6 years now, (various upgrades) and no real problems. B.M. Chair? Good Luck, I'll keep checking back. thanks for looking, dkw
  4. Mine changes around the guitar down to 5/8 at the narrowest point. Why not set it up so it feels good to you while you're holding it?
  5. I swear I'm not an agent of the devil, I'm just a right handed country boy with short hair... Wow interesting stuff people!?!? M69 you are describing a project I'd like to do with an lp double cutaway body style. I love the p-90 sound. I haven't decided on the colors yet (my 16 year old daughter likes the cherry cream burst, I don't know if thats good or bad ) Here is an overexposed photo which came out with the "honeytone". Damn now I've got another distraction... thanks for all your input, really, no seriously...
  6. Thanks again for all your interest and support. Its nice to see that on an electric guitar site all you shredders can appreciate a vintage acoustic jazz box. As I said, I'm not done here. see you, dkw
  7. The bridge, old school two post adjustable fretwire saddle, it really rings. Wooden tailpiece.
  8. Alright then! as promised here are some "real" pictures of the "finished" guitar. About a month of settling in, second set of strings, broken trussrod, (crap import!) and new fretboard. I have it dialed in now, action is very low like an electric, Daddario phosphor bronse 10's. Very responsive to different playing styles with good projection and full sound. It took longer to settle down than I expected but I made the neck very "thin" for a friend with small hands to try for size. I couldn't have hoped this would sound any better, I was prepared for disaster every step of the way. (I even got a couple!)
  9. The red is closer to the traditional sg cherry, I color matched it off a scan from a catalog picture. I'm still playing with this, the trick is tying it all together around the guitar and up the neck. I'm glad you all got me going in this direction, this has been a great experiment in designing a burst not an "explosion". more soon, thanks, dkw
  10. I wouldn't cut thru the shoulder of the guitar. you will have a long end grain glue joint (weak) at 90 deg. the stress of the string tension. A nice clean parallel to grain glue joint along the p/u pockets would be stronger. Save as much of the original wood as you can, thats why you are doing a repair in the first place, do a nice workmanly job of it and let it show as what it is. You can do alot with stains and glazes to match woods up or you can use totally contrasting materials to make a statement. Lots of choices, but an old guitar you have some history with and you brought back to life is very cool! dkw
  11. Picture 2 a little braver on the cherry body color... The mask tools in cp change the file save formats, I have a little more homework to do to get the cream burst overlaid in this picture. There is way too much color choice in the program, if I was working on the guitar I'd just take what came out of the can!
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