donald k wilson

finished cuts. There's an extra step showing here, the ridge around the perimiter. I have to find the related pictures, I'll explain...

cutting on the cnc.

Grabbed the ends in the cad program and rolled them out a little bit.

F holes; wanted an old school look, the gretsch f hole is nice but I didn't like the tight tops and bottoms.

I would guess the cost of "hobby" cnc will come down. the real trick is finding and mastering the software to get the results you want. Here is a picture of the "toolpath" of the soundboard. This is the actual carving path the bit takes. The 3d model had to be drawn as an outline, extruded as a solid shape, (depth) and then surface deformed to create the "arch". The resulting skin is then selected, tool info is programmed, and toolpath is generated. (the red lines). The end result is what you see in the last couple of pictures. The machine takes all the credit...

The tap tone is "crisp"? There is a very nice ring and the soundboard and back are responsive to each other after gluing up the body. It has a much different sound than my washburn archtop, (plywood,) I guess it should... I'm looking forward to getting strings on it. Thanks, dkw

Jammy, we still don't use the machine enough! I wasn't sure when we bought it but we just said screw it we'll find a way to make it work. dkw

toolpathed the inside surface, flipped the block, same machine process sanded and ready for the next step, figuting out the f holes.

Roughed front at this point I was making a mold to do vacum formed laminates but it seemed to be coming along pretty well so I switched gears and decited to go for a real carved top.

The wood was an experiment out of 2x4's so if I screwed up I wouldn't be out big bucks for real tonewood. I think the tuner is an old Pioneer and the eq is an old Marantz both circa 1976. They don't make 'em like they used to... Here is the beginning of the machine process, 2x4 blank, 2nd pass with the cutter

I use it for my business, we restore antique wooden station wagons, woodies, (Beach Boys). Out of this we have started taking on "engineered wood applications" to keep the machine busy. I've had a guitar repair sideline for many years and just decided to see if I could put the two together. Voila, the archtop project.

Bingo, Columbo dc spindle with programmable control box. This was not cheap at first but in the long run was weelworth the $$. It is quiet, reversible variable speed and has many specialty functions .

Here is the control station

Jer, here's the machine, Shopbot w/ 4x8 table

And change back from your hundred... I still think you are low but you like your work. You are right to do the job, get a portfolio going and get a feel for the real costs. Keep track of your time and expenses. Nice work, good luck.

thanks for the compliments, I've almost got the old pics into a correct timeframe, more soon. Jer the fret slots here are cut following the radius of the neck. It wasn't that difficult to do. I also cut several flat fretboards with flat slots, the depth of cut changes on a flat board to be radiused after because you need to compensate for the wood being removed. The curved slots are .040 deep, the flat slots ended uo .110 deep. My cutter is .025 r I got it from grizzly #c1478. thanks, dkw

It's very hard to say without at least a picture of what you are trying to do and a better understanding of your expectations of the finished job... As you say, this might be something I am not comfortable with either. I'm willing to look at what you want to do and we can go from there, no commitment until we both are in agreement... thanks, dkw

Sorry, "try" was a bad word choice, I wouldn't want to go with no confidence either... I wouldn't do a first run of anything on a finished product.

That was a little over the top wasn't it... Don't mean to sound like a lecture, I 've made lots of mistakes, wrong combinations of everything... just trying to throw some helpful info out there. There are people doing really nice work with spray cans and brushes, it's all ultimately in how you make it work. thanks for your patience...dkw

Steve, I might be interested in trying the project on the cnc machine, I would need more information. I'm new here so I'm not sure how to get this going? dkw

WOW AGAIN!!! You get the gold medal for salvaging a catastrophe. You've got everyone trying to figure out how you meant to do that! Very cool. dkw

The software available now is pretty sophisticated. not like the old days of manual gcode. I'm not that good... I got lots of help at mimf but I like PICTURES, I'm a visual guy. (3rd grader?)

Different guns will will have different air consumption. A siphon gun draws from the bottom through a venturi created in the head and requires higher cfm and psi just to get the material out of the cup. not recommended for higher viscosity materials. Gravity feed guns have top cups and don't need as much air to get things going. high vis. materials require higher psi and cfm for atomization (spray quality). HVLP guns accomplish this with significantly lower psi but much higher cfm. Atomization is caused by higher vol of air through the tip and many more ports for the material to flow through. Turbine is for air flow, pump is for psi. Regardless of gun style or air source in order to spray well you must move air. Atomization is a "violent" reaction of a static material being introduced to a dynamic force. different materials react better or worse to different systems and there are always tradeoffs. Have I thoroughly confused the issues now... If you are planning on spraying just laquers and small jobs a conventional gun and smaller compressor would probably be fine, you can move enough low vis material If you want to spray high solids catalyzed or wb urethanes or bigger jobs you will need something larger. We spray professionally, I use a Sharpe gravity feed hvlp gun, different tips for dirrerent materials, with a 5 hp 60 gal compressor, (generic cfm ratings for that size) and we can spray all day. With this type of gun and something in the 3 hp 30 gal range you should be able to spray most anything on smaller jobs.. I've been spraying for almost 30 years and I'm still learning. Maybe I'm thick headed

Hey Jay5, CFM is flow of air at the point being measured. PSI is the pressure of air in the tank, gal is the volume of air at given pressure. Increasing cfm at the gun or psi at the gun (more material and or bigger fan pattern) will reduce your volume faster in the tank. a bigger tank takes longer to drain but also longer to fill Cycle time of the motor running the pump is important, compressors running longer get hotter. (smaller pump, larger tank) This leads to condensation in the tank when the air cools down and moisture contamination in the spray. there are filters for this. You dont want to run out of air in the middle of a spray job and have to wait for the recharge, you lose the working edge and will have problems. All other things being pushed aside, (cost,space...) more air is better. I have used hvlp for several years now and love it. the little turbine systems are really handy. blah blah blah sorry, hope this helps, spraying is pretty fun dkw.

WOW... your price sounds cheap for what appears to be really nice work...