sdshirtman

Its acting like the blade is on backwards. The teeth should be pointing down. Its a new to you tool so I'd personally start with a new blade. I'm also guessing thats a 3/4" blade. Theres no one perfect does-it-all blade but if you're going to be using this for luthiery and will be getting just one new blade, I'd recommend something a bit smaller for an all around blade like a 1/2" or 3/8" w 6-8 TPI. Timber-wolf makes some pretty decent blades that won't hurt your wallet too badly.  

The vibration could be lots of things. Check your tires to see if they have any gunky sawdust buildup on them and if so, clean em off.  That includes underneath the tires. A stifftooth brush and some warm water will help. While you have them off check and see if they are worn. Check the pulleys and the drive belt for gunk too. (Unplug that bad boy before doing any of this). Spin your wheels and see if they are true. Make sure the wheels are tight and that there isn't any play on the wheel bearings (possible worn bearings). This won't be causing vibration but check your guide bearings while your at it. They should move freely. If not, replace them. 

Lastly check out this video from Alex Snodgrass. The man preaches truth. Pretty much the defacto video for bandsaw setup IMHO. 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Band+Saw+Clinic+with+Alex+Snodgrass

Mohawk has lacquer in rattle cans and also has dealers through Canada. 

I personally use several different tools for contouring depending on what level of material removal or detail I'm looking for. 

Microplane rasps are great tools which can remove large amounts of material with a lot of control. With a round course blade I can hog out a belly cut in just a minute or two. I can clean that up and refine my shape with a finer blade and can usually hit it with an orbital sander afterward and be finished. They are fairly resilient tools if taken care of and should last you a quite while before they need replacing. 

https://www.amazon.com/MICROPLANE-SNAP-BLADE-RASP-SET/dp/B000H6BPKG/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1489095895&sr=1-2&keywords=microplane

Shinto rasps are a powerhouse when it comes to hogging off material quickly. They are essentially a series of stacked saw blades spread out across the width of the tool. They are double sided with a course side and a finer side which leaves a fairly fine surface thats ready to smooth over with 120 grit. The drawback is that they are flat and don't work well for precise concave contouring. They are fairly inexpensive. 

https://www.amazon.com/Saw-File-S/dp/B001AX0X12/ref=sr_1_3?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1489096407&sr=1-3&keywords=Shinto

My favorite contouring tool lately are the Iwasaki chemically polished rasps. They have a very tactile feel to them. If you use a firm pressure stroke they will accurately remove a fair amount of material. If you lighten your pressure and stroke you can take off minute amounts of material and leave a very clean surface. These files are better suited for refining contours after you're finished hogging off the bulk of your contours and shape. They do not work well for removing large amounts of material. They are expensive but worth every penny in my opinion. If you could only afford one of these I'd recommend the 200mm half round fine cut version.  If I could only have two the second would be the smaller 110mm half round extreme fine cut version which is just an incredible tool for shaping headstocks, fine tuning neck to heel transitions and shaping volutes. 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dtools&field-keywords=IWASAKI+file

If you're on a budget and could only purchase one type of contour shaping tool I'd recommend starting with the Microplanes set. They are more than up to the task of shaping all varieties of contours found on a guitar. Good luck and I hope this helps. 

Wow that is a mess at the moment. I'd like to picture a hell of a lot of beer to necessitate TWO refrigerators in the garage. 

Since I suggested this thread I'd better participate. Heres two pano's from this afternoon. 

When I suggested this I was thinking more of a thread where you could post stuff your currently working on without having to start an entirely unique thread. So along those lines heres a few shots of builds I have going at the moment. 

Carve top (Out of a piece of 3/8 thick Redwood burl) over black limba with grain matching magnetic cavity covers. 

Ziricote over Black Limba with paddock binding and fret markers. Same cavity cover treatment as the other.. 

Oh man tough decision for sure. I usually dislike Tele's but I'm liking  the travel caster entry. I would have liked to see it without the headstock "nub" where the logo sits. I had to go with the simplicity of the "Teen". I'm a sucker for natural finishes and I'm loving the neck transition. 

Liking the oiled neck!

2 hours ago, Prostheta said:

That would make sense as to why you'd bind the board before mounting, so that it meets the nut slot at its lowest point.

That backbow is a bit of a bummer. Perhaps double-stick taping it to a flat piece of wood (thick plywood, as always perhaps!) might help, plus it can then be used as a glueing caul. That backbow will be counteracted by the pressure from fretting. The only concern is getting it flat for glueing.

I was going to suggest the exact same thing and this is how I would approach the fix. You won't lose much off the bottom of the board. 

On 12/30/2016 at 6:41 PM, KnightroExpress said:

 

 

I'm curious as to what type of finish you used on that. 

 

 I remember reading that thread on MLP when you did that Chris.  Cringy wound you had there. 

Scott, no tendons or major parts. Just the meat part of my palm.  But it hurt like hell and I was scared to look down it right after it happened in fear of what I would see.  I've seen too many grizzly pictures in the past. 

I thought I'd post this little warning here since it's the most visited section of the forum..

First a short back story. I've been pretty vacant from this forum lately due the the fact that Ive been working two new jobs. On top of running my core business and doing my own builds I've been doing repairs with a well known guy down here in So Cal . The other gig has been consulting, designing, and sudo-ghost building instuments for a new line of guitars for the same guy  

Right now the new guitar start up has sold 20 new builds on pre orders and committed to delivering them by Dec 21st. It's a tall order seeing that we were given six weeks to do them and it's me and one other guy doing all of the work and they are all due by Dec 21st.   I've been putting in 12-14 hr days trying to meet this deadline. Anyways, fast forward to 10 PM last night   

  I was routing a bunch of control cavities with the hand held plunge router. I was working at a fast pace and between guitars and was putting the router upside down on the table just to my left side between each piece. (I was in a sitting position while routing on a workmate in front of me),  I got to a pace where I would put the router on the table to my left while it was still spinning down. One of those times it started to fall off the table while still spinning down and in that split second I instinctively reached my left hand out to catch it and we'll, you can imagine what happened next.  I got finished with stitches at the ER this morning around 5 AM.  

I got extreamly lucky and my "bite" was isolated to the fleshy part of my palm and missed all my fingers.  The thought of how much worse it could have gone makes me cringe every time I run it back in my head.  Needless to say my injury could have been easily avoided and I learned a valuable lesson the hard way.

Be careful out there, slow down and don't get complacent with you power tools. It's not fun when they bite back. 

JW

I myself tried Z-poxy on my last build to see what it was all about. I gotta say it was a love hate type relationship. It fills great and is awesome to shoot finish over, but IMHO its WAY too much work. That being said I have a build started with a punky redwood burl top that will be getting the Z treatment. 

BTW Scott, the build is looking, well interesting. I can't say I'm in love with this one personally but I love the way you build dude. I do really like that F-through-hole you did. Cool as shit. I might have to borrow that idea some day. (If you don't mind of course).

Loving this. 

Awesome job on the headstock as always. 

As someone with 25+ years in the T-shirt/garment printing industry this sounds like a shirt problem and not a guitar finish problem. I'd ask him to send you the shirt that was causing the problem and see if you can replicate it yourself on a test piece. Then try the same test with another brand of T-shirt with the same color. 

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

Do you want me to promote this to an article, John? It's a really nice explanation and very illustrative photography.

Sure knock yourself out.  ??

This has been done before but I thought I'd share anyways. I just finished up a build that called for direct mounted pickups. I wanted these to be adjustable but more importantly I also wanted to preserve the threads in the pickup baseplate tab threads that normally get screwed up or drilled out by using regular wood screws to mount the pickups just in case I ended up pulling them out for any reason. 

I ended up using 2-56 Brass screw-to-expand inserts along with matching half inch 2-56 thread pan head screws from McMaster-Carr. These simply press into an eight inch pilot hole and are reinforced with a drop of CA glue.

These screws are slightly smaller than the existing 3-48 threads in the pickup tabs. They do catch the existing threads just a bit but they will screw through the holes but will want to grab the pickup threads when fully inserted.   To avoid any thread damage to the pickup I filed off about an eight inch of threads just underneath the screw head so it wouldn't damage the existing pickup threads once fully inserted and turned while adjusting. I did this by chucking up the screw in a drill and using a file under the head. 

I tried using these with two layers of foam under the pickup but the pickup could be pressed down pretty easily and felt kind of spongy. I fixed this by adding two pickup mounting springs cut in half. They are now quite firm and can be adjusted infinite times without worrying about the screw stripping out of the wood. 

  Pretty simple but it works quite well. 

5 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Hey John! Good hearing from you man. 

What's up Carl,  trying to get back into the swing of things   

2 hours ago, Rockhorst said:

Sounds good., except I don't have an appropriate router bit for that. I'll ponder on this for a few days. The expenses for tools and router bits are slowly going through the roof.

The hardware store carries beech, would that work? I can get the maple filler, but that's a bit more difficult.

Well the nice thing is that once you start to accumulate tools the financial hit of building does lighten up a bit. Beech would work but personally I'd fill it with the same species as you made the neck with.  

If it were me I'd  re-route that part a with a straight bit then fill with a square piece of filler vs a dowel.  Once its dry then route to the desired depth. 

The deeper than intended route dictating your neck thickness is kind of a big deal IMHO. Unless you really like a chunky neck it could be the difference between playing enjoyment or hating the guitar depending on your preferences. Its not too late to fill that slot with a piece of maple and re-route it. Its rather simple to do and remember that once the fretboard on no one will ever see it. 

I fail to see the mistake here.  I think this looks awesome.  Nice job.  If you can't get that dark spot out maybe you can add a subtle burst around the inner part to blend it in.   This is going to be a stunner.  

Jumping in with both feet.  Congrats. That looks like a nice space with plenty of room. Keep us posted with shop build updates. 

Nice job Scott.  This looked like it had its fair share of challenges. Carl said out loud what I was thinking about the binding but I don't hold anything against you for it.  This ranks pretty high on the binding difficulty scale. I'm actually a little bummed you didn't document more of the process and the tribulations that ensued. Kudos for attempting it. BTW how did you handle polishing the parts of the scroll that you couldn't comfortable access? Did you just leave it?

44 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Butt joint = little to no functional strength. Even if you size the end grain, they have very little strength. Can't dress that up I'm afraid!

Carls correct. The butt joint is a recipe for failure. Its time to cut your losses and build another neck from the beginning and do it right. It sucks but you've learnt a valuable lesson. 

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

I've not used Timbermate yet. Does it clog up sandpaper as bad as most fillers?

SR

I've used it on the last 4 builds. It doesn't clog paper as long as its completely dry. That being said it doesn't fill as well as I would like. Will be trying an oil based filler soon as recommended by Tom Bartlett. 

The cupping is an issue you should deal with before gluing the top on. It needs to be flat on the side that will get bonded to the body. Attach some full sandpaper sheets to a flat surface and sand it down level. I think ScottR has some pictures of this process in one of his build threads. Be prepared to use a lot of elbow grease using this method. Actually Scott can probably chime in here as he's done many of his tops around existing necks to cover his deep neck tenons.  

As far as the F-holes, You'll usually want to cut them after you've completed your carve but before you glue the top.

BTW Are you using the oak for sentimental reasons?