henrim

Thanks, there not much more about the jig in this thread. I can take a few pictures, but like said I didn't plan much ahead, so not everything is how I would make them if I was to build a second one. I think it could be simplified here and there without sacrificing anything.

I have seen stuff done in Photoshop that has caused permanent damage to my eyes

Highly subjective. If you like it, it is good. Whether I do or don't is a moot point unless you try to sell it to me Honestly I kinda like it though! But in my thinking the shape of a guitar has other qualities than just the looks. Qualities that either make it or brake it. What is the intended purpose? In an electric guitar the body is there to support all the hardware and to provide the player an ergonomic user interface. Without any thought on ergonomics a square block will do for the body (of course if you are Bo Diddley it will do in any case). Scale length defines the minimum length and that's about it. Add a jack and maybe a knob or two. Ergonomics of course highly depends on the intended use and playing style. If the instrument is only played on stage in standing position, you need to place the controls accordingly, but the overall shape can be virtually anything. Think about Prince's guitars or think about the map of Finland (about the only country that makes a semi-decent guitar shape, btw). As I see it, the purpose of those shapes is to make a statement. They are not necessarily shapes that everyone likes or they are not the most ergonomic shapes. But they have a purpose. If you play classical music sitting on a chair the requirements are totally different. If so, a so called "ergonomic guitar" design may be a good choice. They can be very nice to play, but not everybody thinks the ergonomics driven design is visually pleasing. Personally I spend a lot of time tweaking the curves of my initial designs. In the end I always end up with more or less traditional shapes, driven by the intended purpose and the most important question: Does it look like you can convincingly play dirty rock'n'roll with it? That is my design driver and it automatically excludes too modern approaches and all the otherwise intriguing shapes. I know I lean towards clean simplicity on my designs but I try to keep some street credibility in them too. My 2 euro cents.

Beautiful!

Alright. This is how it came out to be. Like always when you try to cut corners by recycling something you end up using more time than it would have taken to build the whole thing from scratch. Anyways, I think this will work nicely. Not just for guitar bodies, but for painting other things too. The large bearing and weight on the base makes the horizontal movement pretty smooth. Had I built this from scratch I would likely have used a much smaller and cheaper bearing. So in that sense it's a win. Vertical axis is equipped with ball bearings too and with the large wheel it has rather fluid movement. In the picture the fixture is standing freely but it will be bolted to the paint booth table permanently. Or the lowest part will be. Other parts can be be lifted off so the whole thing is not always on the table. I just realised I forgot to add a thumb screw for locking the vertical axis. Should add that.

Someone said something along the lines; mistakes are a good way to learn. Learning to hide them makes you a master. For future reference, when using wood glue (Titebond I or whatever PVA glue) you actually want the contacting faces as smooth and level as you can do. The smoother the surface, the stronger and cleaner the bond. This is because the glue is meant to penetrate into the wood. This way when the glue hardens it forms hooks (sort of) inside the pieces and draws them together. In a good seam there is hardly any glue laying between the pieces. If epoxy is used to glue wood you may want the surfaces rougher, but there’s not really any wood in a guitar that you would want to glue with epoxy.

Not that I have ever tried, but it makes sense not to spray poly(anything) over nitro. Nitro will probably keep living under the clear on top of it and cause problems. The other way around it probably works just fine. But all in all, I have experienced so many unpleasant surprises when coating over with paint that has different base that I rather just use one product on one project. There are still great many possibilities to screw up even with that approach.

Yes it should be level. Any imperfections will be amplified with the top coat. And primer has far better filling capabilities so it's better to have that layer "perfect" before applying color.

It can't be totally flush, but the layer should't be that thick either. All in all, when the top is masked and the sides are painted there will be a ridge between the masked and painted parts. However, In this case there is no need for very thick paint layer as you will clear coat the top anyway and you can do the whole body at the same time. The ridge should even out with the clear coat. With good technique it can be invisible or even totally flush. Guitars like Gibson Les Paul Custom (solid color) with binding may have a visible ridges between binding and the color layer. The edge is still smooth but it's not fully flush. Btw, if you paint the back black, use black primer, so you won't get any accidental contrasting colour showing in the mask edge. And to elaborate my previous reply, you only need primer if you want to have a solid and level color coat. Primer gives you a uniform surface to lay the colour coat on. Without primer you may still have some grain showing, which may or may not be a nice effect. Depends on many variables.

That is a nice piece of wood. It has this smoky dreamy feel to it. Although busy, it has such a color distribution that I can see it working as a fretboard. Personally I generally prefer non-figured fretboards as there are already lines going in two directions (frets and strings), and my simple mind can’t handle too many contradicting shapes and forms. In some cases that I have seen the neck look like twisted or oddly shaped because of the strong figure in the fretboard. But you have found a piece that likely won’t have that effect.

With primer definitely.

Thanks. I have fitted a thrust bearing in to a lathe to ease the compound slide movement, so I know they can really make a difference. I guess I didn’t even think I could find so small thrust bearings that I could use them on these tuners, but as they are available I guess I should order some a test them out.

I´d say you are stretching the word a bit. I’m not saying you can’t get acceptable results with just autosol if the frets are sanded well to a fine grit, but in general in metal polishing autosol is no replacement for polishing wheels and abrasive compounds. You may use autosol or something similar after buffing with a wheel to get rid of the residues and give the piece a final touch.

Me too

When polishing metals it’s common that you need to clean up compound residues. How much, depends on many variables; the compound you use, what kind of polishing is wheel you have and so on. What you could try is to start with a slower speed and see how that works out. All in all I wouldn’t stress too much about it if you can easily clean off the residue with a clean cloth.

I’ve been postponing this one for some time now. Because every time I coat a guitar body I tell myself I need a better way to support the body while spraying it. So far I’ve been hanging them from a ceiling hook, but it’s difficult to have a good access around the body in the limited space I have. So, I finally decided to build a fixture that allows me to rotate the body in every direction. I have done some drawings, but I think I’m going to improvise a bit. I found this used Volvo wheel hub I have saved for the last ten years waiting for a situation like this. Bearing still works well enough for rotating a guitar body. Now I just need to dig my storage a bit more for other pieces and do some welding and stuff.

Probably something on your end. Working fine on iPad/Safari now that I tested.

Well done!

It's been a rough road and you spent some time on it, so congrats for finishing a playable instrument! It is not quite my type of thing, but I do appreciate your use of reclaimed materials. I bet you can get some swampy blues going with it! Or that's the impression I get at least.

Why not? I have no idea what people are afraid of with installing them. In my experience they are easier as they are harder and keep their shape better while whacking them in. Or whatever method you use. Anyway I don’t care much about them. There is a cold feel in stainless steel as material. Probably just a mental image in my head, but I just prefer nickel silver. Daddario?

Good to hear that nothing more severe happened! They are more dangerous and thus scarier. There’s more surface speed on a larger diameter bit. And if the bit grabs it has more leverage than a shank sized bit. And they are more prone to balancing issues.

Fitting and shaping. The bottom wing has an angle adjustment feature. Also neck position will be adjustable in relation to the body. Likely one time adjustments, but they are easy to implement in this type of jig saw puzzle.

Right, although there are those cases when it really should have been the plan A.

This one then. I wasn’t going to work on this today but there was this piece of apple tree trunk taking space in my work shop. Has been there for a couple of years. I thought about squaring it a bit to see what I can do with it. Nicely spalted and cracked. My first thought was make wings for this guitar out of it, but I hesitated splitting it. I may do that some day but for now I let it be and wait if I can find some other use for it. This guitar still in my mind I ended up sawing wing halves from an old furniture prototype I did decades ago. It is straight board glued from strips of European ash and painted black. Color will be gone after shaping these. Depending on how they look in the end I will decide how to finish them. Or heat sauna with them if I don’t like how they turn out. We’ll see.

Scratch that. I don’t know what happened. I just somehow managed to drill one tuner hole in wrong place on the front side of the headstock (backside is fine). It’s not a biggie because the front side is going to be painted and it won’t be visible. But, it is one of those mistakes I like to blame myself for a long time.