henrim

I just want to see if this works. Linking a video I mean, not the video itself. Sorry about that

I put strings on it and wow, that is a funny little instrument. Anyway decided to shave the neck a bit more. It actually felt pretty good but I didn’t like the looks Anyway the thing that struck me while shaving the neck was that I have thousands of euros invested in tools but the tool I like to use the most is a thin piece of sheet metal Gotta love a decently sharpened scraper!

I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject but I have done it a few times. My preferred method is to draw a side view of the instrument in full scale. I do it in Illustrator but can be done by hand on paper. In your drawing you set the bridge you are going to use in its lowest height and draw a straight line towards the nut so that the line is just above the frets. There’s the lowest string position and your neck angle. Illustrator gives me the angle in degrees. On paper you need to measure it yourself. Now of course you don’t ever want to have action so slow that the strings would touch the frets. So you may want to draw the lowest position touch over the frets. And take the nut height in account. But as long as the bridge has a height adjustment you should be good with this method. Obviously some basic trigonometry can give you the angle too but personally I draw the instrument anyway.

Pine doesn’t have much tannins in it. Probably comes out ugly brown without adding some. Tea may well be the recipe. I have used tannin powder ground from various high-tannin content woods. It’s a bit hit and miss game. Same recipe with same wood may not always produce same shade. I believe shade changes with the age of the solution. And how much iron there is. And how pure the solution is or how strong the vinegar is. I try to wash oils from the steel wool throughly before immersing it in to vinegar. I have used plain soap and degreaser without noticing any difference. I haven’t done without washing as I don’t want oil residues in to the mix. Once accidentally mixed a batch without washing and it worked fine on a test piece but still didn’t want to use it.

Steelwool and vinegar? Or something else?

Actually I never really thought about it but this room has different kind of doors than the rest of the building. That door in the previous picture quite likely doesn’t have shellac on it. All the other doors indoors are like in the attached picture. Live and learn.

Here’s a study on the subject (in Finnish). Where they also expected nitro but the door in question had shellac on it. So I guess at least those two were used at the time.

I believe they used different finishes at the time. What ever was available. Nitrocellulose had already mostly replaced shellac in furniture finishing. But these doors have shellac finish. At least the one I repaired a few years ago had (and still has). I was not expecting it to be shellacked but it was.

Yes. They are typical to the era. Shellacked.

Not quite. Although structurally similar and made at the same era (1949) this house has a different layout. 2 full height floors and a basement. With hip roof (aumakatto). But yeah, same problems

Shaped the neck. It is rather thick as I really don’t know how it should be. I reckon it can be chunkier than a guitar neck as the fretboard is so narrow. I guess I string it next to find out

Made the pickup bobbins.

Fretted and did side markers. Left out the blue notes for now. I may add two frets some time later if a feel bluesy enough. Just glued the heel in place with two dowel pins. Not optimal but hope it’s sufficient.

This instrument is a test piece for an upcoming guitar build. So I haven’t done any like this before. The guitar will have a one piece neck. This one has a separate heal glued with couple of dowel pins (or not yet glued. Only held in place with the pins right now). To me this mount is a natural evaluation of what I did with my black single cut that has a bolt on neck and back mounted pickups. Although I’m not the first one to do it this way. See e.g. Travis Bean aluminum neck guitars and Millimetric guitars that were influenced by them.

Not the best ever thicknesser but does the job here.

I like the idea of using reclaimed wood. And in your case the door it came from was not repairable anymore so I think it was perfect idea to give it a new life in a guitar body. The texture on the top/back is really nice. I like your guitar as you built it with all the tin can stuff and mismatched hardware. I have seen a lot of reclaimed wood guitar builds lately, and not all of them achieve the balanced mismatch look as well. Personally I would like to build something with old beaten up reclaimed wood. I guess my approach would to just use the rustic texture on the top of the guitar. Kinda like as an alternative to a quilted/flamed top. Then bind the edges and use pristine hardware.

Yes, that’s what I figured but I feel this one is going to be played more like an electric guitar. The neck is only 36mm wide though so maybe there is no need for radius. I guess I go with straight board for now and radius and re-fret if I feel so after I have played this a bit.

Headstock glued and roughly shaped. Peg holes drilled. I’ll still glue a veneer on top. Which will be painted the same color as the body. Which is white. Also cut a fretboard blank. I guess I’ll radius it a bit. Although maybe it could be straight as well. Don’t know, never played instrument like this. I think the fretboard is some sort Of zebra wood. I’m not sure where it came from. Found it from a pile of wood in the workshop. Nice looking and pretty hard. I’ll make potentiometer knobs of the same stock.

Got the neck bolts aligned with the inserts in the body. Kinda backwards procedure but it went well. Had to run the ferrules through my lathe as for some reason they were around 12.06mm in diameter. Took two tenths away and now they fit into 12mm counter bores.

Started to make a neck. It’s going to be made of maple pieces. Scarf jointed headstock and the heel is glued too. I was going to make a single piece neck but decided to use off-cuts instead. When I routed the truss rod channel I somehow managed to feed the neck blank from wrong direction to the router and it bit a little from the side of the channel. Chiseled the mishap square and glued a piece of maple in. Not a biggie other than the fact it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

I like it. Shape's not really my pint of brew but you did marvellous job matching the headstock with the body. Structurally I see a many themes that are close to the way I like to see them done. And you found a non-ornamental reason to have them fret markers

That is a pretty simple solution but obviously prior knowledge makes things easier. That calculator mod sounds fun. Although I wouldn’t want to relay on a mechanical switch in the long run. Digital Hall-effect sensor is fast and robust. I actually tried using a read relay first because I didn’t have a suitable hall sensor. Read relay works too but I was afraid it wasn’t fast enough to register all the “clicks” when RPM goes high. Like if I was going to mass produce pickups Anyhow, 2€ sensor was the only thing I had to buy so not a big deal.

Got sidetracked a bit from what I originally thought this quick project would be. I could have just wound the pickups and be done with it but I wanted a counter. Luckily it looks like the initial idea works pretty well. So far tested with a cordless drill with a magnet on the chuck. And a hall sensor next to the chuck. Every rotation sends a signal to arduino which just counts them together and shows on a lcd screen. I wanted to use 7-segment leds but I only had three in the shelf, so that’s why the LCD. And the LCD may come handy if I make an other iteration with more functions. But maybe not. I just need to make an arm to hold the sensor beside lathes chuck and start winding. Oh, and the “arduino” in the picture is some sort of knockoff. I would never buy one but that came with some steppers I bought from china. Wouldn’t support such piracy knowingly. All the other boards were hooked to other projects or gone missing. I feel sorry.

Yes, it can’t be Barbales, has to be Barbapaul!

No experience as such as our climate in the Northern Europe is quite the opposite. Although here beside the sea it can be quite humid at times. Anyway, I would probably try to tackle the problem by taking the climate out of the equation by building a simple curing “oven”. Not oven in a sense that you would bake the guitar but some sort of insulated box with a moderate heat source and ventilation to get rid of moisture. I don’t know about your mix but maybe it needs light to cure so the heat source could be an uv lamp. Just thinking, it may not be easy to accomplish an optimal solution. And you don’t want to heat the dimensioned wood much, obviously.