Charlie H 72

Drak this looks absolutely awesome. What a unique finish. Green is my favorite color, especially so dark green its almost black. Try some black hardware on it! 

I think it would look great with chrome covers and no rings. Or-possibly-chrome rings and no covers? Idk. Looking great no matter how you dress it. 

Ah interesting.. the more I put this together the more I am beginning to realize that this person miscalibrated the machine. Dims were correct before he did it, and he was calibrating to his piece, not to a ruler on the board. So there must have been something off in his file. I’ll have to talk to him. Good point about the bit too, though I was using the same one the whole time, I should triple check that it is 1/4”. I’ll get some shop time on Tuesday and I will report back. Thanks a bunch for the tips. 

Ok, good to know. Thanks for the tips! Hopefully I’ll have some shop time this week and I can get to the bottom of this. Or at least figure out what’s going on... 

21 hours ago, mistermikev said:

well if you have it calibrated right... could be backlash... (barely understand that concept myself because I haven't experienced it).  could be an issue with your machine losing steps - many causes but one I'm told is unshielded wire.  some say that putting ferrite beads on your cables can help.  another possible issue is your couplers (another thing mikro schooled me on).  I'm not sure if you have ball screws on all axis like i do... but if so then there is a coupler that connects the ball screws to the stepper motor... these can get damaged over time or loosened over time and there is a set screw to tighten them.  I've never actually had problems with mine afa I know but then who knows what awaits me down the road.  the mech side of cnc is not a strong point for me, so barring responses from the great @curtisa or great @mikro... you might try cnczone or perhaps some of the facebook cnc groups if none of the above pan out.

It’s still unclear if it was calibrated right across the board. The people that use the CNC at this shop run different programs. Could calibrating it correctly for one software throw off calibration on another?  And if so I will need to check calibration each time I run the machine because there is no way to know who has used it. I’ll check out the ball screws too. I’m wondering if it’s better to just go old school at this point though. I don’t imagine I will be using a CNC all that often in my near future, so this time may be better spent actually putting into this instrument. I’ll give it one more shot and see where it goes. 

On 5/13/2021 at 2:47 PM, mistermikev said:

no cnc expert... in fact I've only been doing it for a couple months so keep that in mind.   idk what software you use to run g-code... but if I was having this issue I'd first suspect that my steps weren't set correctly.  Mikro actually showed me that in mach3 there is a config that does all the work for you.  you need a very accurate dial guage.  you pick and axis... tell it to move say .85", then measure how far it moved with the dial indicator.  it will set proper steps based on your feeding it back the amount it moved.  I found that if I did this three times (since measuring over such a small length - my indicator only has about 1" of movement) I would repeatedly get the same measurement after... then I knew it was right.  hope that helps.

Thanks Mike. I will have to give that a try. I talked to somebody at the shop who uses universal G code sender (I am using inventables' cloud based software -easel) and he mentioned that he recalibrated the machine for his project-but before he recalibrated it the measurements were correct for me. Is it possible that when he calibrated for g-code sender that it threw off what was happening with easel? I trust that he was doing it right because he was measuring pieces for accuracy into the thousandths of an inch. I will have to go in and try some things out. I may still just cut templates and then use a router. Would be helpful to be able to make more guitars with down the road anyway! 

Just read about the bridge plate-I hadn’t even thought of that! Just mill a curved bridge hahaha. The flat spot sounds good actually. How will the front edge of the bridge meet the curve? Maybe a heftier bridge plate would allow it to be a simple drop-in thing? 

Whew 35 steps but they are all worth it!! That curve looks absolutely awesome. What a great way to make a tele comfy and modern without the sort of afterthought look a forearm contour can bring. 

Another vote for the sunburst! This is looking so cool. Love seeing the process of making the top and back

Oh and I decided on knobs- michael from armadillo said he’d do these guys in stainless steel: 

Hm I am running into some CNC problems-and maybe some of you good people here could help.

I’m using an x-carve, with a Dremel router set to medium speed, .035” passes at 75”/min

Im cutting different parts on different days and getting different dimensions.. what’s that about? I think I ruined my body blank today but I may try to work with it. Neck pocket and bridge pocket are too small (even with a .01 offset) and the overall shape is about 1/4” narrower and 1/8” shorter than it should be. And halfway through the cut the x axis band snapped. It must have been at the end of its service life. It looked pretty worn out. I stopped the cut in time but the last few passes were drifting which made the wonky dimensions even worse.

Is the only way to work with this machine to cut a bunch of templates on the same day from the same material? At this point I want to get off this machine sooner rather than later. Any advice would be appreciated. 

Yup-all too familiar with too much squeeze out, hah. I think the open grained wood is what threw me for a loop here. I'm much more used to gluing up closed grain stuff, so this ash seemed to suck up a lot of glue in comparison. There was maybe a 1/32" bead.. and on the back side some spots with no bead at all. but-the thing is solid! Not worried as both sides were flat, true, and had a full layer of glue before joining. 

minor minor minor upate-haven't had much time and I am waffling between some design options-probably as a means of procrastination. Perfectionism always keeps me in the design stage! But I started cutting the bridge piece from maple. It will take some trickery to get the saddle slot and string through holes lined up on the opposite side if I use the CNC, but I think the pickup route was successful. A funky little burn spot where there was an odd tool path but besides that all clean. Waiting for my pickup from wilde to drill for the polepieces. 

And a design question-which knobs? I like how basic the armadillo plain stainless ones are-goes with the minimalist design, but the WD ones are also very cool and are a bit shorter which I like (.5" compared to full height barrel knobs). Gonna be using vintage style locking kluson tuners in nickel, FWIW. I know its early for this but its nice to know some hardware details so I can build the finish, etc. around that. 

WD: nickel, .85" DIA, .55" tall

Armadillo- stainless, .75" dia x 1?" tall

here's a pic of them from a reverb listing- armadillo's product photos are not good. 

It seems like a pickguard would influence tone, in terms of reflecting xyz frequencies back at the strings, but I’m not going to get caught up in that-the main thing that needs to improve to influence how I sound..is me! 

my friend said this about ceramic pg:

It seems like more trouble than it’s worth to do ceramic. Probably years of experimenting. And I don’t have access to any ceramic equipment lmao

but I think I figured out that I really need to experiment with torch firing enamel on copper. Pretty simple process, and I could make any shape I need quite easily. The enamel is basically the same as ceramic glaze, and the metal will be a much better substrate. Maybe it could get heavy but I will use light gauge copper. That’s all down the road though.. 

Cow horn-I like that idea! I’ll see what I can drum up. I’ll also call up a few friends who do pottery and see what they think. I’ll report back.

I’m not trying to be the plastic police here. It’s not an environmentally friendly material, but if that was my main concern I would find some plastic sheet to repurpose and save from a landfill. And I probably wouldn’t be building a guitar in the first place either. I just don’t like the way plastic feels, and I do love the feeling of good pottery. So maybe there’s a trail to follow there. 

Sure-I’m familiar with the process, just wondering about the viability of ceramic. It could be a different method as well-to shape before firing or make a flat sheet stock, how thin can it get, etc. 

Ok ok more pointless musings.. just thinking that the pickguard is one of few electric guitar parts that is, by general definition, plastic. And I think  we can do better! Leather is cool but very country, (nothing wrong with country!) and recycled materials and Masonite work great for some instruments, but not all. I tried making one from shellac but it was a failure.  is there more out there? Anybody ever seen a ceramic pickguard? I know there’s a chance of chipping, etc, but if it is well supported on the wood, could it work? 

I think I like the squirrel better than the YT video-wonder if it has gone to production or if it’s just a proof of concept. 
 

Hah! Maybe you should try guitar hero! I’m the same way though. Do they make player guitars like player pianos? It could make me sound a lot better

Thanks to both of you! I’m happy with the glue joint and the way the grain lines up. Maybe I’ll make the finish more transparent than I had originally planned-but that’s way down the line. I thought I put on too little glue at first as there wasn’t much squeeze out but it turned out fine.

I cut a practice guitar out of plywood on the CNC yesterday, and although there are a few spots that need to be tweaked, I like it. Going to beef up the headstock just a little and adjust the cavities so the neck and bridge fit better. They are too tight right now. I tried to cut the body today  but the CNC was down.. such is life at a shared shop! If it’s still down later on I will just use the plywood guitar as a template. 

(Corners chamfered on the bridge piece with a knife because it wouldn’t fit at first)

I was thinking of something more like depressions than bumps so it wouldn’t cause any discomfort. I do use my thumb on the low e relatively often. But I realized that the main function of side dots, at least for me, is to tell me where I am going, not where I am. If I can’t tell where I am by the sound I’m hearing-I don’t think a little bump will help me out! 

On 4/30/2021 at 10:21 AM, Drak said:

My thoughts on it...still lovin' the creme!

Me too! 

The color looks great with some clear and the whole thing just pops! On the home stretch now? 

Awesome!! A really exciting array of skills came together to make this thing. Can’t wait for the final sound clips. 

Well I should Google before I post.. lots of people talking about it on various forums but I have yet to see pics!

I was just thinkin’-why not have little dimples or something else tactile instead of side dots in a neck? Does anybody do this already? Feel your position rather than see it. Or see it too if they are big/obvious enough.