krazyderek

i baught one, and the first one they sent men, one of the side plates were bent so it kinda threw off the squarness. I also didn't realize they weren't square out of the box, lucky for me i discovered this after making an entire fretboard crooked so i was quite disatisfied, so i called and wated another, which they sent and it arrived about a week later. it took me about an hour to get it resonably square, but i still have to use a carpenters square to draw a centerline on the board after all the frets slots are cut, which is usualy not parallel with the jointed edge of the board. I called them about this, cause in my opinion a mitter box should be shipped ina usable state, i mean look at those rinky dink wooden ones that have 90, 45 and 45(the other direction) you can get them from the hardware store and they cut to the right angles, but nooooo something that's 10 times more is thrown together on an assembly line and it's up to the comsumer that's paying to much in the first place to struggle for 2 hours just to get a "fairly" square mitter box

So IMO for a tool that is supposed to be used for such precise work, they should really re think how they manufacture and set them up. i mean for about half the price i coudla just thrown some peices of steel together inaccuratly with the same type adjustability screw holes and spent the same amount of time setting it up.

so my rating a more then generous**½*

but i would not buy this product again, or at least till they improve the design and factory setup

ya, and remember you can always take more wood off if you need to, but you can't put it back on... well with the exception of wood filler and glue mixed with sanding dust.. but that's no good on transparent finishes.... so just take your time

actually i have a basswood neck in the other room, but it has a purple heart strip in the center.

well a boogie board is 2 feet by 4 feet.. so, 8 feet of 1 foot by 2inches... then just cut in half and glue together

76.80 $ for 8 ft of douglas fir, and odly enough, the same for 8 ft of basswood, odd... but they're both going to be about twice the weight as B grade balsa,

Could douglas fir ever be used for necks or bodies? it's about the same weight as basswood so.... maybe?

i take the econo rout, and just use a ¼inch rounding bit with a bearing at the end like a flush trim bit. takes about 2 minutes to set up and do, but if you have a arm rest and chest carvings you'll have to do those sections by hand unless you wana mess around with adjusting the routers height like 20 times per pass..

you could just pick up a set of the floyd rose ones that sit in a threaded cylinder?

yup, 160$ was the quote for 8 feet of 1 foot by 2 inch board, which is what' i'll need, omg... then the fiberglass stuff, the resin for the glass, sanding... and some "exotic" wood for structural strength in the board it's self.... but the purple heart will only be about 12$ for more then enough..

http://www.riley.com.au

this place uses balsa on at least some of their boards, probably for a more traditional board, and as such they probably sell for more, but at least i know they're used in that field..

well i've turned by attention to douglas fir and basswood the next 2 lightest woods, they're about twice as heavy but half the price, per board foot that are available to me localy...

thanks guys,

i agree with brian, you might want to continue shaping the right side of the guitar in the pic if you're going for a strat copy, unless you're going for that exact design shape, in that case it's kinda funky looking! reminds me kinda of the peavy wolfgang model. what is that wood?

ya my friend makes skim boards in his basement so he's going to show me how to fiber glass the bottom and i guess i'll just use the resin on the top to keep it see thru (wood coloured?) or should i put the fiber on top as well? i'm guessing a nice thick layer (many coats) of sanding sealer would be a really good idea? should i try some laquer? or just go to fiber glass once the sealer is all on and sanded smooth and flat?

Thanks alot brian, i really appreciate this.

Ok, well i don't really know where to start looking other then surboard pages, but i went to the beach today and i thought it would be fun to make my own boogie board, cause good ones around here at like 70$,..... and well... the cosco ones are 10$.. but you pay for what you get..

So i'm going to use Balsa wood for obvious reasons. I'm worried about crushing it when i joint, glue and clamp 2 or 3 peices together :S, anyone worked with this wood before? i was thinking about using purple heart, beech, or some other really hard in expensive wood strips in between the peices for lateral strength, i got my friends board to copy the specs off of. Anyways, hope this isn't to annoying, i'm seriously not trying to be an a$$, but any advice on the carpentry side of this would be appreciated

if it helps i'll paint a guitar on the top side of the board ?

laminating is a cool idea, i've tried it with basswood, with a 1/2 inch stripe of purple heart up the center of the neck, neck isn't done yet so i don't know it it will hold but if it does wooohooo what a light neck!!!, but something along that line.. i highly recomend purple heart, with the properties of both maple and ebony it's a great neck wood and fingerboard wood too! it's also one of the cheapest woods strong enough for necks.

When looking for maple, you want to find a nice flat peice that doesn't have very much of a bow or bend in any direction, and also try to look out for knots, as this will be a center point for bending and change of grain direction ( a pain in the ass when sanding or planing) i know this is hard if the board is really ruff cut, but most knots should be fairly visible, idealy you want a flat completely straight grained board that's about 1inch by 3inches and about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long, please, someone correct me if i'm wrong here, but that just seems to make sense to me.. any extra wood you need for the width of the head stock can be taken from a different part of the board, like where the neck is skinniest, then glued to each side.

well.... that was a nice article..... lol i mean post....

for a sealer on the wood i'm using sanding sealer, available at most harware stores in the paint section.

i'm in the same boat Gfrenzy, i'm trying to get ahold of TSL, he's supposed to be the "sanding master" or so i've heard people say here.

actually i'm hanging on the outside of the airplane, i just forgot my parachute

ya i taped off the neck pocket and i was going to tape off that part of the neck so that it was nothing but wood touching at the joint, i heard it was alot better for tone, but should i put some sander sealer on either/both to protect the wood? or is leaving it bare ok?

you might try buying a sheet at your local harware store, in the glass/ plexiglass ile, but i the thickest i've seen it around here is 1/2 inch..

good point woodfixer, but if i am a newb and i'm trying to use stains, a painting job where thickness is going to affect the shade of the colour, should i really be using a spray gun? i feel alot better with a brush or roller, just gives me more control so i can even things out colour wise. i duno i've always been afraid/hesitant of non self powered tools i mean, there's controls and an off switch, but i just seams like an elusion of safety

well that's what he told me, i guess i just assumed it was "laquer", and if by compents, you mean the stuff that requires a catalyst, that's what he uses, i think it's just a safety precaution to protect his investments. so no one else has heard of doing something like this?

so i've heard about this shrinkage (lol), how do you guys get around that (another LOL), but seriously, i talked to a guy around here and he does, polyurethane laquer, a clear polyester coat or 2, and then another coat or 2 of polyurethane laquer, and he says (with 20 or so years of experience) the polyester middle coat acts as a brick wall, it anchors both layers of polyurethane on either side of it to reduce the shrinking and avoid cracks and what not down the road....

anyone else do something like this? has any one actually ended up with cracks or stretch marks of some kind a couple months/years after finishing the guitar?

hey i duno if you guys moved off onto msn or something, but i'm kinda curious about this too, i assume you just tape off the edge of the finger board with painters tape (gotta love the funky colours it comes in now ) and then paint like normal???

you might find that you have trouble printing vector images unless you have access to a printer that interprets Postscript, if you have trouble try to export the image into a raster format like a tiff or jpeg

i've used post script to print out hacky sack designs to scale and i had no issues at all with my dinky little HP deskjet 600C and regular windows drivers

most replacement pickup manufacturers like seymour and dimarzio have recomended distances from the string to each side of the pickup for the "optimal" sound, just look for the distances for the PAF's, they're probably the closest things, i think it's listen under the FAQ's section for dimarzio..

ya, depending on how big of a change it was you might want to think about reseting the intonation, but one venture at a time i suppose

well, that's a honkin reply lgm, thanks for all the input i think i'm going to try the chrome FX....... and OMG i just looked at the prices, 3600$ US and the equipment is another 3600$US... well F*CK THAT!!!!! hopefully the sheeting is a bit better priced..

i think i used something very similar when i made this computer desk, and i think i only used one coat of laquer and the roller left like goose bumps but i didn't really care, i wasn't going to wet sand and buff a 20$ plywood desk.. good enough for a keyboard and some speakers:) what brand was your roller? does it seem really nice? or just your average foam roller that won't melt with laquer? and i'll have to pick your brain about all the stuff you did, after it, all the sanding and what not..

well i'm cheap, and thus i'm going to take that road for painting my guitars untill i can afford to invest in some good spraying tools. I went to home depot and got some sander's sealer, stains, and outdour varathane laquer (supposedly "diamond" hard after 4 coats), all of which are water based for easy clean up and what not.

Anyways right now with the sanding sealer i'm just using those cheap foam brushe's (if you can even call them brushe's...) but i was woundering, once i get to doing the laquer coats, i should probably get a good brush for it, any recommendations?.

I've read some articles on the web that say a good brushed on paint job is better then any spray job, anyone here agree with that?