StratsRdivine

Waaayyy cool!! Almost looks like dyed Sapele or another figured wood. That is not quilt figure, though, sorry. Its actually mottle grain, similar to Bee's wing mottle, where its a combination of ribbon stripe (where the grain spirals around the circumference of the tree, then switches direction every rainy season (every 12mm to 30mm, radially) for the tree to grow stronger when piercing the canopy), and flame/curl - but wider waves. Not at all quilt, which is buckling compression wood (or fungus - noone really knows), resulting in quilt billows - no spiral grain, as north american woods aren't as tall, and don't need to pierce any canopy, thus not needing interlocked spiral grain (ribbonstripe).

Holy Crap, if you could eat exotic wood, this thread should get a Michelin star. You gotta send closeup pics of that figured ebony - amazing. Never saw that before. If you ever want a seriously figured carbon fiber fingerboard, I will be introducing solid 4mm figured fingerboards in about two months. The one below is epoxy filled face for the cast-in-place inlays, but my latest panels are solid with figure running the whole way through, regardless how deep the radius is sanded. Fret slots cut great with diamond blades.

Finally got a break to start working again on the first ever figured carbon fiber guitar. Blinding the frets day. I pulled my laser out of focus to "cut" U-shaped grooves in the clamping caul for epoxying them in. Cast-in-place Dichrolam inlays is also a first ever.

Here is a recent video showing the quilt in 3D - skip to end, but the previous info gives context. BTW - I just shipped a quilted CF panel 14 x 21 to Ron Thorn. Ever heard of Thorn Guitars? Test video (Kickstarter) showing products leading up to the quilted CF

Quick mockup pic of the CF guitar to send to someone Steve met with huge connections (Steven Tyler, Nuno Bettencourt, etc). Waiting for the Wenge neck to get finish shaped so I can glue on the CF fingerboard. Then on to epoxy in frets, cut and buff, setup and go to stage.

Evidently, Nuno Bettencourt saw Steve's performance at the sold out Escape concert Tuesday on video, and asked about the cool guitar he was playing. Steve just sent him several pics and the new carbon fiber body and fingerboard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ_6LJi6Lvs Here is video that shows the 3D effect of the quilt figure in acrylic and carbon fiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93KzPSzuF1E

Those are pretty cool. Automotive 2K urethane is the all around go to finish for stuff like that - higher adhesion than nitro, UV blockers to retain color, buffs to high gloss, or lays down perfect if sprayed right, solvent resistant, and more scratch resistant than anything - you need that in a pickguard. one gallon is usually minimum order (70 bucks), so you need to use it up, as the hardener can go bad. I buy one gallon 4:1 ratio, and buy pint hardener when I need it as I use up the urethane. If you don't spray, then pour it on, and pour it off, then hold level.

Thanks, Carl! True, that the most common acrylic you will buy is extruded, which can work fine for most things, even pickgaurds, as long as you do not apply alcohol to any edge that has been heated (machine sanding, flame polishing, etc.). Face should be fine. I would sand the side you need the marbling to bond to, for better adhesion. Acrylic is hard to get adhesion to, unless methylene chloride is added to the paint (which would flash off anyway, not useful). or solvent cement is the actual paint binder. True also that cast acrylic will sand easier, and will be more resistant to alcohol, but also more resistant to paint bond. The cracking issue is likely your biggest challenge when drilling screw holes. You need light pressure with sharper angle "pointy" bits, then light pressure and really slow RPM's when countersinking. All bits need to be really sharp.

A word of slight warning in case any of you want to try BobCad. Its a professional level CAD software that is designed for machine shops, but if you buy it, BobCad will hound you incessantly with promo emails, and call you incessantly by numerous sales people. Personally, I found QCAD to be so intuitive, that I self-learned it in one weekend, in order to send huge sheets of SST for laser cutting. The dxf format has never given me any issues when I send dxf files out for waterjet, laser, and CNC machining, as I do quite a bit of exotic fabricating of composites, glass, SST, plastics, etc. All for fifty bucks download from Ribbonsoft. I'm sure TurboCad is just as easy, yet there has not been a drawing I cannot do yet - it has all the features one would want for 2D cad. When I need to laser cut my fingerboards, I used the StewMac fret position calculator, input the measurments into QCAD, then cut a template on my laser, and it lines up perfectly against a Strat neck. Tons of uses for luthiery.

+1 on mind blown with that (not so) hidden imagery.

I will be doing a set neck guitar soon, so I plan to mount a steel pin coming out of the butt strap lock and a threaded rod pin angling out of one of the tuner holes in the neck,(which would have expanding rubber bushing or two nuts and barely shouldered washers), so that the whole length would spin like a pig on a spit. Less tasty, but more shiny pig.

yea, unfortunately this is just the beginning of birth pangs. Gotta get enough interest generated at NAMM and through my architectural reps to warrant the real patent filing in a year, and hopefully find investors to help with the 20 grand needed. But when I see Steve Raz play my guitar every weekend, it all seems worth it.

Yeeaaaaaa! Happy am I. The patent just got filed today, so I can sample this stuff to anyone interested. If the mods determine that this is not appropriate, since now this appears like I am using this forum as a sales tool, then I will be happy to delete this post, and just focus on building guitars with the Carbon Fiber. Here is more detail on the carbon fiber sheets: Maybe a little background first. I make textured architectural panels for a living (making a whole 12 grand yearly income for the last four years because I spend $60K per year on R&D to make stuff like the CF Quilt), with wave patterns, bubble patterns, etc, and found that my favorite was an organic pattern I call "Dune" in which I made molds based on sand ripple patterns from photos of dunescapes on the planet Mars, from photos by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft uploaded to the HiRise site via NASA / JPL / Arizona U. So my "Dune" panels are from actual Martian dunes - see below. I was so intrigued by the natural patterns, that I thought "What other natural 3D patterns can be done?", so then quilted maple hit me, since its patterning is similar to dune, but with closed "quilt billows". At the time I was only back coating the Dune and the new Quilt with metallics, as it traces the texture so nice and is easy to apply. But since I had been using highly figured woods in my furniture business for the last 30 years, its obvious that linear fibers are a more accurate depiction of wood figure, being itself, linear fibers. Then ordered CF sheets, and it worked the first time I tried in acrylic, then glass, then in epoxy for gluing direct to wood. I made the 6A quilt molds (enhanced patterning, since I had the creative freedom to draw the "quilt" pattern as I wanted it to be, thus 6A, not 5A grade quilt) 25 x 33 to get two guitar faces from one sheet, and the fiddleback mold can get one guitar or several fingerboards (18 x 25). Planning on large molds to fill my 5' x 12' laminating ovens, so I am ready for production. At about .090" it machines like wood, and can be glued with titebond directly to wood, so you would use it like thick veneer. The epoxy face requires a topcoat of your choice, Nitro would work, but 2K urethane has UV blockers. The epoxy is a special type that resists blushing and fading, and will last the life of the guitar as far as I know. I used the exact same epoxy on my boat, and with constant sun, for ten years, it is still crystal clear. The best part, is that it does not expand / contract along its length at all, as the fiber is incompressible, but it does allow movement in the width, across the "grain" of the fibers. The Dune below is what started it all. Then is a cross-section view of the 6A Quilt in Carbon Fiber.

Thats precisely why I mount round conduit to my neck pockets that then fit into holders that allow me to spin the body right after spraying to kill sags before they happen. Not new, of course as the pros have the same spinny things, but the conduit / metal pipe idea was quick and easy. Crazy sweet spray job Chris!!! It is a pleasure to wet sand flat, well flowed-out finishes to begin with. Pic below only shows one of the two pipe rests in the lower left corner, but you get the idea. Spinning it while spraying is the best part, but spinning after done every few minutes kills any sag / run potential.

Good response, Mr. Natural. If you removed enough hardware, you can random orbit sand quicker to get past the white. Don't use a belt sander - takes extreme skill to not get dig pits. But you do need to remove the surface til white is gone. Then it should be easy from there to fine sand, then re-stain. The stain should take pretty evenly, even if some stain is still present. If you intend to gun spray, then you can mix slight amounts of transtint into your clear to help with even darkening, but that is advanced, requiring perfect lay down of even coating mils in order to not get runs or sags, which are near impossible to even out later. If you do spay a tint coat (which can look better than dye stain direct on wood), then thin the lacquer twice as much as normal for topcoats.

Alright - just sprayed the new CF fiddleback that I cast this week with better "onlays". Mold was a real pain to hit the 9.5" radius, but got it, however, it cast with a twist, so had to grind off quite a bit in the opposite two corners prior to coating. PRS uses Dichrolam in their bird inlays, and it is elegant, but I had to show them how its done. Everything went exactly as I outlined in my July 13th post above so far, except that I just ordered two diamond blades with .023" kerfs, so fretting might be easier.

Wow - it took the last day til now to catch up on your progress. If there was an award for most outside-the-box design, I think you nailed it, and with grace. Fine work - lots of times I thought "millenium falcon-esque"

Waayy cool man! Especially the graceful transition into natural wood in the neck. Reminds me of "Terminator: Judgement Day" when the T-1000's arm slowly transitioned from human arm into a sword. A little tip on rattle can vs 2K - rattle cans are cut with solvent at least 2 times more than 2K urethane at gun viscosity, so they will spray out the tiny orifice. Cans give you maybe 20% solids, while 2K is close to 50% solids. Therefore two wet heavy coats from can might yield 2 mils dry, while two wet coats 2K gunned on will give over 12 wet, then dry to 6 mils, reducing sand through chance. Of course, the greatest tip on leveling out orange peel is to flat sand well away from any edges, then when done, I do one or maybe two passes over rounded edges with 1000 or finer. Same with buffing - never buff edges til last, and then only lightly.

I guess the other question would be what glue did you use for the bracing - titebond or hide glue? Either will move a little with heat, (hide obviously more, and possible for full delam is hot enough). So consider the heat part with glues. If it were at perfect radii when glued, then adjusting humidy back down should be fine, but I am concerned about micro shear / creeping of the glue joint at the braces, considering there is a lot of shear stress on them right now.

The humidity has been a curse this spring for me too, and June was the worst. I have a ceiling mount shop heater that I built a shelf under for curing coatings, speeding epoxy cure etc. and the gentle heat coupled with your AC would really do it, if you had a low temp heater hanging over the top. Lower humidity will work too, but just take longer, but it will work. Its hard to believe that it can go back, but it will, once dried. I'm sure the humidity up in Toronto has been as bad as here.

In all my years, I never thought of that as a planing jig to hold irregular shapes. Need to make one now - my round brass dogs are barely ever in the right position. Such a wealth of info in your pic - I never applied sandpaper to the bottom of my plane either, just struggled holding paper over a block of wood for flat sanding. My two 3M stickit blocks are great though - holds the rolls and you tear off old, and pull new, but the felt bottoms aren't good for flattening, so the plane is better with the built in handles.

Yep, That fingerboard was just the first hand cast test. Perfect to see if the diamond blade cuts through without delaminating the resin and / or gumming up the blade. It just dusts right through perfectly. Making a new dedicated mold today with the 9.5" RAD for casting bottom up, which will eliminate bubbles entirely. I'm actually fine sanding the new CF fingerboard right now in prep for the inlays prior to casting (the jig above radiused the Wenge substrate perfectly). The new one will have a narrow border of my Black Sea Dichrolam (blue/violet color) around each Red Burl delta. After casting, I will radius sand it, then airbrush the "vapor trails" like the last guitar (white wisps behind each gold burl inlay) but use the red candy tint, (to match the Red Candy CF Quilt body) then topcoat with 2K urethane, then cut and buff, then cut the fret slots and epoxy the frets in. So far it all works in my head. Reality is often a different story, but I have rehearsed this many times and can't see a problem yet. If you do, I am all ears.

That is exactly what I meant about logging a lifetime of images and motifs into your brain's image library, so you can tap into it when designing. Kindof. Then there is the "just feels right part". Don't you just love that? I think that's the most addicting part.

Well, the new diamond blade fret slot cutter / fingerboard radiusing jig works great for my figured carbon fiber fingerboards. Two major purposes: cutting radii in fingerboard wood when the dado blade is in the mini 4" saw, and then cutting the .035" wide fret slots in the finished CF fingerboard with the diamond blade. Yes, its the thinnest blade I could find, and yes its too wide for frets. However, I plan to epoxy the frets in anyway, so it should work fine. My clamping caul will center the frets with thousanth inch precision. Very little runout in the the blade for virtually zero wobble since I refaced the flanges like I do with all my tools (carbide reface while spinning). Then the swing bed is solid as a stone - very little racking at all due to the large acrylic faces (oiled) at the hinge bolts. Adjustable height bed, and adjustable radii. My laser marks the fret slots (dead on), and its very easy to climb cut the slot right between the two laser lines.

All I could afford was an oversized electric trolling motor, as opposed to small 4 stroke, plus the simplicity of it. Turns out that was a good decision, as my wife and I love the quiet drive and reliability. I upgraded it to the largest ever made - a 112 lb thrust 36V Riptide, in which I added a higher pitch prop, so it hits hull speed at 75% power, which is fine for all out boating (three AGM batts give me 6 hr run time). I am glad the boat is in this discussion, because apart from my latest guitar being the 2nd most fulfilling project I have done (boat being #1 by a long shot), boat design is very similar to guitar design, at least for me, from an aesthetic perspective. You can make a very valid argument that highly flowing, aesthetic curvilinear design simply comes from the gifted talent level of the designer (sometimes a well curved line just comes out of nowhere), but much can be learned just from studying flow patterns in natural things like dunescapes, plant and wood growth, water flow, etc. It takes a full life of logging great imagery into your brain so you can tap that image library when designing (trust me, I consciously do). So you learn how curves highlight each other based on proximity and scale, so you need to practice drawing a LOT, like how great guitar players have practiced since childhood. One great example is how the curved line of the top of a Strat pickguard does not follow the curve of the top of the body, but is rather scaled down and shifted, which ends up being "perfect" in my book. Here is a recent guitar design I am doing next, which relies heavily on the inter-related flow of curves, and from studying the flow of barchan dunescapes from photos of Mars from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft (public pictures on the HiRise website). Quite fun to use QCAD to adjust curves slightly, which make a huge difference. Then, one must consider conditioned aesthetic, meaning to use a basis of design which is based on existing aesthetic shapes, and you can augment from there with your own design signature. Conditioned, means that people are used to certain shapes in a guitar, boat, etc, and to deviate too much can be ugly, like headless guitars look like decapitated torsos, ergo guitars are too imbalanced, etc.