Racer X

Well, at times, when someone wants to join two pieces, butt up, together, they drill and run in dowels between the pieces. It aids structural rigidity, and in this case, I would certainly think clamping everything up would be easier, cause now it can't slide all over the place. Here: That make sense?

Please excuse my ignorance on the subject, but the first thing that came to mind, for me, was dowels. Couldn't you run two dowels a side, THEN clamp up? Or am I missing something important?

Nice idea! We have Aldis in the states, too, just don't know if they sell these, here. Will have to keep an eye out, though. Was looking for something like this. Dunno why I never thought about this, in particular, though.... Quick update: Found the same one on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gardman-R688-Walk-In...e/dp/B000PYH3B0

My copy showed up at the library, Saturday. Man, that thing is a time machine! I sit down, and next thing I know, several hours have flown by! Really great book. I'd love to cough up the cost of this loaner, just so I could keep it!

Good idea. Just requested a copy from my local library. A great resource that's easily forgotten.

I did that with our kitchen worktop the other week for exactly the same purpose, and a few months back to true up the glueing surfaces of a zebrano body and a maple top :-D Yeah, you know what, it was quite advantageous, since I was not only using full sheets and getting a large area, all at once, but since I was able to use the handle attached to the guitar neck pocket to push/pull across the surface with one hand and apply even pressure with the OTHER hand, I had really good control of the sanding process. In fact, I kept the piece of glass, for further sanding projects.

I've used the glass top of a chess set, double-stick taped full pages of sandpaper to it, and ran my project body across that to get the front and back surfaces ultra-flat. Worked like a charm, too.

It looks nice. Personally, I'd liked to have seen more white in it, kinda balance it out a bit more, but that's just personal preference.

Go paint gun if you can. Being someone who has tried both rattle cans AND the recent switch to a paint gun, I think I can honestly say I'll never go back to paint bombs. MUCH better finish, so far. I, too, bought one of those Harbor Freight Tools guns, but I bought the jam gun, and, so far, it's a pretty decent little gun. Looks just like the Stewmac one, but not certain it IS. Didn't take much time on a piece of scrap to get it dialed in and get me acclimated to it. I MAY try and get one of their gravity feeds, in the future, though, and try that. Since I'm in the clearcoat stage of my project, I may try switching to one of my larger guns that I've had sitting around, for years, and see how THAT fairs on laying down coats.

I too was inspired by the Charvel videos, and their painting rig, so I came up with something not nearly as complicated and expensive, but serves my purpose. Basically, I built it out of spare stuff I had lying around: I took a 3/4" piece of laminted plywood, roughly 2'x3', and mounted a 1-1/2' length of 2x4 to it, using angle brackets. Several inches from the top of the 2x4, I drilled out a 3/4" hole to put the holder/hanger bar through (the common bar that everybody attaches to the neck screwholes of the body.) I simply sit this on top of an old dresser that I use. I can turn the body by rotating the bar within the 2x4's hole. additionally, for when I want to shoot the body in a vertical position, I have a pipe adaptor flange, mounted, at the center-point of the base, that I can slip the holder bar into:

Yeah, and some point early on, one should say "Look, this is just too time-consuming", and splurge for the proper, yet more expensive nippers. Sometimes you spend MORE money by trying to SAVE money.

Got the same Harbor Freight nippers, and dressed it, same as you did. Only thing is, is that I have yet to actually TRY cutting fretwire with them. Guessing, after reading your post, that I WON'T be, either. bummer.

I actually have a glass chessboard that I use to sand the tops and back of bodies, and it works nicely for me. I adhere full pages of paper to it, and instead of drawing the paper across the body, I draw the body across the paper, using my handle I have mounted to the neck holes, with one hand, and applying necessary pressure to the body with the other hand. So far, so good, I'd say.

Actually, the neck I applied it to, I was using the satin wipe-on, but it made a really nice flame appear in the maple, to I decided to instead buff it out to a shine, to showcase the flame. Turned out pretty nice.

I had good experiences with the wipe-on poly, too, when I was finishing a neck on one of my projects. I wouldn't hesitate to use it, again.