mistermikev

so... not challenging at all... I just want to make sure I understand. right so... machine moves to x=1 but has really only moved .98... then machine moves to x=0 but there is a different amount of backlash/slop-in-the-ball-screw... and it moves .9... now x=0 is .1 away from where it should be. In theory this is all compensated for via an avg when setting your cycles/steps... and in practice on my machine it's not a measurable difference... as repeating a move against a dro... (admittedly w/o work piece resistance) I get the sm result multiple times... but in theory this could happen, no?

so... first off - I appreciate that there is some good info here. I hadn't thought of mentioning tramming, nor tightness of index pins, nor machine flex. For context of my post op - I've learned a lot from curtisa and mikro. their advice > my advice. Really a novice here as I started cnc just a couple years ago. many points that I instinctively use from above comments... for ex my spoil board is quality baltic birch and some 20+ (nylon) bolts. when I built my spoilboard: I home my machine, setup/saved my offset, use a v bit to align initially.... drilled all bolt holes, then mounted, then drilled my index holes, then planed the surface. that should all be relative to my offset. but when doing index holes in my piece - I use a 3" bit to cut all the way through. now... I've trammed my machine to .007 tolerance. is there something i'm missing that you would drill index pins from either side as opposed to just straight thru.? On the one hand that would avoid any error in the bit/collet... but if it's trammed that has to be a very small amount. also... I mention backlash in my post. and I say that homing is a correction for it, which your statement contradicts. if I am wrong I'd like to understand why... but I was trying to point out that if you run a big 3 hour operation and potentially introduce some backlash error... you can then re-home and go to your offset - you'll be back to actual zero within the tolerances of your limit switches... effectively negating the backlash error.

right, that was kind of my point... you need a primer that is made for wood that is also compatible with a paint that is typically intended for metal... idk what the market is like today but 20+ years ago when I did this with my brother... it essentially meant finding a car paint guy who knows something about wood or a guitar paint guy who knows something about cars... and internet wasn't nearly as much of a resource back then so... might have been a much bigger long shot... but I thought I'd mention it because a car paint person might not really be aware of the issues of priming wood. Can certainly ask your car person if they will work with other paints... and frankly back in the day(20s thru the 50s) all cars were painted with nitro lacquer... but I just pointed that out to say that the typical paints used today for cars may or may not necc be compatible with the typical primers that are made for wood.

my brother is an auto body expert... works as a mechanic but his passion is restoring old cars. he's done a number of show cars. a long long time ago he repainted two guitars for me... and they were about as good as a finish can be... very pretty. the finish didn't have great adherence/duribliity to the wood... so I guess that would be one thing I would watch out for there. as much as my elbow hates wet sanding... my approach to your problem has just been to try and make it easier for me to finish and I have learned that a job can be a LOT easier if it's prepped well. I haven't bought a da sander yet (requires a large compressor) but I can tell you that that is how 90% of auto body finishes are done. when you've got to get a flat surface on a huge area like a car... that is THE tool for the job. they (I'm told) also do a great job of buffing. In the interest of getting closer to the functionality of a da sander I bought a bosch cordless sander that, similar to the festool or other elec da sander... puts your hand very close to the sanding surface... and haven't used it on a finish yet... but i can confirm it feels just like a da sander for doing basic sanding. I'm hopeful it will make things easier when it comes to wet sanding. Not many sanders I would trust to wet sand on a contoured surface... but a da sander can def do that. will have to snag some mesh sanding pads in the 1200 and up grit... and will report back when I get there. hope there is something there you can use!

well... I wouldn't say that I'm an expert on this subject... as I've had varying degrees of success... but I have learned a lot lately. Just using my eyes and a center line and going to the back, align, then going to the front and align... I was able to get within 3/16. I've since started using 4 index pins... but I was drilling index holes and then flattening my stock after... and this got me to 1/8" accuracy. This was all w/o using limit switches. Now I've setup my limit switches and a light has gone on... used to always worry about finding my ctr after pwr outtage before... no longer an issue. I have yet to cut another two sided body/neck since I've set this all up but I'm pretty confident things will have improved. my index holes are now standardized and drilled into my spoilboard -cut after homing my machine and then setting up on offset on the offsets page. I've have verified that my bit will go back to exact ctr every time now. so even if I bang it off the walls... I can home the machine, then select my offset... and it will go back to the EXACT center I set. So many folks tried to tell me to do this... I wish I had listened sooner. so much can go wrong that you don't think about when building. if you run into the walls... you've changed your center... a machine can loose a step here or there and it will look some precision on the center, backlash in your machine can change your center. altho in theory none of this should happen... all of this is corrected by using limit switches, and setting up an offset because the machine will find your center again reliably. hope something there helps.

right on, the older I get... the more relevant the statement "I'm still alive" is! Have taken a bit of diversion lately... but it's just about time to get back to it. that paudauk? looking pretty sweet. some tidy work there.

that is certainly a worthy goal. I have oft thought why you just don't see a lot of fiberglass construction. I believe the mosrite stuff (or some similar guitar) was all fiberglass... and there was a guy here on this forum that was doing some fiberglass... but it's just not common. carbon fiber would def be cool too. I loved the idea that parker was doing with the thin fiberglass over hardwood. made for some impossibly thin/light guitars that were very stable and sounded great. anywho, here's to seeing you realize that.

wow, looking sharp.

thank you for the compliment. can't go wrong w purpleheart imo. should make for a pretty lil gtr. purpleheart bridge might pair nicely - just sayin'!

afraid I can't add much here... but I'll commiserate. sanding is really hard. I try to avoid it at all costs. to sand fast and true... you need to use less pressure. I know that's the case but I have somehow yet to learn it. we all put pressure on... and when you do that it's not going to be even. I know folks sand fretboards with blocks... and I would assume some can do it well... but for me it is a lost cause. The only guaranteed solution is to make it mechanized. one strategy would be to build the common radius router jig. Another technique I've seen... warmoth I believe is where I saw it... they have a 2' long flat sander and they have a jig that is mounted to the ceiling on rope... they mount the fretboard and it just makes contact with the sander... move it to and fro and voilla... radius fretboard. Theirs was actually setup to do compound radius via dif lengths at either end of the fretboard. probably hard to dial a system like that in. hoping you find some sort of useful pea in this comment.

was going to tell you "that's crazy talk... it'll never work" but I guess i'm a little late (jk, wasn't going to tell you that). I don't believe I have seen a headless classical until now... pretty cool. nice work.

when I was a kid... maybe 10 or 11 years old... was really into art/drawing/painting. I used to draw cars all the time. mostly just sideview. later in life progressed to 3d lol. I have some old paintings of guitars and cars that I've kept over the years... it's fun to look back on that from time to time. Your picture reminded me of those days... youth and nostalgia. "and social change" wonder if I missed any books on "data structures and social change". "discrete mathematics and social change" lol.

i just came in here to accomplish two things... #1 wanted to suggest to @Andyjr1515 that it might be time to take your medication based on your first sentence lol. (jk, love seeing that gtr again btw) #2 welfare check on(harrassment) @stu chop chop brutha! them geetars ain't gonna make themselves! looking over the thread... it's a really nice carve and a sharp guitar. somewhere I saw this guy from brazil that makes these really cool one piece guitars and they are all scuplted and hollow... very unorthadox approach but he apparently takes a thin bandsaw blade, cuts the body in half, hollows it out... and glues them back together. He somehow does this with little to no seam. not sure I'd have the skill to pull that off but I'd like to see someone else do it so... just thought I'd mention lol.

wow dude, that car is a really great drawing. nice work.

that's an interesting piece of wood. It would look really cool with a "weathered motif". or even take a page out of the prs catalog and tape it off based on the spalt lines and do a "partial dye". anywho, neat stuff.

it shows. man... that purple hue... just lovely. nice work.

nice looking design. rawk on.

reading this I can't help but think about what a build would have looked like if I had done one when i was 14... i suspect it would have been horrific. cudos to you... your's has some pizazz. ballsy approach to covering the hole... if it were me I'd just put a cool veneer on the back side... but seems like you've come out ok either way.

poly really is a difficult finish to do gloss w imo. if you cut through any layer and then look at it in the light... you'll have witness lines. So each coat has to be so thick that you won't wetsand thru... and more importantly the target has to be absolutely flat... or the coat will have to be even thicker, that you don't wetsand thru despite an irregular surface. and if you put on a thick coat you'll have that much more wet sanding to do. vicious cycle. just my 2 cents but once you have witness lines... not much you can do. if I was gonna do a gloss by hand... I'd use nitro. Each layer melts into the next layer so you just need to build it up thick enough and then wetsand to flat after it has cured for 4 weeks. all that said, never met a tele I didn't like. is a handsome body. nice work.

on the one hand... it's a bit like diffusing a bomb... on the other it's pretty grattifying!

hehe... well I'm finding with inlay... that going small is more ambitious than going large. I should have shown my finger next to this but... it is small enough to fit on a headstock anyway. I feel like "this is what an archeologist must feel like" carefully cutting/scraping and blowing gentle on the pieces as I remove them from the block they were cut from. Tedious. If you cut too deep... the wind from the router will toss the piece into oblivion... and if you cut too shallow... you'll never get it out. Fun times! Because it's so small... some of the details (fins) I planned to implement via scoring and filling with some ebony dust or black ca glue. S/B a good learning experience anyway. anywho, here in az... all over the place there are signs for "so-and-so river" and "so-and-so lake" and you roll up on it and it's just like the rest of the desert you see - dry as hell! Feels like a ripoff... then it rains and surprise they weren't lying! Have never been fishing here... and I'm told there are great places to do it... but I imagine half of your fishing trips end up at a puddle that used to be a lake! So the great arizona marlin will have to remain unconfirmed hehe.

minor update... ac went out today and I think I have heatstroke... was 90 in here all day long. so I had hoped to get some work done today... but only managed this so far:

Started this build in 2020... didn't work on it continuously over the last 3 years... but more sporadic visits to the project interlaced with tele diversions and what can only be described as machine heartbreak. Fortunately, I get by with a LOT of help from my friends. @Curtisa and @Mikro were there for me - thank you guys - couldn't have done it without ya! This community was there to bounce ideas off of and was a lot of help in navigating the river of choices that ended me up at a peizo bridge with EMG pickups... and I just want to acknowledge that as well. anywho... the details... SPECS: 27 Frets, 35" scale length, 10 deg headstock angle, 1.5 degree neck angle 1 11/16 Nut Width, 16mm String Spacing at the bridge, bone nut and bone saddle Profile is a thin "C": .834" thick at the nut, .945" thick at the 12th fret Compound 6" to 8" radius fretless fretboard 10lbs 6oz Total Weight. MATERIALS: 3/4" Flamed Maple Carved Top Purpleheart and Flamed Maple multi-lam body Purpleheart and Flamed Maple Multi-lam neck 24" LMII dual action truss rod and 1/8" x 3/8" Carbon Fiber Reinforcement Bars On Either Side Fretboard and headstock overlay are Purpleheart with maple fret inlays and Edge detail Inlays are Flamed Maple and Gaboon Ebony HARDWARE: Hipshot Tuners Bridge is Purpleheart and Flamed Maple has locking studs and grub screws for forward/reverse intonation movement Truss rod cover and control cavity covers are all secured via magnets ELECTRONICS: EMG J5L and J5S Active Pickup wired to 18 volts Magnetic Controls: Vm (volume magnetic) and 3-Way Toggle Artec PP-537 under saddle piezo Handmade Active Bass/Treble Piezo Preamp Piezo Controls: Va (volume acoustic), Ta (treble boost/cut acoustic with push/pull preamp bypass), Ba (bass boost/cut acoustic) Switchcraft jack Link to my project thread: "Fish On" Project Thread Demo: Glamour shots:

matter of fact I did. have a chunk sitting there and was thinking I might use it for yet another les paul. rosewood... ah yes... that purple... beautiful stuff!

wow, so many colors in the back of that headstock. v cool.