mistermikev

DOH, "you got your sissoo in my sipo..." "no, you got your sipo in my sissoo" on a side note: have been reading about how mesquite is (apparently) a pretty decent guitar wood. Have seen some guitars made out of figured mesquite and they are quite nice. Was thinking... could be very versatile... play a few songs... wack off a few chips to throw on the barbie and cook up my steak. Would def have to go with a tung oil based finish tho! haha!

ok, yeah, all coming back to me now. interesting that the other source I was just looking at is saying it's a type of mahog... but that source is saying rosewood. wood species are so confusing!

on that washburn above... you'll notice the last frets they change fret wire. much thinner after the 24th. probably would need super thin fingers or fingernails to play it!!

guitar is looking lovely. you have great taste in wood. afa lever hole... for me -I used my dremel... just made a little u shaped jig that would fit my (then) dremel base inside it. at the time I could not find a suitable dremel bit... I think all I could find was 1/8" which is too wide. knowing what I know now there are all sorts of cnc end mills that would be perfect size, but didn't know to search for that term at the time. just wanted to mention for any who might be in the sm dillema.

I don't believe we spoke about this one... there was a guy a while back that had some that he also said was rosewood but was $50 for a 2" x 2' slab. Funny how everyone in AZ thinks they have rosewood! perhaps it's the sm guy but I don't think so, as I recall that guy was in a dif area. this one is way over in queen creek. I guess my interest stems from the idea that I'd like to do an 'all native wood' build... but I imagine anything I get I'm going to want to have sitting for a year so. there are a couple of live edge slab places nearby that have all local wood but they all want $8-$15/bd ft. then again this is probably 8-10/bdft so... i dunno.

hehe, I liked it better when I thought it was toilet!

oh, wasn't going to try 45 - have a feeling that just be a waste of bit. just good to know they advertise that. stepdown - probably more my lack of cnc vocabulary... but then you said "plughole"... I knew exactly what you meant but have never heard it called a that! then again, where I'm originally from we have a thing they call a 'bubbler' and Idk of any other place in where they call it that (water fountain?)

well, this is 3 flute so... we get to 33% more ie 45ipm. afa stepdown... I'm not familiar with that term. in the software it divides up the final depth into chunks closest to my set depth... so if I go .01 depth and final depth is .07 it will make 7 passes. I was thinking that they probably would get a lot of push back on that if it wasn't accurate... but I don't need to push it that hard and not willing to risk the hassle. If I can get up to 20ipm at .009 depth I'd be thrilled. In mach3 I can override the feed rate and bump it up, but will likely try that once I have a number of bits on hand, and perhaps on some of the less expensive ones. it's only $30 for this bit but... probably be wise to save it for ebony or other really hard stuff. thank you very much for the input - most helpful!!

if I may... @MiKro, @curtisa... on a .022" bit what should I be picking for stepover? precise bits got here today (fedex - impressive!). according to their site... initial feedrate for maple s/b .03 x diameter x #-of-flutes x spindle-rpm... setting spindle to 23k so 45ipm??!? not trying that! plunge rate for maple = 1 x diameter so .022... yeah I'll try .009 @23k with 10ipm as a starting point and see how that goes. does look like a very nice bit with coating so... added ramps to my toolpath and set a plunge speed at 5ipm... "make it so #1". will try later in the week as it's a chilly 50deg in my garage today!

I hang on to them... in a pinch they might be ok. I could see them being useful for very fine detail in very soft material... and for not wanting to dull my good ones. pretty sure the dremel diamond wheel would chop em off good... then sharpen with the diamon knife sharpen rod. they were pretty cheap so not concerned. Got my $14 worth out of them in a lesson!!

yup on the too long. was saying that earlier... those things are designed to be fragile. the other bits I bought are very different and 'stubby' by comparison. think you meant .03" there... bit is .023" but yeah i get your drift. actually in retrospect I think my doc may have been much less because as I recall it was some 7 passes to get one fret... and I think the tang depth was only .065 or something? I am guessing that's a mistake on my part - perhaps my doc was more like .01? Still those bits... just crapola. they did cut some decent frets.. nice and clean and wasn't burning... but man was it slow. the length of the cutter is too long and the design/taper of the bit is not ideal. probably could cut them off and file them and they'd do 10x better. afa 18k I chose that because it was suggested on the size of the bit by the tool database... wondered tho because my machine can do 24k. will bump that up for the new bits.

ramp... doh, good call do not think I added ramping to this (depth anyway). Will def add that. Interesting thoughts on the ramp of speed too... def every time the bit broke it was the first cut through. just adding a depth ramp might improve that a lot. that said... the kyocera bits have a very short cutting edge that is just a hair longer than ideal depth. I have a feeling they are going to make things a lot better.

hmm, not sure I get the reference?

I suggest you have a look at the alvarez dana scoop! one of my fav all time guitars... have always wanted to build one - on my someday list anyway. the downside to it... is that the neck is pretty thick right there... but you wouldn't get much better access. dano longhorn: Also, there were some washburn 36 fret jobbies in the 80's that had crazy cuttaways. The prob you face - on a bolt neck the neck/body becomes pretty thick there... on a neck through - well you have to still worry about the neck pickup weakening the area. for that reason many of those aforementioned didn't have a neck pickup at all. not all that hard to play at the 24th fret afa getting access... having fingers small enough to play the frets there - dif story.

well.... this was my "i don't care if I ruin it" piece... as it is the least attractive of all 4 I bookmatched. Still mounted on the machine and machine is at the zero... just not touching it till I get new bits... then i will alter my toolpath based on the new bit size... and re-cut everything - she should be fine as I cut these slots a little thin with the plan to revisit them with the fret saw.. I will be using one of the other one's for either build as the wood is a better match, but am hoping this one makes it through fine for some future build. with this bit.... the speed was set to 3 in/min. the depth was set to .03. router was running at 18k. if I bumped the speed up to 5in/min... break a bit. These were just test bits... uxcell (not exactly synonymous with quality), so didn't have high expectations (they were cheap). I've ordered a few kyocera from drillman and one from precise bits as well... should be here thursday. I'm guessing I will up my speed to 10 in/min, double my depth... and start there. Could probably raise up the spin to 24k... i dunno.

thank you sir. yes, that recon has surpassed all expectations. love it. going to be hard to match that color in stain... will have to grab my bootstraps!!

love the idea of native texas wood. have been kicking around an idea of doing that myself with native az wood. looking fwd to build pics.

that is a def possibility. didn't realize mesquite has that short grain but it does as evident in the pic below. mesquite around here... is everywhere. have def seen cheaper sources than this for that.

"is an African wood that is considered to be the closest, aesthetically, to Genuine Mahogany " "Aesthetically, the wood is similar, also, to its African first cousin, Sapele " dead ringer?

saw this on my facebook feed... "$100 each Live edge Indian Rosewood slabs. First and last pictures are a finished bench made from the same tree(not for sale) 80"x20"x2.5"--sizes vary " def a lot different than the rosewood we're used to seeing... in fact I don't think this is indian rosewood at all. Indian rosewood reportedly does grow in az but this looks like sipo to me. it's a (apparently) rare form of mahogany. also grows here in az. some of those edges in the 2nd pick look like rot to me... what do you think? haggle him down? throw $100 cash at him as fast as you can?

some shots of my birdseye for the neck blanks. not blow your mind but, but not bad looking at all. my experience with birdseye so far has been it is rock solid stable. the boards these came from, have been sitting for a while now and are still perfectly flat. planed off some to see if I'll have any movement and will check again in a few days. second one isn't nearly as figured... but perfect straight grain and some flame. I think I'll try and get some more of the straight grain in the profile of the one above... but it's hard to not want to get that beautiful birdseye in there.

well now... an hour of work on the dremel+diamond wheel and we're almost there. Just have to wait for the diamond jeweler's saw blade to get her the rest of the way. stuff is really beautiful. picture hardly does it justice. def want to wear the respirator with this stuff... just a plume of smoke coming off it while I was grinding. very fine dust. not sure what bit I might use to plane it down... probably going to need something specialty. Stuff would likely make short work of any regular bit. made a test fretboard... had to iron out some bugs. 9.5 to 16 compound radius toolpath kept getting too close to the nylon bolts and sending them flying... so had to resupply on those today. unfortunately the fret slot bits I have are not great... took about 3 hours to mill those 5 slots so just stopped her! slots follow the radius beautifully so that worked out well (thanks for the tip @MiKro!!). could not get the speed over 3in/min without breaking at a depth of .03. as you can see... the cutting edge is way too long for this diameter. Got some quality bits on the way so... will take another crack at this by next weekend. anyone know the short version of how to restart mach3 at a specific line? bookmatched fretboard is hard to see here... but looking pretty respectable. joint is invisible even after radius so thrilled with that.

hehe, I remember that storry well. must be nice to travel like that!!

nothing to worry about... she was likely just mixing up some sort of potion that required a small amount of your blood. (love the idea of her running around at night performing mischief!!)

there's a guy named bartlett who does plans for 59 bursts... he does plans that are actual copies of 59 bursts - note for note, and then plans that are an 'average' of several 59 bursts. He made these plans with access to multiple real 59 bursts. I tell you this to illustrate that... there is enough variance there that if you compared one reproduction that was made from guitar x... and compared it to actual 59 burst y... you'd probably think "this thing is inaccurate as all get out". folks debate the accuracy of gibsons historic guitars with great scrutiny on some of the les paul sites... but I think it's a bit unfair to gibson. I've looked at enough pictures of real vintage sgs, and specifically the shape of the horns, to think that "anything goes" afa making an exact copy!! add to that... that you would be making a copy of a guitar based on a guitar that already has finish on it, and has been finish sanded. to me... worrying about the placement of the wire channel and how exact it is is futile!! using honduran mahog and brazillian rosewood is admirable... but at the end of the day it's much more important that the guitar is built well, and plays well regardless of how accurate it is! in answer to your orig question... take a straight on picture of your guitar... open it in photoshop or similar... make a known scale fretboard using fret2dfind, scale the picture up to match the fretboard, then take the circle tool in photoshop and expand/contract the circle until it matches. that would tell you the exact radius of that guitar. if you really want to be accurate, print it out at that point and compare it to the guitar and adjust accordingly. sorry for the book.