mistermikev

right o. the other day I watched a build thread of one of the cnc kits... the workbee. Was surprising how straight fwd that actually was. still - have to do all the work and the kit is over a grand.

Right on. bed frame - good thinking there.

right on. sounds like some interesting stuff altho half of it is over my head. for me, and at this point... I'm leaning towards something somewhat 'disposable'. My budget for entry is $3-500. Something I can try it out and not be too concerned with tossing it down the line. I figure, worst case scenario... I would have a dedicated pcb fabrication tool. I just want to get my feet wet and see how much work it is to do some basic stuff like cutting a headstock inlay or doing control covers along with being able to drill pcbs. I dunno how realistic it is because I can't see myself building the same thing more than 1 or 2 times. likely the work to accomplish that on cnc would make it impractical. That said, if I find it isn't that much work to make a body template (for instance), my plan is to invest more in it at that point... and then I would potentially be willing to put $2k-4k in. Really still in the 'exploratory' stages at this point... so all of this could change. I keep reading about it here and there and thinking I should just buy something cheap to get the ball rolling... but I know what I really should do is do some 3d design work on one of the free tools to get going.

right on. the only place I know of that I can get it is a lumber yard... all the typical hardware stores have construction grade 'birch plywood' which isn't bad stuff... but is nowhere near as nice.

literally took the words right out of my mouth. The easy method for pseudo blind fret slots.... GENIUS!

ah, so you are saying that where you are from the ONLY have baltic birch? Must be nice! I should really only do templates with baltic because it's quite nice stuff for sure. Now that I know of my local supply I'mma try to use it more.

perhaps 'less desireable' is more the term... but at the cab shop I worked at ages ago... they'd set the heavily figured stuff aside and use it for bracing and such and that always made me sad! the little 'lines' between the A and M - how did you maintain those so nicely? That really looks great. well done.

i dunno if there is a hardware store that sells it... but they sell 'birch plywood' at lowes, home depot, etc here and that is nothing like the baltic birch you get at a lumberyard. https://www.rockler.com/how-to/difference-baltic-veneer-birch-plywood

interesting. to many cabinet makers... at least folks who are say - doing kitchen cabinets... curly maple is also a fault, because it won't match the rest of the cabinets. I think it's probably true about any figure in wood depending on the context. I can imagine it might be hard to work with... but isn't ALL the most beautiful wood hard to work?

baltic birch is a type of plywood but it's not really equivalent to typical hardware store plywood. generally baltic birch is higher grade but as you've mentioned it is basically sm: layers of hardwood with opposing grain. I agree with your thoughts... as guitar builders we freq glue multi lam pieces to solid pieces w/o issue... apparently in the cabinet world there is a stigma about that. I agree that it shouldn't need any dowels or anything. I very much appreciate the way in biz.

very nice of you to say Scott. I'm leaning towards just glue. I've read a number of threads on lumberjocks that suggest that gluing any solid wood to baltic birch... will just explode (sarcasm). I guess the baltic is notoriously rigid and we all know wood changes over time... but given it's only 1 3/4" I think it'll be fine so... going with that. very much appreciate the reply.

little dry fitting... front of the box is flush for now and I will apply some 1.75" curly maple frame at front. Thinking I'll just glue it but what do you think? really don't want to do dowels as alignment will be critical to not having to finish the box other than the maple. pretty solid fit for just sitting there dry... about as good as I can do w/o a table saw anyway.

i like to think I get lucky scores all the time but man that's one lucky score.

so... I saw you talking about finishing the neck... just a few words on what I've learned... in case you are using tru oil for that. as you've seen it builds fast... so you might want to make sure you have room for the finish in the neck pocket. also, doing it on the fretboard is tricky in my experience. if you build up enough to get gloss... it will quickly wear away when playing it. Also, it will quickly build up on the frets. I thinned mine down a lot with mineral spirits and found that I really only want to do two light passes to avoid getting past a satin finish. afa bridge placement... getting a cnc machine is on my list of todos... but I think even having that I would revert to placing the bridge after I've got tuners on, and using a string. getting the neck on straight... and getting the strings to line up perfectly down the board... is pretty easy to do with some string threaded thru the bridge. that said... with a tune o matic style... you pretty much have to take a leap at some point. wish I had more usefull advice for you!

and so it has begun...

true it would waste some wood and take quite a few passes but it would def save some work. I would do just about anything to not have to do that by hand! I guess bandsaw would be the best for this but you'd need a pretty tall bandsaw to resaw that entire thing.

i don't think his was quite 3.5" thick... yeah... doing things by hand... sounds like work: I'm out. I bought my power planer on craigslist with a stand for $100... and new blades for $60 so just sayin'... easily saved me from doing $160 worth of work so far! ;)