Bizman62

Hehe, the headstock continues the cartoonish line!

Routers have a lockable depth adjustment system. So if the router bit is 32 mm long (the bladed part, the yellow one in the picture) you simply push it down until it protrudes 29 mm outside the base plate and lock it there. When you're using a template you'll need bits with a bearing like the ones shown. Make sure that you start so that the bearing rolls along the template. If you need to go deeper than the length of the bit, you can first route with the template attached and then remove the template and run the bearing against the walls of the freshly routed cavity.

That's no excuse and your artwork shows it. Actually the shape reminds me of the cartoons of late 1950's and early 1960's - Pink Panther, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear or longer movies like The Sleeping Beauty or The Sword in the Stone; and I finally remembered The Truth About Mother Goose. You know the style where the perspective can be a bit wonky and the edges a tad sharp... Very interesting!

How come it just happened that the luthier friend just visited us today, it's been about a year since his last visit. Knowing that he still has contacts to his previous workmates in a guitar factory I told him about this thread and my comment about specialized tasks. Well, his answer wasn't what I expected! If someone in the smallish factory said that his job was boring, the other workers told him to enlist himself to PRS as they were in need of a 320 grit sander. Yes, they really have sanders for every grit! They also have separated fret levelers, fret crowners and fret end rounders. Only in their Custom shop you may be allowed to sand through all the grits by yourself. Maybe. There's currently open vacancies as for sanders, both first and second shift: Essential Duties and Responsibilities’ of Manufacturing Production Positions (Sanders) (include and other duties may be assigned) Specific duties appropriate to the specific job will be reviewed during the interview process Able to stand for long periods of time Close vision, depth perception and ability to adjust and focus Regularly exposed to moving mechanical parts; fumes or airborne particles and vibration Able to lift 15-25 pounds (depending on which area you are hired) Requirements: To perform well in production position, we require self-motivated, team oriented individuals with a passion to help out when needed and are willing to adhere to the quality standard of PRS Guitars. High attention to detail, a desire to work with your hands is key! Education and/or Experience: High School Diploma or General Education Degree (GED); Trade School/or Luthiery School a plus Woodworking experience and an interest in hand crafted products a plus Guitar players - guitar aficionados and general guitar & music appreciation is always preferred!

A picture of your fingers, please., as that thing has apparently been triggered by human flesh.

Getting exact build specs for any other than the mainstream "classic" models is challenging as hobbyists aren't too interested in building a copy of them. As truss rods can't be considered "consumable" similarly to bridges or knobs they aren't included on the spare parts lists. As you probably already know, the AF Artcore/Artcore AF neck is a model by itself so if you can find information about any Ibanez guitar using that neck you may find the answer. Somewhere I read that Ibanez mostly used single action rods until the late 1900's and apparently on some models way after that. Yours may fall in that category, as the more "traditional" version it might sell better to jazz purists! As there's no truss rod nut available as an official spare part one might think that it's a dual action rod. A single action rod has a detachable nut, although on some guitars there's a wooden plug making the access hole too small for the nut to come off. Again, if it seems to halt both when loosening and tightening the action sounds more like a dual action one. With strings off the only way to find out is to use a straight edge to tell if you can create both a gap and a hump in the middle of the fretboard by turning the nut.

At first I thought you were talking about side dots but then realized you meant the fret markers. For the former I could have sent you some, a letter would only take a week or even less! For the latter, you've seen my buttons... Brass or other metal tubing works well on the front side, too.

If you want to make money, leave guitar building as a hobby. If you work in a big guitar building factory you are factory worker having your own dedicated task as part of the chain. Factory guitars aren't made from scratch by one person. Instead there's a group of specialists who do the one task they're assigned to. So instead of a "guitar builder" you can be a "buffmeister", "neck sander", "CNC coder guru", "designer", "wizard of clearcoat", "fretmaster", "hygiene technician"... Usually an apprentice starts by sweeping the floors and even that can be done wrong! The friend I've often mentioned was given a tad more difficult task as he already had 1½ years of luthiery school behind him: He was given a pile of CNC carved bodies from which he had to carve and sand the connecting bridges off. As @MiKro said there's success stories as well. To make a living as a private luthier isn't easy, though. Even if you have designed the ultimate guitar which you can build as perfect as humanly possible they still may not sell as players just want "the authentic ****** sound". That's why PRS guitars are pretty cheap as second hand items. They're good but they aren't iconic.

She's pretty! Unfortunately I can't tell anything about the truss rod other than that there's one. Even the parts list didn't mention it. If there's a skunk stripe on the back of the neck, it's most likely a single action rod. If the neck is solid it can be either one or two way as a one way rod can be installed in three different ways. I guess the only way to find out is to loosen the strings and see what happens when you turn the nut. Then again that might cause issues when you restring her. There's arguments about one version having better tonal qualities than the other. However the rods aren't interchangeable, at least not in a way that would be worth the cost and risk. If the rod works as supposed I'd leave it as is.

I hear the word "tonewood" lurking around! You're right, both in that pickups make the sound of an electric guitar and in that some guitars vibrate forever like yours. Sustain is not tone but when you have it you can concentrate on your music instead of struggling with making the notes last long enough. They all affect but not necessarily directly. I've heard both thin and thick guitars resonate well, as well as light and heavy ones. Density... well, that's two fold as well! I'd rather talk about springiness and stiffness than those three. Compare the guitar wood to a metal springs: A steel spring will vibrate forever, a brass spring like those in connectors are springy enough only to maintain the connection.

... as long as it's solid and hard enough to withstand the wear and tear caused by fingers and strings for a couple of decades of regular playing.

Welcome to my world!

I've used one of those, directly from China. By eyeballing I'd say that the studs are in line, measuring tells there might be a ½mm angle. Anyhow, I've made the angle with the four screws. Note that if the quality is similar to mine the hex screws may sit a bit loose so a drop of super glue or thread locker is recommendable. I've already lost one screw. Another thing I noticed is that if you adjust it high the studs rock, another sign of inaccuracy.

Now that you mentioned it I must agree, the entire guitar is covered with "Contact" - the common Finnish name for it is "contact plastic" no matter the brand.

To me that looks like a poorly done paintwork! I mean, let's say a guy has a standard tele which doesn't fit the image of his band. So he sands it more or less to bare wood and takes a shocking pink rattle can. Before painting he also notices that he actually doesn't like the standard tele control positioning nor the pickguard so he takes a large bit and drills a couple of big holes for the pots. As he's not a woodworker he simply covers the wiring channels and the pickup cavity with gaffer tape, poking holes for the pot shafts. Then he sprays the body with the paint. After some gigging the paint at the sharpest edges and the surrounding of the pots wears off - that would easily be mimicked by using fine sandpaper, some 400 grit won't chip the paint but speeds up the aging process exponentially.

Wait. During the waiting time view a thousand guitar building and other woodworking videos, read a hundred books about the subject(s) and build a dozen guitars from scratch. This covid thing won't plague us forever and if you use the time for gathering knowledge and improving your skills they'd be much more interested in you than they would be now. You've said elsewhere that your woodworking skills and experience aren't much worth mentioning. Practice, learn to use the tools and create things you can show the PRS people when they are available again. Passion is a good thing but there's twenty guys in a dozen thinking guitar building would be the coolest way to make a living. I've already told about my friend who wanted to become a luthier. Among other things there was an entrance exam and all that was known beforehand was that you could bring your own carving knife or use the crappy ones provided by the school. My friend had never carved anything in his life so he asked me for a lesson. So I showed him the basics of sharpening and made him carve shavings out of some firewood for a spoon shaped object, trying to give him a feel about grain and working directions. - Later he told me that the task was to carve a knife out of wood. Most of the applicants had just made a sharp stick while one guy was already carving grip grooves to the handle of a perfect lookalike of the knife he was using.

Having read every word above it's obvious that different species act differently. As I said in my first post my experience is from pine flooring where there's both slab and more or less quarter sawn planks. Maple is much more homogenous. Further, as the birdseye feature is caused by tiny knots that never grew there's no single grain direction, just swirls and curls all over the place.

Maybe the formulation had changed over the years in your cupboard? At least that's what has happened to most of my "easy spreading" stuff. As a kid I thought shoe polishing paste was supposed to be cracked pieces of coloured wax in a tin as that was the only phase I had ever seen. I'd like to own that plane!

It's not mandatory. Most builders just aren't happy with "most of", they want it all seem like glass. There was a guy in our class who wanted a playable LP lookalike that would look good on stage. So instead of a spray gun he used cheap rattle cans and instead of fancy binding he took a little brush and some gold paint to accentuate the outlines of the body. As the owner of a six man car repair shop he might even have had access to professional spray guns, also the cost of "real" materials would have been no issue. It was just his minimalistic philosophy.

No, and I was not trying to tell that would be possible. I meant the other hot lug in a stereo jack could be wired as the ground when a mono plug is used as it would touch the sleeve of the plug. Not something you'd recommend but definitely doable. Just as you described in the last paragraph. That said, a poorly made jack is a possible culprit as well. I've witnessed the open type mono jacks struggle with getting the tip hooked. That wouldn't be visible in a closed jack.

I fully agree. I did some more research and found out the same. Guess I was thinking about sharpening chisels or something like that... For Future Readers: FLAT is the right answer!

Yep, quarter sawn is much harder. Slab sawn will peel by the growth rings as shown in the image below: The darker wood is the denser winter wood and the softer summer growth will both wear, dry and compress away.

Could not find the video but if you look at the pictures about flattening the sole here, you'll notice the "acceptable dip": https://www.woodcraft.com/blog_entries/hand-plane-rehab

I haven't done flat sawn fretboards but I know how flat sawn flooring wears and that is not nice. Agreed, pine is softer than maple but we're not wearing shoes upstairs where our bedrooms are. Several splinters have found their way through the socks since the Osmo oil wax wore out in places like in front of the toilet or in the kids' room.

Nope. If I can find the vid I'll post it. Anyhow, as you said, the wear pattern was off-center so most likely it was not intentional. The location was close to what my memory told me. And I may remember wrong.