Bizman62

Not from me. As long as you like it all is good. The shape of the body is only about looks and ergonomics so you're free to build it to whatever shape you like. The bigger the heavier etc, then again a too skinny one can be difficult to hold especially on your knee. Much the same with the headstock. Straight string pull can help tuning and that's what you've already planned there.

So, wearing a mask to protect yourself is a good thing, right? I just read the product description on the bag of KN95 masks, "Professional protection". Either my English is failing on me, or these really aren't too safe to use. This is how it reads, my comments added in italic:

Welcome to the addiction! You've got a good start, full size drawing can be really helpful in finding any weak spots. That said, your plan is a neck-thru, isn't it? Otherwise there would not be too much support for the neck... I also see that you're not going for the fanned frets which is good for a first build. Facets on the body are nice, they aren't too difficult to make and they sure add character to the looks. And they can improve the ergonomics as well.

You may be able to find them. In the Firefox profile there's usually several bookmark backups so reverting to one should do the trick. The easiest way to check that is to go to the Bookmark panel (Ctrl+Shift+O within Firefox) and use the Import/Backup tool: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them If that doesn't work, then your update most likely has created a new profile (32 to 64 bit version?) in which case the old one should still be available in the same folder with the new. %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ is the location (or see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data ) and 'bookmarkbackups' is the first folder there. You can copy and paste that from the old profile to the new one.

That's something I'm not too familiar with. As said, it's a mutation that doesn't inherit. The trees don't grow straight up like normal birch trees so it's possible that a mutated plant doesn't stand the normal stress which causes them grow crooked and also causes the anomalies in the grain. It's not a sickness caused by some third party like virus, bacteria or worm. Nor has it anything to do with the place. It's not a sickness, it's a handicap. You could compare that with people: Some just are born special from 'normal' parents. I've also heard that flames (tiger stripes and such) in wood are caused by stress, According to that theory the sheer weight of the trunk makes the lowest parts crimp like the bellows of an accordeon and when the tree continues growing the figure stabilizes. I've seen similar striping in branches that have been bent because of snow. In those branches the stripes are only on the bottom side where the wood has crimped. That also tells that you can make figured wood by yourself if you force a tree out of its normal growing direction. I've seen a pine tied into a knot while it was growing. It took at least one summer to tie the knot but when I saw the tree after a decade the knot was tight and looked 'natural'. The tree hadn't grown too much after the knot was tied, though, it was only about six feet high and for what I was told it was about four or five feet tall before the tying. -Just recently I read the book "The Sixteen Trees of the Somme' by Lars Mytting (highly recommended!). In the book there was a small forest of birch where a joiner had fastened steel bands around the trunks in order to create some special flaming. Mytting knows something about wood, he also has written a book about firewood.

Just for clarification I'm not saying it's birch. It just looks similar to the stressed carelian birch so there may be something in common in the reason for figuration.

Funny, the word 'masur' can't be found in online Eng-Fin dictionaries, but it was in Meänkieli (ancient Finnish used in isolated parts of Scandinavian Lapland)- Finnish dictionary, meaning the same!

Birch is pretty hard, much like soft maple. In fact, birch has been called poor man's maple since it looks and behaves so similarly! The carelian birch is hard and stiff, the grain goes all directions so it won't split. You can't get seeds from one for cultivating, the seeds produce normal birch. The only way to grow them is cloning. Back in the late sixties my parents bought a riverside field with a tiny cabin. They then bought 90 birch plants to fill the open field with. It so happened that they had mixed the plants in the nursery, about half of them were of the carelian variation. So some birches grew long and straight and some grew crooked. Even small branches are valuable as it's very suitable for knife handles and pens which don't require large planks.

I'd say the best option is to take your calipers and measure. There might be a consensus about how to tell the measurements but you never know...

That looks a lot like mutated silver birch, Betula pendula var. carelica, where the brown stripes are actually bark captured inside the wood.

I had to do the same when I first read the story. As you know back in the late sixties we didn't have Wikipedia or Google but I managed to find out what it was. And yes, the Finnish translation used the word 'ankus' as well.

Tru dat! When I introduced the flake paint 2k clearcoat at the workshop, we took a block of mahogany and rounded both the end and one side to get all possible grain directions sorted. Our Master Luthier was surprised how nicely it filled even the end grain shiny and without too much orange peel. On second thought, that should not be surprising considering the original purpose. The flake covered surface is pretty rough and you can't sand between layers so it has to build fast without running.

Mowgli again! Angkor Wat looks just like the place where you could find the ancient king's treasure including an ankus made of rubies and other shiny gems among other precious materials.

Most likely so. Not to mention that air tools are more lightweight and silent compared to their motor powered counterparts. But yes, the bigger workshop provided by the class which is mostly used by the town woodworkers has two hoses, both equipped with a blower pistol and most likely only used for blowing dust off the tables and big machines. The society workshop I joined in January has one hose which has its home in the back of the big belt sander. Pulling the hose to the workbench there would effectively block the pathways to most of the power tools, not to mention that hand sanding in a hall with several tools plus air cleaning screaming isn't what I'd call ideal.

I'm waiting for a thread of that project to see how it goes

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

The brush and denim method is easier to reach. In both workshops I've had access to the air hose is in the other room.

There seems to be several #301's in various hymn books but I couldn't find anything with "He's with me"

Unless you tidied the sides of the inlays, it looked like there was quite a many file marks and as you seated them pretty deep adhesion should be no problem. Speaking of file marks, at first I thought you had been very sloppy with the shaping. Then I noticed that the closeups were at least three times the real size on my screen!

About 3 mm, if the camera angle didn't do any tricks to my view. Thank God that was aluminium instead of stainless steel! A single mm would have been plenty thick enough especially since you bent the pieces to the radius. But you did what you did and you performed well for a first timer. As I don't usually sign into YouTube, here's my "note below": You managed to balance the speed nicely so that the job looks like threre's quite a lot of work to be done (as is the truth), yet the sped-ups make it look easy enough for someone hesitating to get their feet wet.

Just guessing here, but I think it's also depending on the pressure. Or to be more exact, too much pressure keeps the dust under the paper and the friction creates heat which then melts the resins in the dust and glues it all on the paper. Something like that. Just yesterday I watched one of Jerry Rosa's videos where he explained why he doesn't like using sanding blocks. He showed that with a block there'll soon be resin lumps on the paper whereas the same paper stays clean under his fingertips. The wide surface of the block - even a 1x2" one - doesn't let the dust from underneath as easily as the tiny spot of a fingertip and it's too easy to apply too much pressure. Mesh type abrasives allow the dust come through and even when used with a solid block there's more space for the dust. I've used Mirka Abralon/Abranet up to 800 grit without any burnishing. The wood still feels "open" despite being smooth.

Doesn't the first sentence already include the answer? The black seems to accent the binding even on the natural side, that's very stylish as such!

@mistermikev although the binding really looks nice against the natural, the sides have to be restained. With the neck glued sanding all the colour off and redoing the binding is no longer an option. @Drak this project has been a test bench from the very start. Although my previous build was sort of a challenge with the both sides carved hollow top, with this one I've experimented and challenged myself much more. Routing a binding cavity is a no-brainer, routing my first ever binding channels on a radiused top with a handheld router on wood that's so soft that the bearing digs into the sides... Same goes with the staining, I had never used them before and although I did some testing on scrap pieces on offcuts of the very same blank I had actually not visualized what I was after. In hindsight I should have made test pieces including the binding, then again I had to replace the original rosewood so this project has really been brewing all along the process. What's nice about this - and this is why I have been so careless - is that the body has cost me absolutely nothing. That is, unless you count the hours and gas used for cutting the blanks of the stump! The few drops of dye, a couple of rattle cans of lacquer, 1.80€/hour for the workshop etc. aren't worth counting as every hobby has its price. Knowing that I'm not ruining a 200€ triple A Paulownia one piece super light body is tranquilizing. If I end up ruining this I can simply cut the neck off and remake a body. There's a couple of usable pieces of that very same stump left...

So... The lacquer on the binding had suffered during the sanding process of the top so I tried to scrape it off in order to hide the seam between old and new lacquer at the seam of the binding. That didn't end well, there was a ridge with a garbled edge. Sometimes you just have to make something less pretty to make it prettier than it was at that stage.

Continuing with the Jungle Book theme, there's the bird named Chil, most likely a kite by species.