Bizman62

But think about all those shiny sparkles, spreading stainless steel shards all around your eyeballs!

How about carving a groove at the ends and use zip ties? Or, if you really want to make it fool proof, hose clamps? Like this from Biltema:

The top is a nice piece of striped maple but the lower half of the back looks spectacular! I would have been tempted to bookmatch that for a top...

All in all a nice looking guitar. The HB sized P90 set looks similar to what I've used for a couple of builds. I'd like to hear a blind test with yours and mine, the price range is similar but mine don't have a name.

9 hours ago, henrim said:

I really should have a better way to attach the board

If it's not broken there's no need to fix it.

Agreed, you can't use the entire length of the board. Double checking the ready cut fretboard blanks against a 24 fret fretboard revealed that there's not too much extra, a ½" wide tape at both ends doesn't leave any slack.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Photographer popped round and took some pics for me last night.

A pro? To be honest they look a bit dull, the ones you've shot are much shinier, much more delicious looking. I'd assume a professional photographer would make them look like candy, or like cars in a fancy car show that have been finished with a special show polish - yes, that's a real thing!

12 hours ago, henrim said:

something like the Taylor joint in the attached picture. Both for aesthetics and strength.

Isn't that a type of a finger joint? And doesn't it work similarly to multiple biscuits? I know it's a common way to increase gluing surface and make huge beams for buildings so it's definitely a valid way to make a strong joint. But is it stronger than plain longitudinal wood?

Part #3 of the series:

Part #2 is also interesting, combined the three are less than an hour to watch.

1 hour ago, henrim said:

To me, it's not so much about being afraid that an end grain joint would fail. It's more about the unnatural look of the joint. There are of course cases where end-grain joint can be visually appealing, but in general that look is cheap.

As was clearly stated in the last third of the video, solid longitudinal wood is many times stronger than any glue joint which for us means that you can't extend your neck with an end grain joint. Moreso, starting at about 13:50 he talks about geometry. about the length of the joint v.s. the length/width of the pieces. The example shows that narrow cross grained pieces are very easy to snap anywhere as the lignin bond breaks whereas an end grain joint can stand quite some bending forces. We don't have to worry about that as the only place where long cross grained wood is being used in luthiery is the band covering the bottom seam inside an acoustic guitar.

I recently stumbled upon a new video where they tested angled joints. The results were surprising, a finger joint isn't the strongest when pulling straight like the front of a drawer.

Today I tried to find that video and found a more interesting one. End grain joints, come on?!? Don't we all know that they're prone to fail?

Gluing flat pieces together for added thickness isn't unusual in guitar building. You already mentioned the scarf joint. The heel of an acoustic often is made out of several pieces as well. On our class we've taught to glue slabs in the headstock area to make the wood thick enough for the break angle - a headstock veneer will cover the seams and the sides will look like cut of one block as the grain direction stays the same. Last but not least, as you know you don't need much gluing surface for a set neck joint which is prone to the same string tension.

That said I strongly recommend you to use the actual neck as much as possible to support the headstock extension. The top veneer is a good idea, too. Something like this:

Oh well, I guess I can't live with the slanted figuration so flipping it around and adding some cross grain material for strength is on my to-do list. After all there's still a few millimetres of the birch left so after leveling there'd still be plenty more than the ½ mm that's used for furniture veneers.

58 minutes ago, ScottR said:

You have anything left from the headstock

That very piece is made of the leftover piece of the headstock

Isn't it annoying to find a minor flaw at the final stages of the process? I know that wooden plates look a million times better when the grain direction matches with the body. Actually I just praised how @ScottR had done that in his current build. Yet I found out that the control cover of my build is slanted. Looking further it seems that if I flipped it the copper side up the grain would match so at some point I must have lost the outside. Flipping it and turning it 180 degrees would not be that much of an issue although the shape isn't perfectly symmetrical. Peeling the tape off wouldn't be much of an effort either. But: There's a cross-grain veneer under the tape...

So now I'm pondering whether I should 1) level the current surface to remove the finish, 2) glue a cross grain veneer for strength, 3) attach the new bottom side to a supporting block and 4) remove the tape and veneer.

Gotta love your attempts trying to make certain tasks easier, taking into account the time you use planning and building them I guess you could have made the actual task several times. But that's how inventions are made! 20% of innovation, 80% hard work of testing and rebuilding... Or something like that. Besides, you have both the engineering skills and equipment, and some rails and other stuff at hand so why not? My attempt for such a tool would be something like a router tied to a flexible willow branch with bungee cord...

Hi and welcome! And as Robin the Boy Wonder would put it, Holy Necro Bump!

The black stuff colouring your fingers and the white cloth is most likely water soluble dye. I tried to look for the PCH series but they're pretty well hidden in the Eastman site... Anyhow, the PCH 1 and 2 seem to have a rosewood fretboard whereas the fingerboard of PCH 3 is made of ovangkol. If they're made of less fancy pieces of wood I guess for the lower priced guitars they'd like to make them look more uniform.

There's several reasons why the dye comes off. First, it may be a manufacturing defect, something wrong with a batch. They say that the Chinese factory only builds for Eastman which they claim to be a proof of quality. Contacting Eastman should thus be the first step.

Second, if Eastman doesn't co-operate, you can try washing the dye out. For water soluble dyes plain water is the best option. DON'T SOAK! A damp rag changed every so often should do. A final wipe with lighter fluid or alcohol to vapourize any water could help. And after that a thorough oil treatment as you'd be washing any oils off as well.

Speaking of oiling, using hardening oil such as Boiled Linseed Oil or Tung Oil might also help keeping the dye inside. Splash on liberally, rub until tacky and wipe dry with a clean towel. After about a quarter of an hour wipe off anything that has sweated on the surface. Oil left on the surface won't dry but that in the pores will harden and seal the dye inside. You can apply the oil several times with a day in between for curing.

Third, there might be nothing wrong with the strings or fretboard, instead the culprit might be your fingers! Some people have such a sweat that it melts stuff. The hand cream used may also affect. Back in the day I used to sell 'roller mouses' that had a rubber coated bar to move the cursor. In mere weeks one customer complained that the rubber had swollen and got loose so the bar couldn't move freely. We swapped the product to a new one and within a month he made another complaint. Needless to say that he wasn't a heavy user other than by his size. I also have a friend who corrodes regular strings in a few days, coated Elixirs are the only ones that last for a month or so.

Is it toxic? Most likely not. At least such dyes should not be used for items that are in direct skin contact.

Another Saturday with not too much progress. This is the stage that takes the longest! Spot sanded the edges some and reapplied the oil mix. A few layers more and it's done, I guess... At home I then covered the cavities with copper tape, forgot to take it with me to the workshop but being such a minor task I could as well do it sitting beside the fireplace. It's -20° C outside...

Nice sheen but that has been wiped off... And I ran out of the mix so some chemical adventures are awaiting:

Copper

No set screws on the sides? My only ToM has wide oval holes to adjust the angle with four hex set screws.

Ahh, I've never thought sliding bearings to be bushings or liukulaakeri being a synonym for holkki although now that you say it I can understand that. A quick search for liukulaakeri brought up 'liukulaakeriholkki' which to me tells that the sliding bearing is a special version of 'holkki' but that they both translate as 'bushing'.

Not a wasted day, learned something new!

And my apples were indeed oranges to you!

11 hours ago, henrim said:

“holkki” is probably even more ambiguous.

How so? For what I know and doublechecked it's a hollow object, simply a piece of tube. It may have additional properties like threading or flutes, or a collar. Or a flattened end like those used with filterless cigarettes but you may be too young to remember such things...

Good watching, a well spent 6 minutes there!

I know an elderly mandolin/accordeon player who also fixes the latter. According to him the old accordeons (pre 1940's or so) were tuned according to A 432 instead of A 440 which made them play perfectly with mandolins tuned to A 440. With both tuned to 440 the accordeon sounds sharp. Also tuning the old accordeons to 440 pitch ruins their tone. Guess that has something to do with how the sound is produced.

More about the subject here: https://emastered.com/blog/432-hz-tuning-standard

And further: A common trick to "make your guitar sound better" is to tune one semitone lower, to Eb instead of E. The 432 tuning falls roughly in the middle between concert pitch and the dropped semitone.

And of course changing the tuning requires re-intonating... But so does changing the strings to another gauge or even within the same gauge to another brand with a different type of metal used. So many variables, yet we're trying to mass produce identical instruments!

Thanks @Andyjr1515! I've never seen an internally threaded bush before but as your photo clearly shows such things do exist.

3 hours ago, GenerativeGuitars said:

The pickups are based on a point in the beginning of the program (middle end towards the head/neck, top of the guitar body) that sets the origin of the other parts. I thought the Nut to be the 'center' of the universe (because fret is measured down from it). Or is the Bridge the starting point from where I need to measure distance to the nut? What is the best logic here? Imagine the neck/body sizes change... I can find the right frequency for frets, but what about the pickups? Any logic there?

Can't tell about the logic but the Pythagoras thing is interesting. That makes explaining some theories so much easier!

If you take that Pythagoras thing and mirror the neck side to the body side at the 12th fret you'll notice that the harmonics rules apply there as well. You can pluck a 4th harmonic both on the 5th fret or 1/4 of the scale length from the bridge. Funny enough that happens to be right over the neck pickup of a 21 fret guitar! Same with the bridge pickup, the Tele pickup sits at about 1/16 which also produces a high pitched harmonic. Placing the pickups to certain nodes is an arguable thing, though. Just think about 24 fret guitars, the pickup has to be placed to the closest location of the neck but it's far from the 1/4 node and nobody cares. That said, our very own @Crusader has tested various locations regarding pickups and nodes and he has managed to both make his guitars ring and move some less favourable tones outside of the scale.

Speaking about the center of the universe, let's start from the nut. The bridge is adjustable and although you can do similar compensation to the nut it's of less importance. The frets on the headstock side are so wide that placing your finger makes more difference than the nut. On the narrow frets there's less play so compensating at the bridge makes more sense. Not to mention that the impurity is part of what makes a guitar sound so nice in our ears! Otherwise we'd all be using True Temperament Frets with calibrated string sets. And maybe robot players with uniform fingertips and preset picking force and angle.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

yes I think they are meant to go in the dremel,

No no no, you're not reading me correctly! Admittedly there's those dremel sized tools but the ones I linked to have a 1/4" shaft and a ½" conical bit.

Aside that the colour is simply majestic.

2 hours ago, ScottR said:

I just get so insanely curious about what the wood is going to look like all polished and finished. So I finish it to satisfy my curiosity.

Take a piece of Abura and build a chiseled one out of that! Pretty please!

9 hours ago, ScottR said:

Rough shaped top.

Your chiseling is so clean even the rough shaped top looks superb! On such a spectacular piece of wood leaving it as such would be a waste of appearantical (is that a word???) resources. But on a blander piece of wood, have you ever thought of leaving the surface structured?

10 hours ago, henrim said:

Even if it is not really needed it shouldn't cause any harm either

Exactly. The smaller hole on the top doesn't provide any significant support to the hollow bolt, the string capstan most likely is the place of any wobble.

I did that tiny detail just because it was easily doable.

Then again, as we all know tearout can be a problem with strongly figured wood. Often the tearout in the headstock is minor and mostly can be covered with the washer. With a smaller hole any minor damage will more likely stay in the hidden area, don't you think?