Bizman62

Just amazing! When I was young I had seen inlays like that only on factory made instruments and in my naïveness thought that it's about some fancy industrial high technology machinery that can automatically cut the inlay pieces and carve the cavities in mere minutes - something that might not even have been possible back then!

Oh and how I hated that saw in my early teens! We used omnidirectional blades for cutting acrylics and I never learned to cut straight or even stay outside the line.

Holy inlay! I'm not that afraid about carving the inlay cavities, it's the cutting of that crisp and hard material that has kept me from doing any inlays. Plus I've never remembered to place any order for MOP or abalone or anything like that. Plus I don't know what to inlay...

Did I say clearly enough that it looks just amazing?!

Not to mention that the grain is so straight it's almost impossible to tell how many pieces a top is made of!

2 hours ago, mistermikev said:

man it smelled awesome.  like a sauna.

Cedar, you say? Reminds me of one guy making a semi-hollow with a cedar top. One day there was a stack of planed and rounded cedar planks intended to be used for sauna benches. The town carpenters sharing the workshop apparently had some fancier project going on, normally the benches are made of abachi in larger projects, or aspen or spruce for single family saunas.

31 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

I would think the screw down method would put some turning pressure on your wells.  so if they are in there soft... you might actually make them more loose, no?

No, but there's a risk of pushing the dowel right through the bottom. Unlikely but possible.

Since the top is only 3 mm or so thick and the body is hollow if I understood right, I'd try the heat and paint scraper method first. That also depends on the glue used. Titebond and hide glue will break with heat, the foaming one or the regular white wood glue won't. Some wedges might be useful to keep the top from regluing if you get it off with heat.

Other than that, what @curtisa said is a solid method for those who have a decent band saw and know how to use it. Either my skills are non-existent or the saws at the workshop poorly set up but I can't get a 3 mm slice off with a bandsaw!

Welcome to the forum!

11 hours ago, MTalbs90 said:

update on planers, they are ancient, dull and chipped so going to start looking for some newer ones 

If they are of good quality, age isn't an issue. A hundred years or so doesn't make a hand plane ancient or unusable! Of course the bottom has to be true and preferably the sides at a perfect 90 deg angle but those are relatively easy to fix. Same goes for the adjusting screws and such. A dull blade just needs to be sharpened, they rarely are perfect even from the package. Then again, if your tools are from a dollar shop fixing them would not pay.

You most likely won't get the surface perfectly flat with sandpaper, the edges tend to round and slope.

For tools needed, well, the builder at the refugee camp may have the minimum of what it takes:

There's really nothing I can add to what @ADFinlayson and @komodo said in terms of safety. I know from personal experience that a collet can loosen, fortunately I was taking off a <2 mm pass on predrilled soft alder...

Summarised: Use a depth stop and route several shallow passes until you've reached the preset depth. The shallow passes serve a similar purpose to predrilling with a forstner bit, i.e. having the least amount of material to be routed.

AFA pre drilled holes: I like the idea (never remember to use it!) of having a hole at both ends. That should help keeping the ends accurate. Another way to skin that cat is to have a stop block at either end. The bravest ones just draw a mark and stop the router spot on at every pass. The last method either gives me steps or a cavity too long - routing the cavity a tad too short until the last pass should tidy the ends though.

2 hours ago, komodo said:

Starting the router with the bit on the workpiece is just dangerous

Now that you mentioned it, editing that part out is a good idea for the very reason you gave.

Having a hole drilled at both ends in a soft wood, maybe. But tilting the bit a full 9 mm down on one of the hardest woods really can make serious damage.

Pretty, down home like a summer cottage!

Start by checking the nut height. Less than 1 mm between the first fret and the string is low enough to start with. You can use a pick of 1 mm, if it barely stays between the string and the first fret it's good. File the slots deeper if needed, the highest point being at the very edge on the fretboard side.

After having adjusted the nut check the action again. If it still is high check that the neck is straight. You're aiming to have it to give just a little in with the string pull, without the strings a stiff neck should be perfectly straight. You don't want a hump in the middle of the neck since that will buzz!

If all that is well and done and you still have your action too high, recessing the bridge by double the amount you need to lower the action at the 12th fret is an option. A lower bridge might also be available.

2 hours ago, Liquorice said:

While sanding a piece of wood it caught the belt and flew away

Happened to me too a couple of times but fortunately only thinned my fingerprint. That's too easy to do when using a large belt sander for thinning a tiny little piece like the switch cover of an LP. Actually I lost one such disk, it flew somewhere into a wood storage. Those incidents taught me to use double sided adhesive/masking tape+super glue to attach such pieces to a block big enough to hold firmly.

At our class there's a pretty girl, small and slender with long hair - isn't 28 still a "girl" or is that infantilizing? Anyhow, when she started she would have her hair open, not using earmuffs or goggles when using power tools. It didn't happen once or twice that I handed her those. She then used them with a "come on oldtimer" face...

Now during the last Saturday of this spring I noticed she had her hair tied to a knot while working at the pillar drill and later having earmuffs and goggles while routing. When I thanked her for taking care of her safety and reminded her about her earlier attitude. She told that having heard so many horror stories from the rest of us and elsewhere including YouTube she had started to think it would be better to be safe than sorry. You should have seen her face when we discussed a potential scenario where long hair were grabbed to a circular saw, splicing the face!

Very good reminder, mistermikev!

too far... Should I try to guess the missing letter where the three dots are?

Hmmm... on another forum the now retired admin (meaning he's an old fart himself) started a thread about how one would describe or name his/her fart. Some of the names were hilarious, some more obvious. Just remember, there'll come the day for all of us when you just can't trust a fart any longer...

Speaking about idioms, 32 going on 14 or 44 going on 4 ring no bells here...

Back to the subject, how about redoing it to something similar than the Carvin in http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/49668-what-is-this-guitar-pic/?do=findComment&comment=577558?

 1/8"  seems thin to me in an unfinished body even though the body is only partially hollow. There's not much left to sand off.

Had it been my project, I'd have been pissed seeing how beautiful the back of the guitar is compared to the neutral looks of cedar. It's almost bookmatched! If the bottom is thick enough I might be tempted to cut along the bottom of the cavity and make the inside a top - or a lefty with the current bottom on top. That quilt definitely wants to be shown!

Well, she really looks like I hope you do. I mean, perfectly functional with some marks of a fully lived life and some subtler hints about being on the second half when viewed closely.

Shiny anatomically perfect curves, what's not to like? Congrats!

13 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

couldn't happen to a nicer guy

or to a more attractive guitar!

Do you prefer commenting here or on the YouTube?

Thanks for sharing, doing some study knowing what it is makes me want to build one! Or rather, build one inspired by it.

I just noticed a feature I may have to add to my current build: The gap for lifting the plates! 

And the way you've addressed the "all access neck" - does that allow for using the neck pickup as an extra fret?

7 hours ago, komodo said:

sophisticated savagery

I couldn't describe her better in my native language!

Forums like this really broaden my expressing skills in English, hopefully still leaving the grammar I learned at school intact.

I can only help with what I've learned about lacquering the fretboard. For what I know it's done after hammering the frets in. You apply the lacquer and when it's (semi) dry you scrape the tops of the frets clean. Cut along the bottom of the frets in an angle for a clean seam. Or something like that. Hopefully I got that right.

That sure is difficult to find with Google!

If the player were recognized, there might be something about his gear published.