pariah223

if just a few frets are off its quite possible you had an error in your fret slot cutting. Also, how does your action look? if your action is real high you could have intonation problems as well.. and to be able to play the instrument without fret leveling.. i am assuming your action must be kinda high unless you are just really that good

I recently received The Art of Violin Making by Chris Johnson and all of the resources in the book for plans are located overseas from the US which is where i live. I have found a few not so good sources for plans and was just wondering if anyone here has made a violin or has plans and is from the US and could steer me in the right direction for nice full size violin blueprints. Thanks

hm it seems like this book is still pre-release on amazon although it says january 1st... i really want this book

once whoever bought it gets it mounted and uses it, let me know if its worth the buy. 60 bucks is cheap for a vice like that, but only if it works good!

ugh... thanks (sarcasm)... now my wallet will be even lighter because im addicted to tools... if i see em, and i like em, i gotta buy em. Someone posted on another forum about a good drill bit set price... and there on the way... i wont post them to spare you all. hehe

yeah i just had a problem with a guitar im working on dry out because i kept it in my dry, heated room for too long. I wouldnt have had trouble im sure if i kept it in the garage. the below freezing temps scared me though, but i guess temp doesnt hurt as much as dryness...

So my shop/workspace that i currently use is far from ideal when it comes to building guitars. The biggest issues seems to be humidity and temperature. My shop is not heated 24/7 due to the cost so i heat it about 2 hours before i use it and then i may not use it for 2 days after so it goes back to just above the outside temp (usually below 30 in the winter). Im sure the RH in my garage is all over the place due to this so i am looking for a way to keep the garage at a semi-constant humidity even with the temp changes. I just started humidifying my room for the winter and i keep it at about 45-50 RH but i cant build in here for obvious reasons. I am sure i am not the only one dealing with this issue so what have you guys come up with?

I did a little research and found out exactly what happened and found out how i should be able to fix it. I went to Taylor guitar's website and they had videos with EXACTLY the same problem i had. what happened, is when i brought it into my room that is like 0% humidity right now due to the dry heat in the winter, it dried out the wood and caused this to happen. If i would have kept it out in the humidity it would have been fine. If you click http://www.taylorguitars.com/contact/customerservice/ and go to videos there are a few humidity vids. I took a look at my other guitars i have, built and store bought and there having similer issues being in my room. I just fired up a humidifier and i gota grab a hygrometer and make sure i keep my room at the right humidity level. I wish i saw this video before i tried fixing the splits because beleive it or not, when he re-humidifies the guitar the splits close up!

I have been working on another acoustic and all has been going great. Except i made a big mistake and i kept the guitar body in my room over night after showing a friend.. and my room is so dry that my eyes usually burn if im in there too long. I then took it outside the next day which was a rainy 40 degree day with high humidity and my back plate seems to be a bowl instead of a dome now. Im not sure what to do at this point but i am very dissapointed. Any suggestions? This also caused the soundboard to split a very tiny bit (i made it worse trying to fix it). Edit: What do you guys use as a humidifier when your guitar is in the case. I notice there are a bunch out there and they are all pretty cheap. Also... i like to keep my guitars on the wall because if they were in a case i probably wouldnt play it as much. If i keep my room at 45-50 humidity all the time (humidifier/dehumidifier) should i be ok doing that?

There are just a bunch of little errors here and there that if your not paying attention to what your doing or reading.. will mess you up. The funniest error i noticed in the book is his dimensions for the dovetail.. says to make it 22 inches tall.. that would be some sight haha. Its not a bad book by any means.. it got me through my first guitar and i still turn to it for reference.. I just warn you to really think about every thing you do and before you take on a process... make sure your read the whole chapter. Sounds like obvious enough advice but it can be easy to see the nice pictures, see how easy and clean he makes it look.. try it, and realize you didnt read the paragraph on the NEXT page that tells you to leave an extra inch around the border. Great book but i would wwait to see what hiscock's book has to offer and how it reviews since its only a few weeks away.

what a great find. I have hiscock's electric book and i thought it was a great resource. I also have Kinkead's acoustic book and found it to be a decent resource.. but i found there to be a lot of misinformation and calculation errors, as well as dated techniques that i dont think most people use anymore. However the pictures are great and there is still a lot of good information.

Welcome back! I have been periodically checking back to see if you have started up again, nice to hear from you again. I am actually more than halfway through a new build, but have not been posting about it. I might post soon though to show some pics. Looking foward to seeing your progress

So i started cutting the binding channels on my new guitar.. and the binding i am using is about .90 thick. My sides are about .80 thick so when i started routing, my nice cedar kerfing started showing. I looked in a few books and noticed that there kerfing seems to be showing too, but i want to verify that this is normal... and that my top wont fall off once its all said and done. Thanks!

we hand crafting luthiers can never expect to compete with a machine that is programmed for pinpoint accuracy... and i don't believe that we should want to either. There are the people who want to buy a decent guitar from ibanez but dont want to spend 2 grand because its just a guitar to them... and those people wouldn't be our target audience anyway. Its the people looking for the personalized, custom, hand crafted piece of art that will and would be buying our hand crafted instruments. Just my 2 cents

hm i have always done my nuts with files and a radius block that matched the fingerboard radius. Belt sander kinda seems like overkill but maybe someone else can chime in. What exactly do you mean by how much power you will need?

what tools do you currently own? If you dont own any.. then a belt sander and a jigsaw are not top of the list items in my opinion. are you planning on electrics or acoustics to start off with? from scratch or kits? What kind of budget are you on? what kind of hand tools do you have and what are you pretty good at as far as woodworking goes? SOrry to answer a question with a bunch of questions... but its not a simple answer without more info.

I did a search on the forum to see if anyone had brought this tool up and found nothing. I found it on sale at a local hardware store yesterday and took a plunge and picked one up. For those of you who havnt heard of it... here it is http://www.worksharptools.com/product.asp?specific=137 . I have struggled with tool sharpening since i got into guitar building. I just couldnt get anything to work good except scary sharp, and that took so long and was such a hassle that i just used dull tools and dealt with it. Well i bought this thing yesterday and i have sharpened all my chisels and planes sharper than i have ever had them before. Took little effort and little time. If anyone is struggling with tool sharpening.. or is looking for a quick way to keep tools sharp (talking 30 seconds to re-hone an edge)... and has 200 dollars to drop in something... i highly recommend this tool. I am so impressed with it i had to tell someone, so you guys are the victims!

welcome to the forum. If im not mistaken what you are asking is if the laquer is something you could fix yourself. Trying to do a finishing job yourself if you have no experience or anything is going to be a very difficult task. If it is something you only plan on doing to this guitar, your better off either leaving it alone, or taking it to a professional and paying the money to get it done right. If you really want to get into it though, this forum has hundreds of posts that are about finishing. Take a look around the forum. You will find alot of info. Hope this helps

Hello.. I had an idea, and i dont want to try it until i confirm it. I have a guitar that is natural wood with nitro as a finish. I went through the motions of wet sanding and buffing to a mirror shine. I have never really been a fan of ultra shiny acoustics and was thinking of ways to dull the finish down to a more matte, natural look so it doesnt look so plastic like. Is there a way to do this? I was thinking of wetsanding something like wetsanding with like a 2500 grit and then not buffing it out, but everything i know tells me that is a bad way to approach it. Like i said, i would just try it, but i dont want to mess with it until i know its something that people actually do. Thanks!

I have read that bubinga can be a big pain in the butt to work with and bend. I am nearing the point where i will be bending it, and cant seem to find any solid sources that say things like how wet it should be.. how much heat to use... is there any charts out there for this type of thing? or have any of you hand bent bubinga and can give any tips before i take it on? thanks!

there is a small section in stew macs info page.. its small, but might be what your looking for http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Binding/In...a-bindings.html

lol, i laughed pretty hard at that one.... Yeah, i was tossing around between a drum sander and a buffing machine. I actually found a brand new 1/3 hp motor in my garage that my dad must have for no reason.. so i could do both i suppose. Drum sanders are tricky to build.. no?

My job just moved and the place we moved into had some stuff left behind.. and among those things is a perfectly good working 3 hp 1725 rpm motor. I brought it home and was thinking of making a buffer out of it... but 3 hp seems like it might be way too much power for a buffer. Any ideas? Would it work as a buffer or can anyone think of a better use for such a beast?

ah caught red handed just looking at the pictures... im not worthy!

i cant seem to find any good tutorials for abalone/pearl binding.. Is it just really that simple if you get the curved pieces?