Professor Woozle

That may explain the price difference, stainless steel is significantly pricier due to its nickel and chromium content. I wouldn't rule out them being the magnetic form of stainless (martensitic) but it's most likely these rods are a standard tool steel of some sort.

Not all stainless is non-magnetic, but generally the stuff used for applications where it doesn't need to be hardened will be non-magnetic. Incidentally, regular iron and steel is also non-magnetic at high temperatures, there's a point generally around 800 degrees C where the crystal structure of the metal changes (to what's known as austenite), but that same non-magnetic crystal structure can exist at room temperature in heavily alloyed steels like stainless.

To see if they're stainless you could try testing them with a magnet? All of the A-coded (austenitic) grades of stainless steel aren't magnetic, and they tend to be the ones used for applications that don't require heat treatment (i.e. edged tools).

I haven't really started yet, but one half will be going on a LP when I eventually finish off some of the other ongoing projects and find time to start another!

The simple "pleasure" of resawing slabs by hand with a ripsaw... I'm slowly turning a rosewood table top piece into two guitar tops by that means, when I can summon up the energy!

I've recently got a Woden no.5 to restore, one side wing had been broken off and welded back in the past but it looks a solid repair, the handgrip is broken too but repairable. Cleaned up and resharpened, it should be a decent addition to my toolbox.

My first thought was that it's ebony, but looking at the grain I'm not so sure - maybe something else that's been dyed?

Plan 'B' is now looking likely to become plan 'A' having looked over some ash limbs I scavenged a few months back and seen a bit with a suitable curve - go for the old-school ship builder's approach and let the tree form the shape you need! I might get some thin slices off straight pieces and put stripes in the body too. This is giving me more ideas, I'll look out for a crotch bit - one-piece flying 'V' body, anyone?

Definintely different - personally, I'd have gone for a whiplash curve but that's because I've long been a devotee of Aubrey Beardsley's artwork!

I saw the title of this thread and thought "that sounds like a Cardiacs song!"

The backup plan is keep my eyes open for an ash limb with suitable curve - there's a lot of ash trees having to come down round here thanks to ash dieback, which means lots of wood to be scavenged, and I reckon with ash being a naturally pretty dry wood I could get away with minimal seasoning for an experimental build like this. As for the steaming, the offcut piece is about half a metre in length and a fairly gentle curve would be sufficient. I may spark together some steel formers for the job...

I'd probably kill our elderly microwave if I tried to steam a piece of timber in it, but I wonder if I could do a long slow steaming in the oven? I'm sure there'll be something I can do using the junk in my garage!

Definitely something to experiment with, I'm wondering if it would work to carve out the face of a guitar, paint the recessed area with the superblack so you'd only see the outline shape with the pickups, bridge and controls apparently floating in the void! Hmm, when I'm a bit more flush with cash maybe I'll get some of the paint and pick up a junk body off Ebay... Edit - not strictly relevant to the thread but this old Persil advert popped up in my mind, what with black being under discussion!

Didn't Ronnie Dio play the "Rainbow in the Dark" keyboard riff on a little Casio of some sort?

I haven't got as far as building a steaming box/pipe yet, I'll have a look online for possible options and see what looks the best fit to my available materials. Also thinking about how best to make a bending jig, a fly press would be the ideal thing to apply the pressure but I don't have one. I do however have a spare anvil that could be used as a weight...

I have some bad habits. There's Ebay, for starters, I pick up lots of stuff I don't need but think it could be useful/fixed/fun/bargain at that price. Then, there's having too many projects on the go at once and as if my long-running inlay job, the Giannini classical to do up, and several others weren't enough, I've been thinking about doing something with an Ebay purchase. As well as stringed instruments, I mess about with bagpipes too and a few years back I bought a smallpipe chanter for £20. After deciding I didn't need it right at the moment I listed it on Ebay again but without success, so I took that as a sign... I do a bit of turning, so thought maybe if the chanter was part of a complete set it might do better. It's made of ash, and I've usually got plenty of bits of that scavenged for firewood. Having got a bit, cleaved it into billets and roughed up with my billhook, I got busy on the lathe. The intention is to make a two-drone renaissance smallpipe of the type known as a Hummelchen (German for little bumblebee), The pipe ends will be yew (piece on the right has all three ends roughed in one piece). I did have problems with one bit, half of the smaller drone was problematic due to the long 3/16" drill wandering during drilling and so that bit will get recycled into a composite. I'm also intending to carve a human face onto the chanter stock, which is the uncut block.

Roughly sawed the bits at the weekend for the electric hearpe experiment, here they are along with an acoustic hearpe I bought off ebay several years ago, which I keep meaning to sand off and refinish, and also make a new bridge and tailpiece, not to mention take those silly flowers off I'd planed the edges and tried gluing up yesterday but it went a bit wrong, I think I managed to put slight chamfers on so the pieces were pushing outwards when clamped. I'm thinking of knocking up a router sled and levelling them off on all sides with that, then re-planing and trying again. I'm also thinking of trying to steam-bend a bit of a curve into the offcut that's going to be the peg arm.

Thanks for posting the link - at that price, I'm tempted to buy some and just try coating a test piece, then putting a matt lacquer on top. If the results are good enough then I can see a future project being done with it. I also keep thinking of the bit from "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" with the band Disaster Area's stunt ship, with the black controls on a black background...

Sorry, forgot about the BBC links not working for outside the UK, or not unless you set up a VPN tunnel to a UK IP address! Had a quick search and found this page with some useful info - https://www.coating.co.uk/vantablack-coating/, sounds like nanotube paint is becoming more accessible but still eye-wateringly expensive and it also suggests it's not very robust. I do note the mention of a sprayable alternative, wonder what that would be like under a matt laquer?

Last night while half-watching BBC4, I saw something that piqued my interest. It was a special light-absorbing black paint, which even when it had a torch shone on it just sucked the light up. The magic to it was that it was a coating of carbon nanotubes that were end-on tothe surface, so any light got pulled in, bounced around and its energy dissipated. Of course, my immediate thought was "how cool would it be to have a guitar body coated in that, a black hole guitar!" although I guess this stuff needs applying at a specialist facility, is horrendously expensive and may not be particularly robust either. Still, it's nice to dream... Link to the programme on iPlayer is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017frm/secrets-of-size-atoms-to-supergalaxies-series-1-1-going-small

I finally got round to cutting some timber for the experimental electric hearpe today, once it's starting to look like something I'll post up on the thread. I also need to get started on another project more akin to this, when I can find some time. I've got some smaller bits of Brazilian rosewood and Cuban mahogany that need turning into a mandolin that will be baby sister to my cittern...

Aye, it'll do fer cheese on toast but not fer a meat n' tater - nowt but Hendos on them!

African Blackwood would be an alternative to staining Indian rosewood, but rather more expensive and takes the edge off tools pretty quick. It is lovely wood though, smells faintly of chocolate when you're working it and takes a really good polish.

Thanks @Dave Higham that's a really classy looking guitar. A Sheff lad, then? Do you get Hendos sent out to France specially? For the benefit of non-Yorkshire site members, Hendos (Hendersons relish) is a Sheffield delicacy, which greatly enhances a meat and potato pie.

Please do - this has been an enjoyable and informative journey to follow, so some good shots of the end result would be very welcome!