Prostheta

I hope to try my hand at acoustics within the next year or so. The big issue is in the amount of jig/template planning and building I will need to do. It is certainly not something that can just be picked up, especially when you are unaware of the sheer amount of work that goes into one. Try your local library for a few books on the subject. It is somewhat difficult to offer positive advice when the questions asked do not truly explain the extent of the subject. Electrics are certainly cheaper and easier to build if that is the information you were seeking. Whether one knows how to perform brain surgery or not, we know it is not a pushover! Acoustics are not brain surgery by a long way thankfully, however they do require a completely different set of disciplines and knowledge to "simple" electric guitar building. I think Melvyn Hiscock published a book on acoustic recently. If it is as accessible and friendly as his solidbody book I can recommend it thoroughly. There are several other books on the subject also which I am sure will be listed and written about in the upcoming site update....

Oh, still plenty to do. Currently the existing projectguitar.com site is being translated and restructured into the new CMS system. You know when you've moved house, you unpack everything and for about six months you're living in a sea of cheese knives, cardboard boxes and photo albums? Yeah. That. Once the transitional period is over, the site on the whole will be a million times more cohesive, easier to manage with lots of new features to carry PG over the next ten years!

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There's nothing better than a well set up router table. Since my neck sides are not straight in relation to the centre where the rod needs to go, I tapered a piece of Birch to correspond with the neck. Two holes were drilled halfway through and small screws inserted until they emerged on the mating face by a couple of mm. This was then pressed into the side of the neck and the rearmost screw advanced in a couple of turns since the end is to be cut off anyway. The centreline measured bang on 70mm from the edge, so I set the fence accordingly, took a test cut on some scrap and measured any difference. None....bang on. After marking the endpoint of the cut (minus the radius of the cutter) the neck was slotted in 1-2mm increments until a depth of 10mm was achieved. This is when the photo was taken. To fit the adjuster and welded block end in, the fence was tapped with a hammer (in the background, actually) on one side one millimetre to achieve an offset at the centre of 0.5mm. I took the second cut after tapping the fence back 0.5mm the other side of 70mm. A 10mm bullnose cutter replaced the straight flute bit and was run through the centre (after resetting the fence) to create a rounded bottom for the adjuster and a round access hole. After the rod was checked for fit, the glueing surface of the neck was run over the jointer with a 0.2mm depth of cut (I believe it too....very fine cut), the rod checked again for fit and siliconed in place with a strip of masking tape to keep it from being knocked out. The end of the neck was cut to length and the waste used along with a piece of Ebony to fashion a plug to fit over the truss rod adjuster. As of a couple of hours ago, this was glued in place and is drying overnight before I pick up the work again on Thursday. Next I need to slot the fingerboard, taper it minus a couple of mm and glue on some more Wenge to self-bind the board. I am not going to go for a full semi-hemi job on this one since I am using stainless steel wire. All things being equal, the board should be being glued on by the end of play Thursday. From thereonin the neck will only be getting trimmed flush as the body needs work....

I'm tempted to play around with profiles a bit since I have always just scraped and sanded till they felt right and ended up with the same boring shape every time. Assymmetrical would be interesting. But anyway. Thicker necks have always made solid-sounding instruments unless the wood was crap. My Black n' Gold bass's neck is more like a Fender-ish feel and that sounds awesome.

Did your guitars change anybody's preconceptions? ie. thin bodies or whatever? People are bought with their eyes and preconceptions but put proof in their hands....

...it does!

Scraped flush.

Oops. Looks like I FTPed the wrong files and overwrote two older pics.... Inlaid the headstock with the Ebony infill. Clean and sweet.

0.85"/21mm is exactly what I aim for also. Thinner necks just don't sound as good unless the wood is itself good. Mahogany necks definitely need to be meatified.

Excellent. Good to hear it Wes. It seems however, that some people are having difficulty in posting or starting threads. I spent most of today housekeeping the backend system so if any errors have crept in, please PM me or a moderator.

Okay, cool. So how's that working for you, Wes? 8pt text 10pt text 12pt text 14pt text 18pt text 24pt text It does mean however, that posts that use specifically-sized text might now be out of whack in relation to the default 14pt text size. We need to keep an eye out for that. Can you manage that, Wes? Actually, this morning I was reading an article on how DRM is making documents such as e-books, etc. impossible for visually-impaired people to use reading aids. http://www.zdnet.com/going-blind-drm-will-dim-your-world-7000004586/ I will certainly keep accessibility in mind from hereonin before the new PG site becomes too "ingrained" to change it Wes.

I really love that extra decorative laminate in the headstock. Carl Thompson uses this same technique to get the maximum mileage out of his top woods, separating recovered pieces with decorative laminates. Why try and hide a glue line when you can make it into a feature? ;-) This is one of three identical glueup tables where I study. One of the tables has had its clamps renewed and I really should have snagged the old ones. A bit of a cleanup and some Hammerite would have sorted them out! :-)

You need a bigger monitor or a smaller face. This is on my to-do list Wes, bear with me.

What browser are you running Wes? Hitting CTRL+PLUS a couple of times in Chrome increases the size of the page nicely. Perhaps you are too far from the monitor. :overhere

The default font size is somewhat difficult to alter but I'll look into it.

Hah! Woke up with a sore head, Wes?

Clear your cache Wes. Ctrl+F5 normally, or CTRL and click the refresh icon.

Thanks for the feedback. Any minor oddities will be ironed out as time goes along however the main tasks ahead are the relaunch of the main ".com" side of the site and the integration of the new articles and content system. Certainly, Project Guitar has a lot of growth ahead and a correspondingly large amount of work (and coffee). The six selectable header images come with many thanks to ScottR as this month's GOTM winner (#1), and from gracious donation by Robert Woudsma of LoonSong Instruments (#2). Each month as we have a new GOTM winner, a new header background from the winner's photos will be chosen for the site in the default header image position meaning that all new visitors to PG and those who have the first image header selected will instantly see your creations!

Clamping pressure radiates out in a 90° arc from the clamps through the caul. If these cross over each other, the clamping is sufficient and as you correctly say, turn it into a press.

Project Guitar is being updated! We have been online for a little over ten years and to mark this the whole projectguitar.com website will be receiving a gradual overhaul plus the forum has been given a whole new look. Currently the board background uses a few "default" header images however these will soon be altered to guitar/luthiery-specific backgrounds. If you so wish, one of six backgrounds can be selected by clicking the small paintbrush icon in the top right hand part of the site.... Welcome to the next ten years.

Yeah, squeaking sounds like seized bearings.

There are online tools for resizing images. I think googling "image resizer" is what you need iirc. I will write a tutorial on this.