Prostheta

Wow - this post is of no help to you (apart from moral support) but best of luck with that!! I'll be following this thread with interest.

I have the Morley power wah - cheap and pretty cool. Wouldn't mind trying the Bad Horsie 1 or 2, or an old Morley Distortion Wah.

Lucite specifically recommend Cyanocrylate glues for bonding Perspex to a wooden substrate. I *do* not think so.

Epoxy test in the pipeline.

Okay - the horses mouth spoke. No alcohols or solvents, especially acetone to be let near it! Epoxy is a definate thumbs up.

Sounds good to me. Epoxy makes sense. Will post back in this thread (or a new one) when I get around to testing it, and *what* I'm creating!

I was thinking of Perspex sheetings - 5mm sheeting to be exact!

Not to blow what I'm going to attempt here (it'll be awesome though!!) but I need to know what glues will adhere plastic to wood either as a laminate top or a sandwich in a multi-lam. I well understand that I do *not* want to try using plastics in a neck laminate of course (or do I?!).

I presume that the glue face would need roughing a fair amount with say, 120 grit to key the face.

Ugh. Morning. Too early to think. Tell me what you want the circuit to do, how much space you have for pots/switches and I'll come up with something for you tonight. I tell you what though - dialling out a coil from a bucker with a semi coil tap is way cooler than tap switches!

It might be easier to put the two pieces face to face and cut them at the same time. This will achieve the same angled figure with only one cut. This angled cut is what is done when you have a nice figured piece of wood that has some slight discoloration in the middle.

*cough*

That's what I was suggesting!

Without thinking about it (midnight here - tired!) I think that you're getting crazy phase cancellation. Low frequencies have much longer waves than higher ones, so the cancellation produces a comb filter attenuation which at lower frequencies can be pretty dramatic. If I remember correctly that is. It might be worthwhile reversing the phase of one pickup to see what result that gives you.

Incidentally, wouldn't reducing the volume of one pickup in your design ground the entire output of the circuit? Bad move man!

Sorry I don't have much time to think about this more, but I think the design is flawed a little....I would consider semi coil taps using pullpots to fully tap the coils out on your humbuckers or dial out a coil as a "tone control in the middle of the bucker", and a linear pot to blend between the two outputs (pickup to either side of a pot, wiper is your output) and you could even pullpot this to reverse the phase of one pickup. Three controls there - a fourth (space permitting) would be an overall tone control or overall volume. Oh the possibilities!!

Oops. Better sleep. Hope you get your head around this better than me man!

Thanks - I figured (no joke intended) that it would look pretty cool on a V or Explorer style guitar to complement the angles of the body as opposed to the perpendicular of the centreline. I can see difficulty in acquiring bookmatch figure wide enough to work on an Explorer though!

Okay, so I guess there'll be a better way that people use on this one, but bear with me because I'd like to know if my thought train is going in the right direction and thinking in the right way ;-)

A picture is worth a million (or less than ten) words:

Basically, reface your bookmatch, aligning the end grain so you know it's totally face to face (mark the edges to align?) and clamping the wood in the direction you want to angle the bookmatch. Using a jointer or router table, rout along the guide and Bob's your mother's brother!

Obviously, issues such as tearout can be dealt with by good bits, not routing too much at once and dampening the edge slightly I guess.

Would this work well, or just be a potential waste of good wood? It seems to work in theory, and you obviously learn by your mistakes and experience. So I've decided to learn from others mistakes and experience rather than from my pockets bad experiences.

Licking what?

If it's sticky you might be able to do the "women's wax leg treatment" kind of approach and layer porous paper over the top and heat it till it's sticky to rip it off a bit.

How about cheap-ass masking tape? Tape it (not overlaying tape layers) across the neck short ways and leave it a couple of weeks to "bond". Heatgun it a little and see if the masking tape rips it off a bit.

My way of thinking here is to exploit the common flaws in badly made paintjobs which (after all) seem to be more common than those made in good paintjobs!

Best of luck in this, and I would advice trying techniques in small controllable areas before committing to the entire neck.

Don't worry unless you have direct sources of ignition. Just watch your Danish oil rags and Bunsen burners dude. No direct sunlight, and you're about fine.

Look at your average hardware store and how they store the flammables :-) Not seen them explode much.

Hmmm. I was actually considering mounting a router under the bench I have and making a bunk router table out of it for jointing wood. No doubt I'll run out of bench real-estate before then of course! Might be a consideration....

That sounds pretty cool. Any chance of sharing a link in this thread? I'm sure I can find it on Axminster, the amount of time I've been on there!

Considering what I've had to do as far as sanding work goes on the LPDC, lots! I can appreciated the Robosander being good for following template work, but I can colour within the lines so it's staying on the list, and not going into Room 101 ;-)

Will check out 3dhardwoods.com for sure - thanks!

How many projects have you completed Sambo?

Hey Sambo - I only just noticed that you're in Wales man. I might go test those numbers for gits and shiggles ;-)

Where do you tend to buy most of your wood from? I guess it'll cost you no more than it would me. Being green to most things in this area, i'm resorting to my usual research head and testing the waters with cheap sticks before getting my expensive boots wet so to speak.

As for Axminster, they just have the heads up in Google search listings for most things

I think an updated list of "things to buy" would be:

- bandsaw

- 1/2" shank router (decent)

- router table for jointing glue planes of bodies

- oscillating bobbin/belt sander (emailed Ridgid's UK distro)

- drill press with laser lining (good throat capacity - 13cm seems small to me)

- lottery ticket

The jury is still out on the thicknesser type though. I'd love to have both as thicknessing is probably the most mundane of jobs for building guitars, hence I think it can be relegated to the bit before the installation of true mojo, thereby keeping the I-Made-This factor closer to 100%. If the big JET machine will obviate the planer/thicknesser then cool. Instant big machinery!

Better go measure the door to see if I can fit big-ass things through it I guess. How stupid would I feel if I couldn't fit that £600 sander through the workshop door?

I'll do some shopping around on Metabo, Sambo. They seem pretty well recommended "over here" so it's an option for sure.

Meh - found an oscillating belt sander in the UK Erik - but it's huge!

Why oh why don't we have a decent mid-range of tools in the UK anymore?! Everything is either cheap and generic (read: useless) or it's designed for big results and steps up beyond hobbyist level?!

Pish. At least something like that would RULE for finishing internal perpendicular planes like these!

Thanks for the info erik. I've been looking at extraction/collection because I hate sweeping and vacuuming. I'm not 100% sure whether my table saw has facility for collection, but given that it throws dust a million miles an hour in all directions I think I'd be better off investing in a deep sea diving suit for that one. Dust collection is high on the list of priorities given that most (all?) woods are sensitisers and rattle your lungs up a treat after a while.

I'm fully loving that oscillating belt/bobbin sander....I'm going to see if anyone can supply those in the UK....thanks man!!

guitarchump: I think the way to go with thicknessers is to classify them for their usage. Planer thicknessers are what I'd call "coarse" in that you're not looking for achieving the cosmetic look, more of a "predictable workable state" closer to your spec, from which you're ready to work towards the finished look. Sander thicknessers seem to be more "fine" in that you could pop a body through and you'd be happy to leave the result you get as say, the back of your guitar. I wouldn't trust the high speed knifing machines within a couple of mm of the finished thickness just in case fate strikes!

Cheapest "known" brand A bit on the pricey side considering planer thicknessers rattle in at 1/2 or 2/3 of the price. If it would obviate the need for a planer thicknesser then this would be super awesome. The maximum sanding capability is 25cm (9-15/16") on single pass, and double that if you reverse the piece. So it's entirely possible to do an entire glued up 2/3 piece body on this baby.

Best I've found for guitar work! This would rock severely, but I'd consider this commercial, or a lottery win toy!

Heh - I can only imagine the look of horror and fascination on my good friendly guitar tech's face when I run a blank through this. He already thinks I'm crazy considering the things I've achieved through "just getting down and doing it".

Ah ah ah ah!

I'll look at my budget on this one. I don't think I could trust the capability and "coarseness" of planer thicknessers to say, planing wood down to <5mm for neck laminates. How do people usually manufacture these, and what tooling is used? The two sources of wood I'm looking at right now are David Dyke's and North Heigham sawmills. I guess David Dyke would sell wood close to spec which would require minimal planer thicknessing, although I like the idea of going to a sawmill and picking up fair to decent instrument grade wood in large quantities with a trolley. Being well out of ideal spec, sawmill wood will need plenty of cutting and planing, but is a sander thicknesser a sufficient tool for this? The Tim Allen-ness of a sander thicknesser is playing on my mind now though. Goddamnit!!

Apologies for the length and possible contradictory posts. I tend to thoughtstream a lot because I believe projects are 90% planning and 1% work and 9% beer. Mathematically this works well in time saved, unless you double the beer ratio and introduce a 40% error factor and double the work. This becomes 18% beer, 2% work, 40% mistakes and 40% planning. That said, the beer reduces the efficacy of planning by 50%. The fine line is there!

To sum up (for those who would best skip to the ends of my posts of course):

- Will a sander thicknesser obviate the need for a planer thicknesser, given that I may be using rougher spec wood?

- Can planer thicknessers be trusted to finish wood thin enough for neck laminates in purpleheart/ebony/bloodwood/maple? (~4mm or ~5/32")

- Would I be best buying my wood from a luthier supply like David Dyke or buying rougher bulk from a sawmill that deals with instrument grade?

- Will having too much heavy grade machinery devalue the tangible pride and mojo in the resulting instrument?

- What are next weeks lottery numbers? Whoever answers this for me can have that big-ass industrial sander as a gift.

Thanks dude - I can see my English sarcasm went a little astray (over there --->.) on the fret press thing ;-)

I think I can live without the safety net once the bobbin sander is here!

Ben: I better think about the signature then in that case! Goddamnit. At least I'm not selling anything *bwah*.

To a degree I guess. Electrons flow on the outside of a conductor, so a heavier multistrand might be cool but you won't see the results. The internal electronics of a guitar don't carry high voltages or high currents to warrant an upgrade in gauge. It's like considering that you're talking the equivalent of a small car driving down an empty four lane motorway at *low* speeds, there's no point in looking at more lanes if you get my meaning. If anything - better screened cable might reduce your noise but heavier gauge will just be a bigger pain to work with.

Oh sorry, I meant "no".

Dude! I have a full *one* more post than you!! Woo me!!

Dude - my wife is Finnish, and speaks Swedish, German and to a degree most other Scandinavian languages. If you require proofing on your site, please PM me (us).

SONAR in conjunction with a Yamaha 01x mLAN desk, although this is in storage at the moment.