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curtisa

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Everything posted by curtisa

  1. Thanks Scott. The fluro lighting in the shed does weird things with my camera. The colours in that top are much darker and less yellow than how that looks. In the last shot you can see the cavity covers sitting on the workbench - that's probably closer to how it looks in person.
  2. I used clear epoxy on my latest build as a grain filler, and used a scraper to remove the bulk of the dried epoxy. Much quicker and less dusty. Still hand to sand at the end to even it all up, but there was far less dust to deal with if I was to sand it all back in one hit.
  3. Pop the high and low E strings out of the nut slots and move them further apart and see if the extra width at the nut works with the existing neck taper and bridge setup. It'd be a shame to bring out the big guns on the neck if widening the nut slots worked afterall.
  4. Having said that, (somewhat ironically) my current favourite guitar was one I purchased without playing - an early 90s Artist series PRS Custom 22, which despite its dings, rust and flaking gold plating I love to bits. I've always had a soft spot for the look of the Ibanez S. When I was a kid I'd spend a lot of time flicking through copies of Guitar World magazines, marvelling at the full-page Ibanez adverts and wishing I could get my hands on some of the instruments featured in them.
  5. True enough. Even so, having bought guitars in the past that I liked the look of without playing them first, and after using them for a while and finding no faults other than they just didn't feel right from the moment I pulled it out of the packing, I would now much rather try the guitar of my dreams first before purchasing.
  6. Something I could try in person before laying down the cash
  7. I was at an antique store the other day and there were a couple of woodworkers benches for sale. They were labelled as 19th century French origin. One of them was fitted with a leg vice, and may have been split top, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering that correctly. What struck me at the time (apart from the asking price!) was how low and uncomfortable they looked. At a guess I'd say they were only 700mm high. There'd be no way I could use something that low unless I was seated. I should also point out that the height quoted of my workbench does not include the top. The overall height on mine is 930mm, which is close to what's commonly used in kitchen benches in this part of the world - a much more friendly height for my poor old back.
  8. Mine was just a bunch of ideas cobbled together from various designs I'd seen floating around the net and, after battling with a crappy fold-up Workmate-style workbench for the best part of 8 years, also driven by a need for something not **** The frame is all 45mm x 90mm hardwood framing (close enough for most people to consider as the "classic" 2x4). Each leg is two pieces laminated together to make 90mm sq profiles. Frame is 1.2m long x 600mm deep x 880mm high, and the top is 1.8m long giving a fairly generous overhang at either end. Only one vice installed at present, a chinese Record knock-off that was given to me years ago by my Father-in-law long before I got into guitar building, let alone before I had a bench to mount it to! A lot of the plans I'd seen suggested making the worktop the same height as your wrist when you stand with your arms by your side. I'm 5'10" and have an intermittently bad back, and found the suggested height a bit too low to be comfortable for long periods of time. An extra 80mm of height was enough to make a difference for me, and I find it's still a good height for me for either hand tools or power tools. The one thing I did transfer from that fold-up workbench was the wide gap between the two work faces when the jaws were fully opened. That was the only redeeming feature that thing had, and I found it handy to be able to place F-clamps in the gap that could reach over either the front or rear workfaces. As a result I've deliberately made the worktop on the new bench two separate slabs separated by about 90mm. At a pinch you could probably consider it a split-top workbench, but because the gap between the two tops is so wide it's effectively two separate workbenches in parallel. The eventual plan is to install a removable section in the 90mm gap that could be a tool well or bench dog section etc. These couple of shots show how I did the through-bolts and wedged tennons. As those barrel nuts aren't a normal hardware store item, and I couldn't be bothered specially ordering them, I came up with my own solution - just a 35mm hole bored into the stretchers at either end and one edge squared off for the nut and washer to sit against. Since space is at a premium in the shed at the moment I built a removable router table for the bench that just slides over the end on a kind of cantilevered sleeve arrangement. It's a pretty snug fit but with a bit of jostling it can be slid on and off fairly quickly. If I ever get some space back the router table could be easily reused in a purpose-built stand. Anyway, sorry to clutter your thread with my chitchat. Your workbench is definitely going to be better presented than mine!
  9. Wedged tennons. Given that my tennons were such a tight fit and then glued as well, fitting wedges was probably a bit of overkill, but I was keen to try a few different techniques to make it as strong as possible.
  10. Very interesting read so far, will be watching this one closely. Having completed my first workbench build late last year myself, it's interesting to see somebody elses take on the same topic. I note that you're using blind mortise and tennon joints throughout the frame. I elected to use through-haunched MT joints on the top shorter crosspieces, and through-MTs on the bottom crosspieces, with two wedges at each tennon to provide more "squeeze" in the joint. The longer stretchers in mine were blind MTs to a depth of only 15mm or so, with 4" through-bolts pulling the whole thing together. It's surprising how strong and twist-resistant the frame is, even more so once the extra mass of the top is fitted. The other thing that convinced me to use through-bolts on the frame was that if I ever need to relocate the bench, I can break it down to pieces that will fit in the back of my car and re-assemble it elsewhere.
  11. If you have any spare shank bearings and stop collars you could retrofit one to a bullnose bit and make it a template-following bit instead of using a pattern ring. There probably are bullnose bits out there that have the bearings already fitted. On a pre-carved top you'd have to devise some way of positioning the template above the body on spacer blocks to keep it level over the carved parts. Tricky but not impossible. I know a few people do use the drill press with a cove bit on the highest RPM setting like you describe, but i feel more comfortble using a high speed bit for what it was designed for in the proper tool. YMMV.
  12. 1/2" diameter bullnose bit in the router, plus template ring fitted in the router base. Drill a 30mm diameter hole in a piece of clear acrylic and lay it over the area to be routed. Run the router around the circle template to a depth of 3-5mm to taste. I find I get a cleaner result if I run the router around the template in an anticlockwise direction (ie, a climbing cut). Marking a set of crosshairs on the body, and drilling your hole for the pot/switch before you route makes lining everything up easier too.
  13. I'm still refining my technique somewhat with those concentric inlays, but they came out better this time around. Got a few more ideas to try out to ensure the two pieces line up perfectly every time. At the moment about a third of the inlays get thrown away due to off-centres. First time around it was 50/50.
  14. The last neck I did was in Tas blackwood, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the spokeshave to play fairly with it. Blade was sharp, adjusted OK, tried running up the neck, down the other way, skewing the blade left or right, increasing or decreasing angle of attack, more pressure, less pressure...Couldn't get any clean shavings off it at all, only gouges and splinters. In the end I gave up and just went at it with the Shinto saw rasp. I guess sometimes you just need to find another tool to accomplish the same job!
  15. I use a 10mm radius cove bit with a bearing on the router table to set the carve depth all the way around the body. As I run it around I'll ease the body off the bit as I approach the neck pocket on either side. The deep parts of the scoop I'll rough in using a half-round rasp or round microplane, being careful not to catch the edges I've just routed. To blend it all together I use one of these bad boys. The graduated radii on the edges makes it handy to increase of decrease the amout of curve in the scoop as required. The rest is just sand paper and elbow grease.
  16. Position markers and neck carve done. Really digging the gidgee fretboard, lots of character. Red myrtle in the scarf and lams looks pink in these shots but turns burgundy when the clear goes on: Also whipped up a couple of cavity covers in tiger myrtle to match the top:
  17. The guitar is quite bright sounding plugged in, but I'm willing to bet that's more to do with the use of the EMGs, particularly the 808X in the neck position, which is quite singlecoil-like in tone.
  18. I found the celery top to be fine to work with. Grain is nice and tight. No real issues with strength that I can see so far, but the neck was a 5 piece which will have helped anyway. It's more resistant to dings than the Queensland maple I used on my previous neck, so I guess it's perfectly OK in terms of hardness. I used tung oil on the jarrah, maybe 6-8 coats. Very dense wood. Given how hard jarrah is I'm not sure it would translate to a warmer tone. I would imagine your choice of body timber and pickups would have more of an impact.
  19. In the audio world the log/anti-log pot would be the "correct" implementation of panning between two sources, where at mid rotation you want the two channels to be attenuated slightly. At first sight the pot you describe would seem...uh, broken but on second reading in the guitar world it makes perfect sense - us string-twangers generally don't give a hoot about the correct combining of two pickups...Just make it loud!
  20. Interesting. I opened up my Yamaha bass to verify the blend pot against what you've said, and it's fitted with a dual log/anti-log pot (mid point is 75% of full travel on each element). Horses for courses...
  21. It'll be the value of the pot from one end to the other. The centre-detent is only a mechanical index for those of us who like to feel where the midpoint of the pot's rotation is without having to look at it.
  22. Headplate roughly cut and attached: Trimmed to size: Test fit for trussrod access. Decided to try a different method for accessing the trussrod nut. Rather than just routing a channel to the full length into the headstock, I've made the window in the headplate only big enough to insert the wrench instead. Much neater methinks: Headstock profile cut: Ready for position markers:
  23. I'll second that. May I ask where you're sourcing some of these imported timbers? The one and only store down here that did any sort of imported timber sales went belly-up a couple of months back.
  24. Had to use the phone camera for these shots. Please excuse the shoddier than usual quality. While that's clamping it's time to get stuck into the final routing and shaping jobs on the body. Pickup cavities landed exactly where the wiring channels were run earlier: Trem cavity: Almost done: Time to carve: Rough carve nearly there:
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