Setch

I also wondered *** about the abalone-esque pattern behind the shark, looks very wierd in the early photos. Great looking piece!

I promised to update when I'd tried my Norman Nutfiles, so... They work really well. They cut smoothly and create a very nice round cut. You can use the back edge as a straight edge to see how close you are to final depth, and once you're at te depth you want, you can burnish the slot with a little cutting paste on the back of the file. I'm really impressed, especially for an inexpensive product.

To nitpick for a minute, isn't diabolo a saw blade manufactured *by* Freud? I've heard them recommended as a great all rounder, thin kerf but still great for general purpose table saw stuff.

I can't speak from personal experience, but I think you'll find any blade will suffer cutting ziricote. I've heard it has a high silica content, and really hammers edged tools.

I've not had any problems with wax transfering. I think it's such a small coating that any amount which did transfer would be long gone by the time you'd finish sanded and completed all your surface prep.

Doing anything to knock back the edge is very risky, you can cut through, or thin the colour coat, and depending on how transparent it is, that can look lousy. However, once you've got a good number of clear coats on, a *very* careful scuff can make the edge a bit smoother, and make the process quicker.

Looks very nice Dan/Chris, super clean. If it were mine, I would have approached the heel and head a bit differently - I think this would be an ideal instrument for a back veneered headstock, and I'd have tried to align the heel grain to it was closer to the neckshaft than the sides. I think with a wood like limba you need to really contrast the joinery, or make it *very* inconspicuous. As it is. I find the mismatched grain a bit of an interuptiuon to the visual 'flow'. Still it's a minor point, and rest of the package is lovely. I really like the ebony (oops - RW!) binding, the way it contrasts with the limba, whilst tying in with the balck grain lines is great.

Build up clear till the ridge is gone. Or, bite the bullet and strip and re-spray a thinner colour coat.

Holy Moses - that's a great looking piece of burl!

Gents, play nice. I will close this down if it looks like it's turning into a flame fest.

Ooooh.... you sarky b*gger, you. For the pedants out there, I'll clarify; the tool illustrated was used in conjuction with my arm, in a recipricating motion. It sucked.

Yep. 12" is standard. That'd be inches, not degrees

Through the mists of my crystal ball, I see your future involves.... a burnt out jigsaw motor.... a wasted afternoon.... and several wasted pieces of lumber.... Seriously, not gonna work. The jigsaw doesn't have the oomph required, and the saw will bind and flex since it has so much more surface area than a bandsaw blade. If time isn't an issue, I'll refer you to my (patented) technique for slow, tedious re-sawing:

I've not tried it, but Frank Ford recommends a toner/stain coat over the area to be re-coloured, which is feathered over the existing finish. Then, use a razor blade to gently scrape back until you remove the dark transition area where the two layers cross. Finish matching is a PITA, so you may have to settle for good enough, and be aware in advance that the best you're lkely to achieve is inconspicuous, not invisible.

IMO, the advice to seal with shellac prior to staining is a carry-over from furniture finishing. In that case they refer to a stain which primarily sits *above* the wood, and colours it with minimal penetration. That is very different from a dye, which is what is usually used to colour a guitar by soaking into the wood. In furniture, it is often advantageous to colour wood in a way which mimises the variations in grain and colouring, since it lets you create a harmonious piece of work without having to perfectly colour match your timber. In a guitar, most finishers want to accentuate the grain - different aims, different techniques.

Has anyone tested the heat release of the West Systems? IIRC Mario Proulx specifically stated he used cheap hardware store epoxy to attach his fretboards, since it's plenty strong with the large glueing area, and releases easier than West Systems. I use Devcon 30 minutes, same stuff I use for grain filling. Invisible glue lines are perfectly possible, just make your joints fit well and you'll not have a problem. Don't over clamp though, it's possible to starve an epoxy joint if you clamp too much. Yeech - not me!! It climbs up my arms whenever I use it, and somehow magically turning up in places like my eyebrows and shoulders, where I *know* it can't have reached using methods explicable by conventional physics.

I'm in the epoxy camp. I had 2 incidents of back bow when using titebond, and none since switching to epoxy. The gluing area is so big that you can use most glues without concerns about creeping.

One thing I'd do differently - orient the tip section so it has the game grain as the rest. As it is, you'll get a glue line which will telegraph through the finish, and possibly even crack it - wood expands and contracts very little along the grain, and quite a lot across it, so a glued crossgrain section like that may cause trouble.

I like to apply a thin coating of wax to my chisels and planes, then give it a light buff with a cloth. It keeps the rust at bay, and doesn't cause the problems which oiling tools can (like transfer to woods, sticky hands etc). I apply it when I have a sharpening session, after I've honed all the tools. At the moment I use a neutrol shoe wax, but I'ds advise caution with this - you'll find many shoe waxes contain silicone. Paste wax is supposed to be good, but I odn't have any at hand.

3mm is fine. Just don't go any thinner than that.

I'm not sure I understand the question - sorry. I plane the surfaces to be joined until they fit together 'light tight'. Look at the joint with a bright light behind it - if any light is visible, the joint is open and more work is needed. Once they're spot on, I glue up; the freshly planed surface is the ideal surface for glueing.

Children, behave. No personal attacks, and no deliberate bear-baiting. This thread is closed.

Been there, done that! Excact same deal, same cause, same solution. With a little care it'll be invisible. I doubt I could even find the repair on mine if I wanted to...

I'd dispute that. If you really had a passion to make something, you'd put in the hard work to learn how to do it properly, yourself, rather than trying to find shortcuts like getting somebody else to do it, then blaming them if it isn't perfect. You want the finished product, without the time, and effort required to do it right, and that is never, ever, going to happen.

I joint bodies with a jack (no.5) plane, and clamp the wood in the vice so I'm planing as normal - no shooting board. I found a good tip for squaring the planed surface. Instead of adjusting the plane iron or tipping the plane to correct the angle, just move the plane sideways, so that it overhangs the high side of the surface - the lack of support tends to automatically correct the angle, and you're less likely to go too far the otherway. If you're planing something wider than the plane iron, you need a very fine cut, and I like to skew the plane slightly. Remember that at first you'll not be taking much away, as the iron will only cut the high spots. It's very tempting to adjust the plane to a deeper cut, which feels like it's doing more, but is likely to cause tearout. Keep the cut fine, and each pass of the plane will remove more material. When the surface is flat, you'll take a nice curly shaving across the whole face of the wood.