What are you working on currently?

magicbastarder · 09-02-2023 11:19pm

yep, one of the shinto rasps. i picked up a new profile bit for the router today, and now that i have one with a bearing on the bottom, and one with a bearing on the top, i should be able to cut a template for myself with one (where the bearing will register against the kit body) and use the template then with the other bit to rout the new body.

magicbastarder · 10-02-2023 10:42am

just saw your edit with the photos - that's phenomenal work.

magicbastarder · 12-02-2023 12:05am

i'm sure someone here wll have suggestions - as i'm using a bolt on neck from the kit build, which was already drilled for screws in line with the body; i've no easy way of drilling holes in the body i've made which would line up with the ones in the neck. are there any obvious tricks to do this?

i was thinking i could cut some nails, fit them into the holes in the neck with maybe 1mm showing proud, and press the neck onto the body, which should leave an impression of the correct position on the body?

-=al=- · 12-02-2023 2:22am

Makes sense. Usually you fit the neck to the body, but once you have a way or marking the centre of the screw holes from the neck to the neck pocket it should be ok, just make sure the holes are straight in the body to receive the neck and it should be fine. A slight angle at that point with holes in the body can possibly throw off the centre line of the neck as you screw it together, so it's important to get it right. But should be fine with a snug fit.

You can even sometimes yank the neck into place if it's slightly off, I've done it on many G&L and Fender's when the high e string slightly rolls off the bevel of the fret if it's not aligned to well. It's not ideal but works too.

Other option would be to fill the screw holes on the neck with a dowel, drill the holes on the body, get the neck snug in the pocket and mark it that way.

If it really goes bad you can fill either the body or neck with dowels and start again, so just jump into it. Measure twice drill once and force it until it fits!

magicbastarder · 13-02-2023 12:41am

i tried thìs, and for some reason i've yet to fathom, all the holes ended up a good mm too far out from the body, so pulled the neck away from the body when screwed in, rather than tight in. i ended up drilling the holes in the body noticeably larger than in the supplied body i was using as a template (6mm instead of 4mm) as they were binding in the body not the neck; i suspect the oak i'm using was part of that, that it's just much harder and grabbier than the basswood.

before i did that, i planed down an offcut of the wood used to face the guitar (21mm to 4 or 5mm) and used it to shape a cover for the back access.

magicbastarder · 13-02-2023 2:43pm

latest faff - i was starting to test fit everythng before it gets a proper sanding and finish, and the screws i got with the pickups are so unbelievably cheap that four out of eight broke; two while unscrewing them, when i realised that two had broken going in. so i had to drill out around them with a 2mm bit, and pull them out with a needlenose pliers. i've routed the remains of each hole clean and will turn some dowels later to plug the fresh routed holes.

-=al=- · 13-02-2023 6:19pm

I think it was always a bit of a tricky challenge trying to fit the body to the neck that way. the slightest error can throw the whole thing off. Sounds like the oak is pretty tough stuff!

magicbastarder · 13-02-2023 11:38pm

it is; i got that fixed eventually, i think. final sanding and first coat of danish oil gone on tonight.

magicbastarder · 22-02-2023 11:50pm

finito!*

*not quite finito.

dathi · 07-05-2023 11:30am

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a ring box i made for my daughters wedding

magicbastarder · 14-05-2023 8:34pm

just finishing up a slab of elm for a coffee table, going to be a present for my mother. was planning on making life easy for myself and probably just using hairpin legs; they stock them in screwfix. anyone know of anywhere else which would stock them, just in case there's more variety available?

https://www.screwfix.ie/p/rothley-2-pin-hairpin-worktop-leg-matt-black-350mm/821pr

glynf · 23-05-2023 6:17pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120597239#Comment_120597239

Very nice. I picked a few sets of these off amazon.de before:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B08XLY177P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Decent quality, but the screws they came with were rubbish-very soft metal-so I would recommend using your own.

glynf · 23-05-2023 6:46pm

Finally got back doing a bit of woodwork-a nice change of pace from doing a lot of DIY lately. Got a load of oak countertop that I got from a skip and made some adironback chairs. Got the design online and sketched out the templates on 6mm plywood. This was nearly the slowest part as all dimensions were in inches... cut with a jigsaw and fine tuned with a shinto rasp and pots of sanding. rounded over all edges with a 1/4" router. I used stainless screws and finished with two coats of osmo UV protection finish.

https://i.imgur.com/ROw52Afl.jpg[/img]

https://i.imgur.com/iUwiOPWl.jpg[/img]

https://i.imgur.com/dx78zlIl.jpg[/img]

https://i.imgur.com/07hFiB7l.jpg[/img]

https://i.imgur.com/lSWzbWdl.jpg[/img]

magicbastarder · 15-08-2023 5:30pm

working on making an electric guitar at the moment; currently doing the neck. the place i ordered the non-wooden bits from (thomann) don't stock fretboard sanding blocks. was curious about making my own. but they're not simple - but are deceptively simple looking. they look like this:

the key point is the concave side has a curve of a set radius - in my case i want a curve of radius 9.5", which is standard on telecaster style guitars. but making a block with a consistent curve like that is not particularly easy - the most common method i see on youtube is to build a pendulum jig for a router so there's 9.5" between the pivot and the bottom of the router bit, so you swing the router back and forth as you slowly feed the block underneath. i may just have to buy one instead...

-=al=- · 15-08-2023 8:36pm

Yea they're tricky enough to make and not really worth it, especially when they're available for a few quid on ebay.

G&W have decent quality ones that aren't too expensive - https://tinyurl.com/radius-blocks

The aluminium ones are pretty good and the medium/long ones are a bit better for a new radius, but you can get a wooden set for a few quid that do the job. The smaller ones are even better in some cases for doing certain repair jobs or localised radius-ing

You can plane most of the fingerboard away then finish with the radius blocks for a 9.5 radius since you'd be sanding for a bit otherwise, If it's rosewood or something I'd go up to 8k sanding and get it super shiny but it's not totally necessary.

The last couple of frets I usually sand ever so slightly more so the smaller blocks are good for that. The last side dot can be compensated about .10/.25 of a mil lower to be in the middle of the fingerboard for this

magicbastarder · 15-08-2023 10:42pm

i actually started making a jig this evening. minimum ten days seemingly to wait for delivery of a sanding block, i figured i'd know within a couple of day if a jig works.

magicbastarder · 17-08-2023 5:51pm

first go (i knew the first pass would be muck, i was just ensuring nothing was fouling on anything else - and you can see i hadn't added the 45 degree braces to the cradle the jig is sitting in, so the base was going to flex anyway). followed by a reasonably successful result - two changes i made; one was realising that some of the inconsistency was in a knot sitting just a shade proud on the track i was pushing the piece along, and the second and more fundamental one was realising that there was still a little too much play to swing the router back and forth and back and forth over the piece as i incremented it to - so i tightened up the swing of the pendulum, to make it stiff, held it there, and advanced the entire piece through in one pass. then incremented the pendulum slightly and repeat... meant there was a single swing of the pendulum for the final full pass.

magicbastarder · 01-10-2023 10:45pm

the guitar mentioned above is finished. slightly amazed that it works.

-=al=- · 01-10-2023 10:50pm

Looks pretty cool! nice off centre inlays and wooden knobs! well done, how does it sound?

magicbastarder · 01-10-2023 10:57pm

here's the funny thing - i'm not a guitarist! well, i know a few chords etc., but to my ears it sounds good. i decided i wasn't going to go to all that trouble and throw in dirt cheap pickups, so got fender tex mex pickups for it, and it sounds good to my ears.

the inlays in the face of the fretboard actually came from a plastic lollipop stick. getting a drill bit the right size to mount the wooden knobs onto the pots was not too straightfoward, but i managed to get 5.8mm bits from a place up north.

magicbastarder · 01-10-2023 11:01pm

worth mentioning that the guts of the body came from a london plane tree that was felled in merrion square. it's a lovely wood to work with.

-=al=- · 02-10-2023 6:34pm

Pretty cool good to have a story for the timber, looks good together. Those pickups are pretty decent for the cash and prob make the biggest difference to the sound. What pots did you use for it and what value capacitor?

magicbastarder · 01-11-2023 1:19pm

sorry, only saw this question now - not sure what the pots were, a friend who had some spare ones and said they were decent, gave them to me. 0.02uFk capacitor i think. the tone response is not very linear as you roll it off.