a practical use for used guitar strings

[fazool]

I didn't take a pic (yet) but had great success last night:

I'm carving some foam to customize my camera case and my guitar accessories case.

I had an old toy transformer (14v , 0.7ADC) .

I slapped together three pieces of wood, strung an old .015 B string and clipped power leads to each end.

Temperature was perfect and I was happily carving away.

AFter this quick and dirty success, I'll build up something elegant for my next project, but this was a great use of old guitar strings. And super simple.

[Sperry]

Wow, I could have used that idea when refoaming a Peavey T-25 guitar case!

[tahoeguitar]

Fazool, I'm a little confused. Unless the guitar string has some resistance to it, or the transformer has a built in impedance, you wired in a dead short and it should have blown up your transformer. Am I missing something?... What gives?

BTW don't ever try anything like this with a car battery or any other battery for that matter. Even though it's low voltage, it will turn your guitar string into an instant white hot fuse element and if the string doesn't fail soon enough the battery will overheat and possibly ignite or explode.

[fazool]

Originally Posted by tahoeguitar

Fazool, I'm a little confused. Unless the guitar string has some resistance to it, or the transformer has a built in impedance, you wired in a dead short and it should have blown up your transformer. Am I missing something?... What gives?

BTW don't ever try anything like this with a car battery or any other battery for that matter. Even though it's low voltage, it will turn your guitar string into an instant white hot fuse element and if the string doesn't fail soon enough the battery will overheat and possibly ignite or explode.

there is a formula for resistance and the string is long enough to add enough resistance - its common. Google hot wire foam knife - super common DIY project.

Works great.

[printer2]

Measured the resistance of a E string, roughly 1.5 ohms. Not quite a short but not necessarily a pleasant experience for whatever is driving it. Many wallwart transformers have a high built in resistance, you can tell by measuring the voltage with no load and compare what you read to the name plate voltage. Not unusual to see a 20% difference. DC supplies can be an old crappy transformer or a switching supply, now days it is cheaper to put in electronics rather than a chunk of iron.

Yeah, not a good idea for a car battery or a power supply with some balls. (That is a technical term, our refrigeration guy characterizes the cooling units saying they have enough balls or they don't.) A couple of months ago I made a seven foot foam cutter for my sister, she ordered blocks of Styrofoam that were a might too big. Sliced off two foot slabs. Wire from an old heater bank 3000W load for dissipating heat from a generator (about a dozen in the rack).

The wire was kinked from being on the ceramic insulator so I mechanically worked the wire and pulled it as straight as I could. Not good enough as I needed the wire to lay flat, was making a heating blanket for bending sides. Decided to heat it up to soften up the wire and pull it straight. Clamped it to one end of my deck, the other end to a trailer, ran an extension cord back to the other end to complete the circuit. Plugged it into the outlet (don't do this at home kiddies) and as the wire got red hot I gave it tension by pulling on the trailer. (the wire gets longer when hot) When I thought it was done I unplugged it and rolled the trailer back so the wire wasn't mechanically loaded enough to break.

Don't worry, everything was fine, I am a professional. The wire was good to use afterwards.

[LSemmens]

You could also use an E string as a cheese cutter, if you are so inclined. No electrickery required.

[Frank Ford]

My wife has been a full-time potter for as long as I've been a loser, er, "luthier."

She uses clay cutters like this one for slicing wet clay:



Unwound guitar strings work well as replacements, and sometimes she'll string a cutter with just the windings pulled off a bass string to get a curly wire for decorative cuts.

At the shop, we keep a box of clipped off ball ends for folks who like to string 'em up for jewelry projects, etc.

[Earl49]

I just saved the ball ends from two sets of strings and gave them to a ukulele buddy. He wants to avoid the classical guitar tie method (has been problematic for him in the past) and just make big knots around the ball ends and pull the end of the strings through.

I use short segments of old wound strings as nut files to widen nut slots for a bigger gauge of string. For example, using a .059 to widen a slot cut for a .053. A stack of feeler gauges keeps me from filing too deep, just widening and smoothing the slot. (Yes, I have a set of nut files too, but sometimes this trick is just quicker and easier).

[JDatlen]

I use the wound strings to add decorative burnt lines in turned objects. I use roughly 14" lengths tied through a hole in two wooden handles. You can cut a small v in the piece you are working on and hold the two handles applying pressure to the turning while it is spinning on the lathe. It adds a perfectly clean black burn line in the v cut. I use this for the ornaments that I turn for christmas presents as well as other things.

[Frank Ford]

If you look closely in the lower left corner of this video at the 2:40 mark, you can see one of the inlay artists tapping and forming teeth into a steel guitar string wire as he actually makes the saw blade for cutting the pearl inlay material:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxFm3A1O2Xw

[brad4d8]

Second Strings Project: http://www.secondstringsproject.org
Brad

[maxtheaxe]

I have one tying down the air cleaner cover to my lawn mower...

I have a huge pile of strings that I need to send to Second Strings Project. They're in good shape, being mostly moderate-usage Elixirs with plenty of tail. Some of these guitar players in 3rd world countries would be very happy to have them, from what I hear.