I’m excited to see the Allen Carruth scraper in action. I’ve put it on my tool list a few different times, but have never purchased it after reading reviews that it’s hard to get a burr on it without a grinding wheel, which I do not have. Do you have any ideas of how to keep it performing with just sharpening stones and a burnished?

Also, I noticed your smoothing plane is a low angle (and I presume bevel up), are you using a standard 25 degree bevel or something steeper?

I’m looking forward to seeing what direction this thread goes in once you start building the neck!

Tim, Stewmac has a video by Alan Carruth with the scraper on their website. Alan shows how to sharpen without a grinder. Sharpening this way is particularly good for softwoods, like tops etc.

Yes, it is a bevel up smoothing plane. I started with a 25 degree bevel and I have a 5 degree micro bevel and the blade itself sit in the plane at 12 degrees. Which all adds up to a 42 degree cutting angle.
I'm getting another blade which I'll start out with a 35 degree angle and end with a 52 degree cut. This will do a little better on highly figured softwoods like curly Redwood or bear claw Spruce.
It's easy to switch up blades on low angle planes

Progress Pics
 

Here are a couple of progress pictures. I used Black Ebony for the logo chip and back graft, The "H" inlay is black mother of pearl

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...ccf995d0_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...dcc3fa88_c.jpg

The sides are bent and joined and the kerfing is in also:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...6d4db4e1_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8d939131_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8ba01090_c.jpg

Thanks for following!
Mark

Those are some amazingly smooth lines and curves for hand-cut and hand routed inlay - your technique for accomplishing such tight tolerances on large inlays would be great to see!

Thanks tadol, I'm pretty old school with inlay cutting although the new titanium fret/jewelry saw works better than the old steel one I have:

https://live.staticflickr.com/5699/2...7a1725aa_c.jpg

I also have a coffee mug full of needle files on clean-up duty.

When I can do the inlay on the background piece before I glue it to the guitar, for instance, rosette donuts or arm bevel bananas.

Hmm, that's not very clear.

When I have a laminate that I use for a rosette or the laminate that goes on an arm bevel I don't really do inlay, I do marquetry. I'll take some pics of that
when I get to the arm bevel on this guitar.

Whoaaaa....
 

That black M O P may be the most beautiful crustacean bit I have ever seen!

The whole thing is another beauty!!!

Salud

Paul

Thanks Paul, I 'm a big fan of black MOP. It's has this great dark gun metal look.

Thanks for commenting!
Mark

Rosette
 

Here I am laying up the rosette. I'm doing a Black Ebony ring with Bloodwood marquetry and black MOP inlay.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c6112008_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8e6fa998_c.jpg

The purfling is black wood, Maple and thicker Bloodwood:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...1f731da3_c.jpg
Top and back:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...24106804_c.jpg

Thanks for viewing!
Mark

Gorgeous - I love the look of the black MOP and the color of the bloodwood is so rich. Yummm.

Best,
Jayne

Thanks Jayne,

Bloodwood just glows. I has great depth in its color. Bloodwood also sounds great too!

Mark

Hand Powered Table Saw
 

Here are the first round of top braces on the go bar deck. As many of you may have read I do a number of sash joints on the top and back brace of my guitars. These are tight lightweight joints with a lot of precision cuts and miters.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...fbd39000_c.jpg

One hand powered tool that I have found immensely helpful for this type of precision cut is the Bridge City Jointmaker Pro. It is based around a long Japanese blade mounted under a sliding table that you clamp your piece to. You then slide the table on it's lateral bearings across the blade.

You have several controls for the blades:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...a5110273_c.jpg

When you loosen the top knob you can angle the blade 45 degrees in either direction. The crank below sets how high the blade sits which determines the depth of the cut.
You can measure that but simple pushing a rule out to the highest point of the blade:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...ab22cf5e_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8683f928_c.jpg

So this is a hand powered table saw. What is the advantage of that?

The first advantage is accuracy. With the precision fence you can easily set the stops to the thousandths of an inch:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...06e8aff1_c.jpg

You are making a vibration free cut off on a stationary blade so the cut surface is a finished surface with no tear out. There are a number of blades available with different teeth per inch and blade thicknesses, including a gauged blade for doing fret slots.

The second advantage is you are cutting without heat. So when you are slicing a .040" piece of your prime Ironwood burl for purfling it won't get hot and crack on you. If you are cutting fret slots you are not making the slot edges brittle buy cooking the wood with a hot blade.

Third advantage is there is only the noise of the fine gauge saw cutting wood no dust collector needed. What little saw dust there is basically just falls on the catch below.

Fourth advantage is it won't throw your work at you or jerk it around and cut your fingers off.

I am constantly finding new applications for the hand tool and loving the improvements along the way.

Wow! A serious piece of kit, as they say down under!

Outstanding! :)

Mark - the Jointmaker pro looks like an amazing device! But this is a terrible thread, as TAS may be replacing my GAS. I love the concept of a hand powered table saw. Thanks for introducing me to this.

Rick

I did a search for Jointmaker Pro on eBay and the only results were for cigarette rolling machines!:roll:

I am just blown away by the beauty of your work,I only wish I had the skill so I could convince myself that I play good enough to do justice to one of those beauties. I will enjoy following this build.