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  #46  
Old 07-01-2013, 08:18 PM
Viking Viking is offline
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Originally Posted by printer2 View Post
I just noticed, some of the boards your shop is made of might make for a cool guitar.
That's actually the fence in my back yard! Western red cedar! And yes, some of the boards do look like good top material, don't they? I live in a town house and don't have a shop as yet. I built myself a large desk/work bench that I'll use for indoor, humidity sensitive operations. I'll have a fairly steady climate in the house. I don't actually have a humidifier yet, but I will get one soon.
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  #47  
Old 07-01-2013, 08:21 PM
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Originally Posted by stuw View Post
Nick,
A little trick I found when making my rollers was after a ton of sanding, I chalked the roller to see the low and high spots, put wood putty in the low spots, let dry and re sanded, sped up the process a lot. I use the hook and loop on mine, the Velcro is thick and does help.

Only other minor issue I found on mine was I had to shim one of the pillow blocks up to match the exact height of the table.

Charles, now that you've gone high tech how much time do you save thickness sanding a top or back set? I like my homemade thickness sander, but it sure does take time.

Stu

btw Nick, how do you plan on adjusting your table height?
Also do you any auctions near where you live? I was at one sat. and they had 4 electric motors from 1/3 h to 1 horse and they went for $10.00 each.
I'll adjust the table height with a simple little bolt coming up from underneith. I'll take a picture of it later.

I don't know of any auction, though there probably are some. My best bet for electric motors (I think) will be the local scrap yard. They'll sell pretty much whatever they have to you by the pound. So for 5-10 bucks, I can probably acquire a box full of used electric motors, one of which is bound to work.

I will do it eventually. I'll also see if they have any steel pipe when I do go, cause I'll be building my own bending iron soon as well.
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  #48  
Old 07-02-2013, 07:24 PM
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Auto body filler might be a good idea to fill out spots. I just set up the sander and put a coarse grit sandpaper on the base raising it more as it took off the high spots. Didn't have quite that much to straighten out but that is just a little more time.
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A little trick I found when making my rollers was after a ton of sanding, I chalked the roller to see the low and high spots, put wood putty in the low spots, let dry and re sanded, sped up the process a lot.
How does the filler stay attached to the drum when the outward force of spinning on the drum would rather throw it off? There would be very little holding it to the drum. Or does a wood filler contain a glue like component to it?

If I made a paste of wood glue and saw dust, that should work, right? And there would be no chance of it fracturing there and being expelled...

Cause yeah. The last few low spots are going to take forever to come out. I'll go through another pack or two of sandpaper before they're gone. Ugg.
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  #49  
Old 07-03-2013, 06:56 AM
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Ooops I miss spoke.

I didn't use wood putty, (on left) that is obviously for just filling nail holes on trim etc.
I used plastic wood (on right) which will fill and stay put for ever. On mine I also have the drum wrapped in Velcro that would keep anything loose from coming out. This stuff gets so hard I sometimes start sanding on it before its completely dry.



Not sure if your interested in making your own bending machine, but its pretty easy, and can be done cheap.

Mine is just scrap plywood, springs I've collected over the years, cauls made from scrap, aluminum tube ($12.00 worth per machine) old quick grip clamps from garage sales ($5.00 for two) and a Watlow silicon heat blanket (same company that makes them for the luthier supply companies) This one is for heating or keeping 5 gal buckets thawed or warm. It comes with a built in rheostat/thermostat that will not let the blanket get more then 350 degrees. I've checked and it does not get any warmer than that, plus it works great. Found it on Ebay for $10.00





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Last edited by stuw; 07-03-2013 at 07:39 AM.
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  #50  
Old 07-03-2013, 07:56 PM
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Not sure if your interested in making your own bending machine, but its pretty easy, and can be done cheap.
I might eventually be interested in making my own bending machine with the silicone blanket. Ebay doesn't seem to have any deals like you mentioned though. What did you search for? I looked for silicone heat blanket, and a few things came up, but nothing in the dimensions needed for bending sides.

I'm actually quite okay just going the old fashion route of creating a home made bending iron out of a metal pipe and a charcoal briquette lighter.



So I finished truing up the drum tonight and I've got a 10 yard roll of 80 grit sandpaper on the way. I hope to have a thicknessed top, back and sides by the end of the weekend. I've also been tinkering with rosette ideas. I'll be using some of my white oak and some walnut, for what I hope to be a contrasting, alternating tile looking rosette. I'll also be binding the guitar with some of the walnut.
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  #51  
Old 07-04-2013, 11:46 PM
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So while I wait on my sandpaper to arrive, I've been working on my rosette.

This was my first attempt at the pie pieces that would make up the rosette in the first stage. I made the cuts for the pieces from 12 o'clock to 8 o'clock (ish) on my bandsaw. Not a very accurate way to make the cuts, and it didn't work too well.

The pieces from 8 o'clock to 12 o'clock were initially cut with a sharp medium size saw. Much straighter initial lines, and, the pieces were much closer to complete pie pieces. So they mate up well in the center. After the cuts, I of course sanded the edges so the joints are fairly tight.



So I redid the first pieces, and I like the result much better.

The light colored wood is white oak, the dark is walnut. Should look pretty under finish.



This is how I'm gluing them together. Two clamps to hold the existing completed pieces, another to hold a caul level on the granite block, and the last to apply the clamping pressure on the caul.



Then, once gluing is complete, I'll fix it to a level board from underneath, and use my trim router to cut the inner and outer radius with a pin in the center.

This is the method I'll use to fix the glued up circle to the board underneath it (idea pictured below, which is not my photo by the way, stolen from here). Glue the un-cut rosette to a piece of paper, then the paper to a piece of wood. I can then hammer in my center nail for the trim router's circle cutting jig. Cut the inner and outer radii, then use a spatula to detach the rosette from the work board.

I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on how well they think this may or may not work. I don't see any other way to do what I'm trying to accomplish, but that may just be my ignorance.

I will do some test runs of this, using some thin pieces of wood, before cutting on the real rosette.



Idea stolen from here.
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Last edited by Viking; 07-04-2013 at 11:59 PM.
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  #52  
Old 07-06-2013, 04:05 PM
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Wrapped the drum on my sander with 80 grit sandpaper today and fired her up. Awesome way to thickness wood. Still took a while. I had to go from .16" on average, down to just prior to final thickness. After using the drum sander, the thickness of my top was around .11". And it was deflecting about 3 millimeters on an 18", 5LB deflection test. So I started hand sanding at that point with a block and 100 grit. Got it to 6 millimeters on the deflection test and .1" almost exactly. A few deviations in the thousandths of an inch around the perimeter. I'm going to assume that's normal. I don't see how you can get an exact, precise thickness through the entire piece. Then I finished up with some 220.

Here's a better picture of the wood. It's quite pretty.



And here is my home spun deflection testing setup.



I actually changed the setup slightly after I took this picture. I realized that the 5LB weight was deflecting more in the center of the plate than the edges. So my edge ruler reading was off a bit. So I placed a thin but straight piece of wood on top of the plate and the weight on top of that, to more evenly distribute the weight across the plate. Gave me a more accurate reading.

In any case. Somogyi recommends, in his book, "Making the Responsive Guitar" a beginner thickness their top to .095 inches. So I figure .1" is not far off from that. And, a little extra thickness gives me some room to sand around the perimeter to loosen up the top a bit if I think it needs it.

And, I'm 3/4 of the way through gluing up the rosette. Taking forever. 30 minutes per piece for the glue to set prior to continuing to the next piece, and around 24 total pieces.
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Last edited by Viking; 07-06-2013 at 05:05 PM.
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  #53  
Old 07-06-2013, 04:52 PM
printer2 printer2 is online now
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Here's a better picture of the wood. It's quite pretty.
Aren't these little victories great?
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  #54  
Old 07-06-2013, 05:18 PM
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Aren't these little victories great?
They are, but at the same time, I'm a bit frustrated. It feels like I'm playing with my dad's tools, like I'm never going to actually accomplish what I'm trying to achieve. Like there is some magic ingredient that I'm missing somewhere. I think once I've got the box assembled, it will feel different. You know, when I'm holding an object that I made that actually looks like a guitar.

But yes. It was nice to get the sander put together and have some real work done on the piece I'm planning on using for this first guitar.

At some point, I'm going to have to turn my attention to dust collection, cause holy cow. That made more dust than truing up the drum did. My skin was coated with it. Good thing I had a dust mask. It also interferes with the sander doing it's job. Starts to accumulate on the surface of the wood and hinders the sander. You can hear the motor struggling to get through sometimes.
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  #55  
Old 07-06-2013, 08:35 PM
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So it rained this afternoon, which meant I had to pack my stuff back into my shed. But, it cleared up in the late afternoon early evening, so I broke out the bandsaw and resawed the white oak piece I intend to use for the back. Wow. It's really pretty. Great sap wood strip, and decent figure. I didn't think it would look this cool.

The firgure on the left hand piece is slightly less noticeable in the picture, but that is just the angle of the light. The figure is almost identical on each side.



This is about 11 inches wide. So I will have to take a bit from the remain 6 feet I have from this board and resaw it and attach it to the sides. Which means it will be a 4 piece back.

Also, I am going to get 2 sets out of this wood. Wonder what I'll do with the other set. Hmmm. Tough choice!
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  #56  
Old 07-06-2013, 08:43 PM
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Originally Posted by Viking View Post
They are, but at the same time, I'm a bit frustrated. It feels like I'm playing with my dad's tools, like I'm never going to actually accomplish what I'm trying to achieve. Like there is some magic ingredient that I'm missing somewhere. I think once I've got the box assembled, it will feel different. You know, when I'm holding an object that I made that actually looks like a guitar.

But yes. It was nice to get the sander put together and have some real work done on the piece I'm planning on using for this first guitar.

At some point, I'm going to have to turn my attention to dust collection, cause holy cow. That made more dust than truing up the drum did. My skin was coated with it. Good thing I had a dust mask. It also interferes with the sander doing it's job. Starts to accumulate on the surface of the wood and hinders the sander. You can hear the motor struggling to get through sometimes.
I still have to finish my dust collector, not a major issue as most of my dust generating jobs are done for now. One thing I did about the dust of the sander is to have a little computer fan blowing at the drum and it kept the drum and wood clear of the dust. Not much help for cleaning up but better for the work.

When I worked at a college I helped the kids in making a race car. The other instructor on the project once commented that it was more a marathon rather than a race, that is getting to the race. I find it same with making a guitar, many steps that you have to get right and you just plug at it till you get there. I still remember him turning to me and what he said when our car did its first lap around the speedway. It probably would not be appropriate to say here though.

I think you will fell different when you get your box done and even more so when you finish your guitar. Even though I have worked on and made many things it just amazes me when I pick up mine knowing it started out as a few scraps of wood.
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  #57  
Old 07-06-2013, 08:47 PM
printer2 printer2 is online now
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Originally Posted by Viking View Post
So it rained this afternoon, which meant I had to pack my stuff back into my shed. But, it cleared up in the late afternoon early evening, so I broke out the bandsaw and resawed the white oak piece I intend to use for the back. Wow. It's really pretty. Great sap wood strip, and decent figure. I didn't think it would look this cool.

The firgure on the left hand piece is slightly less noticeable in the picture, but that is just the angle of the light. The figure is almost identical on each side.



This is about 11 inches wide. So I will have to take a bit from the remain 6 feet I have from this board and resaw it and attach it to the sides. Which means it will be a 4 piece back.

Also, I am going to get 2 sets out of this wood. Wonder what I'll do with the other set. Hmmm. Tough choice!
Looks good. The stuff I have isn't as pretty.
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  #58  
Old 07-06-2013, 09:01 PM
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The other instructor on the project once commented that it was more a marathon rather than a race
Yeah, I can definitely see that.

Being a software engineer, I often think of things in terms of how a piece of software could track or manage something. So in my extra extra spare time, I've taken a piece of process engineering/working tracking software I wrote and created a guitar build process/work tracker. It contains all the highest level steps to creating a guitar, at least, one way of building one. When it was all broken down, there are almost 100 individual tasks inside 8 primary activities. A bit more than your average weekend project.

But, at the end of it, I imagine the satisfaction of having completed the project will be that much sweeter. If it was super easy, then there would be little reward associated with the achievement.
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Last edited by Viking; 07-06-2013 at 09:09 PM.
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  #59  
Old 07-06-2013, 10:16 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by Viking View Post
At some point, I'm going to have to turn my attention to dust collection, cause holy cow. That made more dust than truing up the drum did. My skin was coated with it. Good thing I had a dust mask. It also interferes with the sander doing it's job. Starts to accumulate on the surface of the wood and hinders the sander. You can hear the motor struggling to get through sometimes.
I can't help but sit back and shake my head as you continue to prove my point that reinventing the wheel to arrive at already well-known information is the hard, slow, inefficient way to get there. Sure, I get it that sometimes it isn't about the destination but, rather, the journey. Carry on... I don't want to interrupt the journey.

I won't waste your time and tell you about the severe allergy I developed to ebony dust - even the most minute quantities - from doing exactly what you've described you are doing. (Others have done so with cocobolo and other rosewoods.) You'll figure it out yourself.

Time for me to "contribute" less.

Quote:
Ideally, you'll want about 400 CFM of air flow for dust collection. You'll also want some sort of dust shroud to keep the dust "in".
http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...3&postcount=32

Last edited by charles Tauber; 07-06-2013 at 10:32 PM.
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  #60  
Old 07-06-2013, 10:57 PM
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I can't help but sit back and shake my head as you continue to prove my point that reinventing the wheel to arrive at already well-known information is the hard, slow, inefficient way to get there.
I've already said that I'm going to put together dust collection. I don't require convincing on the subject. I've never heard of anyone being allergic to WRC or oak and I was excited to try out the drum sander. So I did. How is that reinventing anything?

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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
I won't waste your time and tell you about the severe allergy I developed to ebony dust - even the most minute quantities - from doing exactly what you've described you are doing. (Others have done so with cocobolo and other rosewoods.) You'll figure it out yourself.
You won't waste my time? Ummm, to late, you just did.

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Time for me to "contribute" less.
If the only thing you have to say is "I told you so", then yes, you are sincerely invited to contribute less.

If there is one way to get others to NOT take you seriously, and to just want you to go away, it's to speak to them with a condescending tone of voice. And brother, you've got that in spades. This might help you with that.
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