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  #166  
Old 05-21-2021, 06:17 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by warfrat73 View Post
The routing is done, definitely not perfect. Oh well.
The rabbets don't have to be "perfect" off the machine.

I notice that you are using a small Dremel attachment for the binding/purfling cutting. Not a great choice, in my opinion and experience. It is too small, too underpowered and too light to do a great job.

That said, the rabbets can be cleaned up with hand tools, including chisels, knives, files, purfling cutters, gramils, riflers, etc. It's possible to do the entire rabbeting with hand tools, but it's pretty labour intensive. So, if the machine removes most of the wood, even if not perfectly, it is a time/labour savings.

If you intend to do more guitar making, I'd strongly suggest you simplify life and get a good, solid setup for performing binding cutting. Doing so can reduce a lot of the anxiety and improve and speed the result and minimize hand clean-up.

The scarf joint looks nicely planed. If the joint fits well, looking from the side, the joint should be nearly invisible. Do a dry clamping first to get the bugs out of it. Clamping a glued scarf joint is like clamping greased bearings: the joint has to be prevented from sliding in four directions, left, right, up and down.
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  #167  
Old 05-21-2021, 06:52 PM
phavriluk phavriluk is offline
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Default a thought

A Dremel is a dandy toy tool, but for the same cost, a real router can be had.

My comment isn't aimed at OP, since what the Dremel can and can't do is known to him, but for the benefit of someone gathering tools to build: skip the
Dremel.
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  #168  
Old 05-21-2021, 10:03 PM
Neil K Walk Neil K Walk is offline
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Originally Posted by phavriluk View Post
A Dremel is a dandy toy tool, but for the same cost, a real router can be had.

My comment isn't aimed at OP, since what the Dremel can and can't do is known to him, but for the benefit of someone gathering tools to build: skip the
Dremel.
I may be new at this myself (only on my second build) but I find Dremels with their smaller size, lighter weight and variable speed settings to be easier to control for detail work like rosettes and purfling. Maybe routers and laminate trimmers are better for flush trim cuts and routing binding channels but I find them to be too bulky and somewhat overpowered for my tastes. YMMV.
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  #169  
Old 05-23-2021, 08:37 AM
Talldad Talldad is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil K Walk View Post
I may be new at this myself (only on my second build) but I find Dremels with their smaller size, lighter weight and variable speed settings to be easier to control for detail work like rosettes and purfling. Maybe routers and laminate trimmers are better for flush trim cuts and routing binding channels but I find them to be too bulky and somewhat overpowered for my tastes. YMMV.
You have better skills than I using a Dremel for rosette cutting, I found it bounced all over the shop whenever it met a change in grain direction.
I use one of these now to score the edge of my rosettes and its perfect every time. Then if I am very careful and have an easy channel to cut with I might Dremel out the path.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NT-Cutter-Y...84935844&psc=1

The only adaptation I make is to replace the centre push pin with a 6mm 1/4" rod which fits into a hole in the centre of my sound hole.
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  #170  
Old 05-23-2021, 10:11 AM
masterofnone masterofnone is offline
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Warfrat- I think your first build is looking great! Enjoy the time you have and use what you learn for the next one. I'm now finishing my seventh and eighth effort. I THINK I'm starting to get the hang of it. Here are some of the things that I fall back on: If this was easy, anybody could do it. See it through. Don't let perfect get in the way of good! I recently started learning some things that Mr. Tauber mentioned previously. Really depressing. Almost scrapped the lot of them. One of them has turned out to be really special. It's body is distorted, but it plays nice and the sound is amazing. I'm looking forward to hearing the last two, complete with flaws. Best of luck!
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  #171  
Old 05-28-2021, 11:13 AM
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warfrat73 warfrat73 is offline
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Think I might have made a bit of a mistake, but really not sure. Could use some advice before I glue it on.

In preparing to glue the scarf joint, I think I over-thinned the headstock. The plan was for a 1/2" overall thickness. So I thinned the headstock to ~.41-42" to be joined with ~.08-.09" headplate giving me a final thickness of ~.5".

Plan was to glue the angled surface of the headstock offcut to the flat surface of the neck (per Cumpiano procedure) To my novice eye, that leaves what seems quite a small joint/gluing surface. Will this be ok? I'm using Khaya here.

Alternatively, since I left myself extra material in case I screwed up, I could dress the alternate surfaces and glue the headstock to the top of the neck shaft, giving more gluing surface, but still leaving me ~6" of headstock. Or, I could cut and dress a new headstock from other material that I have on hand.



Edit: For reference the joint itself is a bout 1 3/8".
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Last edited by warfrat73; 05-28-2021 at 11:19 AM.
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  #172  
Old 05-28-2021, 12:53 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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I use a finished head thickness, including veneers front and/or back, of 5/8". As long as your finished head thickness of 1/2" works with the tuning machines you are using, you should be fine.
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  #173  
Old 05-28-2021, 08:46 PM
mirwa mirwa is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by warfrat73 View Post
For reference the joint itself is a bout 1 3/8".
Looks pretty thin, i like a headstock of around 14mm, so if you laminate that one up, you should be good. i would do a 3 ply lamination and use that as the headplate as well

The only other thing, the scarf join you have done is typical for a classical not an acoustic

Steve

For reference, when I do a scarfjoint, after glue up, I pass it through my table saw to bring a 21mm thickness down to the 14mm, really simple method, bullet proof
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  #174  
Old 05-28-2021, 11:30 PM
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warfrat73 warfrat73 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mirwa View Post
The only other thing, the scarf join you have done is typical for a classical not an acoustic
It's the method outlined by Cumpiano.
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  #175  
Old 06-01-2021, 02:04 PM
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warfrat73 warfrat73 is offline
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Well, binding is stupid. I got it on there. It looks better than I'd feared it might, but worse than I'd hoped would. Still have a bit more cleanup to do.

Between the smell of scraping the plastic, cutting my thumb on some sharp plastic, cutting my palm and scratching the back on the corner of the scraper when it slipped... oh well.

Got some progress on the neck too.

But, made a couple of mistakes last night. The first was trying to work on it after I'd had a few beers.

The second was rough cutting the neck taper... was having a hard time getting a good fit, and then I realized... "Oh, I don't need to fit that part, it's waste, I'll cut it off." Oh yeah, but I forgot to rout the truss rod channel first. Stupid. Cutting it by hand should be fairly straightforward, if a bit of a pain... I knew better.

The other mistake was that I accidentally rounded over the edge of the heel on the bass side. I need to remove a touch more material, so it'll close down a bit more. I know it's just cosmetic.

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Last edited by warfrat73; 06-01-2021 at 02:26 PM.
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  #176  
Old 06-01-2021, 02:37 PM
phavriluk phavriluk is offline
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Default a thought - - - - two lessons I learned

First, the easy one: I had a few necks that were rough-shaped that needed truss rod slots (no, I didn't make them and the price was right). Double-sided tape the neck onto a rectangular piece of plywood and run the sandwich through the router table.

Second, work stops at 10 pm. Rigidly enforced. It's saved my little backside innumerable times.

And Miller Time is after lights out in the shop. For no other reason that beer plus work in my shop adds up to beer and no work.
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  #177  
Old 06-01-2021, 04:26 PM
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warfrat73 warfrat73 is offline
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Just for the record, all of the injuries happened today, not last night.
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Bourgeois DR-A / Bowerman "Working Man's" OM / Martin Custom D-18 (adi & flame) / Martin OM-21 / Northwood M70 MJ / 1970s Sigma DR-7 / Eastman E6D / Flatiron Signature A5 / Silverangel Econo A
(Call me Dan)
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  #178  
Old 06-03-2021, 02:28 PM
Neil K Walk Neil K Walk is offline
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Looking good so far. This part of the build is my favorite part; I savor it and think of it more as sculpting.

FWIW I don't like using rasps except to rough shape the shaft of the neck. That part of the heel is has open pores and the rasp really chews it up too much for my tastes. I'll usually sharpen my 3/4" chisel and then use it carefully to carve the facets in the heal then move on to a rounded file to do the profile at the 1st and 10th frets. Only after that will I use the rasp.
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  #179  
Old 07-15-2021, 11:04 AM
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warfrat73 warfrat73 is offline
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Just thought I'd post an update:



That's more or less the whole story. It's rained pretty much every day for the past month or so. And even with a dehumidifier running, I'm having trouble getting the RH in my basement to a workable range
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"What have I learned but the proper use for several tools" -Gary Snyder

Bourgeois DR-A / Bowerman "Working Man's" OM / Martin Custom D-18 (adi & flame) / Martin OM-21 / Northwood M70 MJ / 1970s Sigma DR-7 / Eastman E6D / Flatiron Signature A5 / Silverangel Econo A
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  #180  
Old 10-10-2021, 11:00 AM
DickHutchings DickHutchings is offline
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I must be lucky. My basement is very dry and the dehumidifier keeps it the proper range for guitar building and wood storage. I love my new basement shop.
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