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Tales from my workbench


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15 minutes ago, JGale said:

I used to think butchering a hog and rebuilding an engine were penultimate accomplishments. 

Depends largely on if you do both of those in the same day.  Lol

 

 

Edited by Biz Prof
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44 minutes ago, JGale said:

I used to think butchering a hog and rebuilding an engine were penultimate accomplishments. 
Now there is third type in my mythological hierarchy.

Salute!

I've got nothin' but respect for butchers and mechanics! And plumbers. And stone masons. The list is endless, really. 

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I left the neck clamped up today and moved it into the house since it's only 50F in the garage. That's a lot of glue, so I'm just gonna leave it be for a few days. 

I made a little more progress on the body tonight. First I rough-cut the body. I left it waaaaay wide to allow for boo-boos in an upcoming step. More on that in a later post.

ePfOdrQ.jpg

 

I also got the top center seam jointed and glued up with hot hide glue. Clearly I needed more clamps. :D

XGsakeG.jpg


More soon. :)

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Wow! I just went through this thread, and what can one say that hasn’t already been said? You are truly a master of your craft! 
 

Man, I thought I was hot stuff a few years ago when I just refinished a ‘75 Strat! I’m in awe of your skills. 
 

IMG_0953.jpg

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On 1/26/2023 at 12:08 AM, Kerry Marchman said:

Absolutely spectacular work! A joy to see this kind of talent. Well done!!!!

 

On 1/26/2023 at 7:18 AM, Lockbody said:

Wow! I just went through this thread, and what can one say that hasn’t already been said? You are truly a master of your craft! 
 

Man, I thought I was hot stuff a few years ago when I just refinished a ‘75 Strat! I’m in awe of your skills. 
 

IMG_0953.jpg

Well, thanks a lot to both of you, I appreciate it! Nice job on that Strat!

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I took the neck blank out of the clamps last night, squared up one face of it and sent it through the drum sander to clean up the rest.

z6NtcX3.jpg

 

Came out great. :)
UKX3kex.jpg

 

I also cleaned up the maple drop top at the same time. 
ogjZdW1.jpg

 

More soon. :)

 

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On 1/23/2023 at 4:05 PM, slingblader said:

I've got nothin' but respect for butchers and mechanics! And plumbers. And stone masons. The list is endless, really. 

As do I, being an amateur of myriad trades.  Of course, I've also known a few mechanics and plumbers who were--by the looks of their work--butchers.

Edited by Biz Prof
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I made some progress on the neck today. I decided that I should get the neck profile drawn out on both sides of the blank. Since this is a multiscale, it's not a mirror image from one side to the other. So, drawing it out should help me to keep my brain wrapped around it a little better. :)

I started off by drawing in the "long" treble side of the headstock. I'll be making the headstock thickness 1/2", then adding a 1/16"ish laminate on top.
5dp7sRV.jpg

 

I marked out the bass side, then wrapped things around the blank. This creates a compound angle. 
IXY4l1t.jpg

 

There are a variety of ways to cut that angle, but I thought I'd give the router method a try. So, I created some ramps that were attached to the sides of the blank and offset from the face by equal amounts. 
nnscvV3.jpg

 

This is part way through the procedure. 
pCN3994.jpg

 

And done. I left it over-dimensioned and will bring it down to final size with hand planes. This was an incredibly messy and time-consuming process; but hey, it was my first compound angle headstock. Next time, I'll just rough cut it on the band saw and tune it up with hand planes. It will be far faster, less mess and just as accurate. 
oywkhZm.jpg


 
I then cut the overall thickness profile and also the compound angle on the back of the headstock. It took about 3 minutes total. :D
ah1UEMs.jpg

 

More soon. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a while since I've updated this thread, so here we go. :)

The body shape started with the RD shape as the inspiration. But one of the things that always bothered me was the "chunkiness". To combat that, I decided to do some sort of profiling to the body wings. I always loved the tapered wings of the Firebird, but I wanted something a little more curvy, or carved looking. 

The big factor that I needed to keep in mind was that I intend to use a maple drop top on this body. So, the carve has to be more linear and can't use curves. In a nutshell, it can have elevation changes, just not curves in and out from the center. To put it yet another way, I can probably put a drop top on a partial cylinder, but I can't put a drop top on an inverted bowl. 

Since I've used the "topographical" routing technique to make Les Pauls in the past, I figured I'd do the same thing on this build. I drew out the body profiles with a cross section at each bout, then transferred the measurements to the body using 1/16" elevation increments. 

I used some scrap wood to use as routing guides.
kJMq89y.jpg

I started on the outer edge with a total drop of 1/2".
BJt3SRZ.jpg

Raise each step by 1/16", rinse and repeat.
jMgDLxI.jpg

And this is how it came out. 
PB6jF2Y.jpg

95XFksr.jpg

773DOkA.jpg

9zSxOup.jpg

MDzGJkb.jpg

The middle section remains flat for the bridges and pickups, the rest will get smoothed and blended together. I'll need to thin out the top before gluing it to be sure I don't have issues in the steeper sections in the top bout. 

More soon. :)

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1 hour ago, django49 said:

^^^

I like the way you think through the approach (problem solving) logically.

Thanks, man. It took me longer than I care to admit to formulate the plan. :D

To be brutally honest, I wouldn't have had to come up with this cock-a-doodie scheme if I wouldn't be such a cheapskate to begin with. I could have just glued on a 5/8" thick top and carved that down instead of carving the secondary wood and using a drop top. About the same amount of work for the shaping part, but I wouldn't have to worry about potentially breaking the drop top. SMH

Anyway, this basic technique worked great on the Les Pauls, so figuring it should work for this bass.

1JFdK3a.jpg


O0nGO3B.jpg

 

Edited by slingblader
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This is just incredibly cool.

 

You've got a lot of talent, sir!

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4 hours ago, cmatthes said:

This is just incredibly cool.

 

You've got a lot of talent, sir!

Thanks, Chris! I really hope this one turns out well. I'm getting pretty excited to see how it comes out. 

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Body shaping, continued...

With the elevation steps cut, it was time to get things ensmoothened. :D Poplar is a relatively soft hardwood, so I hit the steps with 80 grit on my ROS. This only took a few minutes to nearly blend it all together.
z2dOsca.jpg

And done. It doesn't look like much here, the lighting sorta flattens everything. 
3ylbwvY.jpg

Next up, I rough cut my top and thinned it way down on the drum sander. The upper bout has a fairly drastic curve, and I didn't want to break the top. 
aT4ljrH.jpg

I got the top aligned and fastened it down at the neck pocket, pickup and control pot locations. Using short truss head screws for this. 
TVAc4ci.jpg

Before I glued the top, I sprayed the outside with water a couple of times to allow the outer surface to expand. This really helped it to lay down pretty well. 
TljAK1O.jpg

Then I threw the whole thing in the bag and crossed my fingers.
6qDJzgV.jpg

So, a couple of things about the maple top that are now pretty obvious. First, the overall color of the guitar will be white, but I'm going to attempt a transparent white on the top. (I have a plan, but wish me luck on that) Anyway, being the mizer that I am, I used a piece of curly maple that had some worm holes in it... cuz hey, it's getting some translucent white over it anyway (the holes were filled before the glue up). 

The other thing is that the body is so wide that my piece doesn't quite reach to the wide point of the lower bout. It won't miss by much; but remember that I'm using very wide binding... so the body will need to be reshaped, just a little bit... likely about 1/8-3/16". It shouldn't be noticeable when I'm done. 

More soon. :)


 

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Man, you don't know how true that is! Plus, I'm running out of room to put these damn things. 

I'd actually like to start selling them at this point, but my big hangup now is coming up with a brand/company name. For some reason, my mind goes completely blank, and the ideas that I did come up with haven't been well received. So, if you have any suggestions, now is the time. :D

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