R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135 
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 4, 2017 22:16:23 GMT
The morning came and the paraphernalia was removed and I scraped it all down slightly and it seems to be all right:
I reckon I ought also to come clean and admit that, with the lens zoomed to full telephoto and with full aperture, it can indeed manage a fair degree of differential focus:
Apologies if I upset anyone but, if nothing else, I think I've proved that my workshop is indeed a mess.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 14, 2017 18:01:12 GMT
I finally found some time to get back to building a guitar and found, as I always do after interruptions like this, that I'm not quite sure what to do next. I could tidy up the "rosette", or move on to making the sides, or make a head block. I'm waiting for the arrival of some 1.5mm constructional veneer for the sides so thought it might be a good idea to make the head block. This is not very big but has to be fairly robust since the adjustability of the neck depends on its ability to hold bits of steel in place without splitting. I decided to use up some spare bits of mapele and saple constructional veneer to make up some 25mm plywood. Here's what I made:
and it's glued together with, you've guessed it, Cascamite. It feels like a piece of stone or metal, which is just what I wanted. Of course, its final shape will be slightly curved on various faces to match the soundboard, the backboard and the rim where it meets the neck but, first of all, I decided to start drilling it to take the cross-dowels (barrel nuts) into which screw my adjusting bolts. This meant drilling a 10mm hole from side to side very close to the edge:
Imagine my surprise when the side didn't split away and, even more surprising, the holes drilled from either side actually met up in the middle without any step!
You'll understand what I mean when I say that each ply of the piece is 1.5mm/1.4mm thick. I wonder what the diameter of the hole is? Well, luckily, it's just about the same as the diameter of the cross-dowels that fit into it
 
though I haven't pushed them all the way in yet as they're a bit tight.
Minor progress and no mistakes to report, I'm afraid. But it's worrying me slightly that the steel fittings are not stainless... Will I rue the day?
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 15, 2017 8:51:07 GMT
Here's a question I have to answer before I can insert these cross-dowels: you will remember that one end of each turnbuckle has a right-hand thread and the other end a left-hand thread; that's the way a turnbuckle works. I have three of these turnbuckles forming a triangle - two side by side at the top and one at the bottom when viewed end on. Thinking first of the two at the top; does it make more intuitive sense to have them both move the neck in - i.e. close the gap - when turned clockwise when you are apparently screwing them into the box; or should they be a mirror image of each other (in which case what does the bottom one do?)?
I just hate it when they ask for audience participation, don't you?
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Feb 15, 2017 14:25:47 GMT
Vowel please Rob.  K |
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leoroberts
C.O.G. 
Posts: 26,145
My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
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Post by leoroberts on Feb 15, 2017 14:27:34 GMT
no mistakes to report, I'm afraid. spoil sport... |
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 15, 2017 15:15:55 GMT
no mistakes to report, I'm afraid. spoil sport...
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 15, 2017 15:18:21 GMT
Vowel please Rob. K |
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ocarolan
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CURMUDGEONLY OLD GIT (leader - to join, just ask!)
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Post by ocarolan on Feb 15, 2017 15:26:48 GMT
Vowel please Rob. K ...your observations are consonant with mine, Rob. K |
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 17, 2017 8:51:22 GMT
Here, incidentally, is the thought I had while running:
It may not look very nice at first glance but think "satinwood commode" and I think you'll come round to it.
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davewhite
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Luthier
Aemulor et ambitiosior
Posts: 3,548
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Post by davewhite on Feb 17, 2017 9:34:47 GMT
Rob - interesting design as always and fun to watch it come together. I was worried about the thin edge of the neck block for your top barrel bolt given my experience with them but I suppose its cascamite blanket and the extra thickness when glued to the side will help. You don't want those components to fail as removing and replacing them would be interesting.
Looking ahead - how are you going to connect the neck to the body? Won't screwing your adjusting bolts into the neck barrel bolts unscrew them from the barrel bolts in the neck or are the threads set so that both pull in or push out the neck when adjusted?
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 17, 2017 10:56:16 GMT
Rob - interesting design as always and fun to watch it come together. I was worried about the thin edge of the neck block for your top barrel bolt given my experience with them but I suppose its cascamite blanket and the extra thickness when glued to the side will help. You don't want those components to fail as removing and replacing them would be interesting. Looking ahead - how are you going to connect the neck to the body? Won't screwing your adjusting bolts into the neck barrel bolts unscrew them from the barrel bolts in the neck or are the threads set so that both pull in or push out the neck when adjusted?
As for the connecting bolts themselves: yes, they have been specially made for the job (by a local computer expert with a shed in his garden) with a right-hand thread at the box end and a left-hand thread at the neck end - as you can just about see in the picture - so that screwing them into the body will simultaneously pull the heel/neck in closer and vice versa. I'm pretty sure I'll also need a sliding wooden dowel centrally located between the heel and the body to stabilise the neck position; I think Howe-Ormes have these.
Rob |
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 18, 2017 17:45:38 GMT
I finished cutting out the 5 layers to make up one side - three with grain running lengthways and the other with cross-grain. I then heated up my side-bending iron and bent them individually to fit together into a laminate. Here they are with the mould ready to receive them and a few cramps on hand for panic cramping:
I learned my lesson (from francis ) last time I did this and had a paint-tray and mini-roller to hand ready to apply the glue:
I imagine I actually reached this stage some time yesterday but, since then, I've had gluer's block; this is a recognised affliction of woodworkers approaching any complex gluing session when visions abound of pieces of wood with glue all over them but not really in the right place yet and certainly not cramped up and with the glue rapidly going off... such terrifying visions can rush upon the calmest of workers leaving them in a cold sweat. Anyway, I found other things to do - hoovering, polishing the top of a chest of drawers, tidying the workshop (yes, that's how far I went), asking Mrs R the F what she thought of my binding pattern, welcoming new forum members - until this afternoon when I told Mrs R the F of my syndrome and she made me a cup of tea. Then it was off down the workshop, mixing the glue,
slapping it on
cramping it up and, Bob's your uncle,
a side is born - or, at least, we have a pregnancy.
I'll try to make it two by tomorrow evening. It might help if I give myself a bit more leeway in cutting out the pieces; I squeezed these out of my veneer pieces with nothing to spare so had to be very careful when lining them up in the cramp. Penny-pinching again.
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francis
C.O.G.
Posts: 2,483
My main instrument is: Whatever I'm building...
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Post by francis on Feb 19, 2017 22:27:59 GMT
Mmmm - cups of tea. That leads to comfort breaks just when half way through applying the sticky stuff....  |
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Feb 21, 2017 21:00:57 GMT
I apologise in advance for what is coming up; there's rather a lot of turgid explanation of difficulties and how they might be overcome. But don't worry; there's also a big cock-up in this episode.
I left the laminated side going off nicely in the moulds. Each component of the lamination is 1.5mm thick, giving a total thickness of 7.5mm. Of course, what this means is that the inside veneer is actually cut too long - by exactly 18.85mm in fact - because it goes round a tighter left-hander (or right-hander) than the outside layer. In previous thick-sided builds it hasn't mattered very much because, given the gently contoured shape of the top and bottom of the sides and given that I have allowed a little extra to give room for mistakes, I have always ended up with enough 5-layered meat from which to carve my sides as designed. This time, however, there is a small but important difference: the top of the sides is mainly a straight line (because the top is flat) but has a prominent lump at each end. Well, I hadn't entirely thought through the significance of this and had decided to cut pretty tight to the straight line and the bumps so that I could register the straight-line section of all five layers by pushing them down on to a flat surface when in the mould. Admittedly, this would leave the lumps overhanging the edge of the flat surface but would still provide enough contact to produce a well-registered laminate with a good square edge. (Please feel free to take a break whenever you like). Here's a picture to liven things up a bit; the right edge of the right-hand piece is the shape I'm talking about:
The clever ones among you will already have worked out that, as these pieces become too long for the job, the lump get pushed further and further from where they should be and you end up with a stepped laminate, which isn't really a laminate at all. Now there was a little leeway built into my cutting so I might be able to save the day when I come to clean up that first side out of the mould but it made me start to think about improving things for the second side. I ended up by producing five slightly scaled side templates which should allow the lumps to all register right on top of each other when bent up into shape:
Don't struggle to read it; it says, "outer, 1 in, 2 in, 3 in and inner" so that I know which is which once they're cut. (Also the lines criss-crossing the templates are just there so that I can print them off a glue them together correctly registered on A4 sheets).
Since these had been planned so carefully, I thought it might make sense to cut out the pieces of veneer fairly accurately, not forgetting to mark each one clearly, and then find a way to hold them in place while I loaded them, already bent to shape, into the mould. This could fairly easily be done by gluing each piece, stacking them together and then taping them at a few points around the edges and especially at the ends. The dry run went well. Then the real thing: all went well... for a while. I rolled glue on to the inside of the "outer" piece and then on to both sides of the next three and, finally picked up the last one on which it said, "inner" - except that it said, "3 in". This meant that I had already slapped glue all over the inside of the inside piece which meant it would probably stick to the mould and would at least leave glue all over it. I ran up the garden, got a big bowl of water, gave the dog a good shouting at for barking and putting me off and returned to the scene of the disaster. Even as I mopped the glue from the inside of the "inner" I knew there was a a major problem: it was now very wet and tape doesn't stick to wet wood so I was left sliding precisely cut bent veneer around in an attempt get them to register at both ends and at the top and then closing a mould on them and cramping it up without disturbing their positions. I haven't looked at it since but I can only say that I did my best. It was banished to the floor:
The problem here - or one of the problems - is that I still have davewhite 's words ringing in my ears: "You don't want those components to fail as removing and replacing them would be interesting.
" (See above). He is pointing out that the side/rim itself will be under some stress hereabouts because of the adjustable neck mechanism and what has occurred to me whilst making these sides is that this will also be the weakest part of the sides/rim: i.e. We are talking about the point at which the ends of the side join in a kind of a butt joint - never the strongest and potentially even weaker if I can't run all my layers of laminate right through to the joint itself. This is why I was taking such care to get the sides right (and probably why the gremlins stepped in at just this point to foul things up). Don't worry, though; I went for a run. During this run I decided to screw/epoxy a brass plate across the joint to give the mechanism some proper competition. So it might all come out in the wash. I'll have a closer look tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I have decided to turn to calmer matters; like a nice bit of carving which still hasn't been done:
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Jo whoever he is.
