R. Stratenstein's 2012 Challenge Build Thread -- COMPLETED

[axedaddy]

Originally Posted by R. Stratenstein

Thanks, axedaddy. I'm keeping this one in my hip pocket pending a decision on finishing. I'm afraid epoxy would make spots that resist absorption of color, etc, but I guess if I put down a couple of sanding/sealer coats, and color over that, it wouldn't matter would it?

In my experience if you use enough saw dust the repair is not only invisible but it takes finish very well. You are correct about the sanding sealer.

[axedaddy]

Originally Posted by Muzikp

You are not alone here, and braver than I for asking. Thanks.

+1

[OpenG Capo4]

Originally Posted by R. Stratenstein

Absolutely no doubt it IS easier to just save and buy one, but a good one that's wide enough to handle the full width of a guitar body isn't cheap.

Have you seen this?

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/nat/tls/2923064332.html



I see similar machines on the local craigslist pretty often.

[OpenG Capo4]

\
|

Not exactly "cheap" but similar machines at Woodcraft are well over a grand. I'm not sure whether that runs on regular single phase home power or not. I know thats a concern I always have when looking at tools.

[R. Stratenstein]

Originally Posted by OpenG Capo4

\
|

Not exactly "cheap" but similar machines at Woodcraft are well over a grand. I'm not sure whether that runs on regular single phase home power or not. I know thats a concern I always have when looking at tools.

No, I had not seen it. I've had such rotten luck with Craigslist, I don't peruse it very much. Not cheated or anything, just bad links, emails or calls never returned, etc. I may see if the guys still got it later this week. Been crazy here at work, and they've got my street dug up, where my driveway used to be is now a 25-ft. deep valve pit.

Anyway, that's a very nice machine, I saw one being demo'd. at the old Stone Mountain Tool Works several years ago, and it's fine. I was especially impressed that it does not (or the one they were using didn't) make a ridge in the middle when you're sanding down 32" panels.

I wanna say the thing runs on plain old 110 AC, but even if it's 220, I'm wired for that. As a homeowner machine, I wouldn't imagine they'd sell many if it required 3-phase. But like you apparently have, I've found what looks to be a spectacular deal on a really nice, heavy old piece of equipment, only to find it's something weird like 437V 3-phase.

[adirondak5]

I have the Jet 16-32 , same machine but with a 4" dust port , it can be wired for 110 or 220 , for figured wood its fantastic .

[R. Stratenstein]

I'm gonna call the guy about the thickness sander tomorrow--today's been a tee-total b-itch at work.

Man, I really hate it when deferred maintenance catches up with me.

Package of parts came in the other day for my random orbit sander, which had forgotten to random, and was orbiting about 15,000 RPM.

It's a nice DeWalt DW421 that a lot of woodworkers use. Probably one of my favorite tools, it just works good. With the vacuum hooked to it, no dust, little noise, and it does a great job fast. Well worth the $23 or so of minor parts to put into it. This will be the 2nd, maybe 3rd refurbish I've done. I've just been putting off the rebuild of this one. Can't afford to lay it on my Tele project without things working perfectly, tho.

So here's how it goes. With the patient sedated and on his back, use a #20 torx driver to remove the 3 screws holding the sanding platen/disk, whatever the heck it is.


It comes off quite easily, revealing the only parts involved in making the thing a random orbit, instead of just an orbital sander. First, you have the white ring you can see in the sander body, then there's a big bearing in the middle of the shaft, mounted on an eccentric lobe of the motor shaft. (It's inside the triangle-shaped thing with the ears, we'll see more of it in a minute) The white ring is called the dust seal/brake, and it has to rub on the underside of the platen, creating some friction, for the eccentric/bearing assembly to rotate and oscillate, creating the random ordit action.



Remove the center Torx screw from the end of the motor shaft, and the bearing and its carrier (the triangle thing with the ears) comes right off.
The carrier is some kind of cheap metal--zinc or pot metal, and is kind of brittle. You can see the chip I knocked off of it the last time I did this. I'll be more careful this time, using the proper tools, to separate the two halves of the bearing carrier.


Here we see the bearing carrier half separated, along with the specialized tool used for the purpose. I was more careful with it this time.


The bearing was pretty well ensconced in the other half of the bearing carrier, necessitating use of another highly specialized tool to press the bearing out of the carrier. You daren't pound the thing out with a drift or chunk of old axle, much better to use the right tool. . .



. . .which is called the Double-Socket, BFH bearing removal tool and technique. I was gentle with the BFH, though.

So, here we have it, ready for cleaning. Farewell old bearing, and thanks for the quadtrillions of happy revolutions!


So we apply some of the best cleaner to cut pitch, gum, old sawdust, oil, grease, and just about anything--petrosolvent-based brake cleaner. I hadn't noticed it before, but what the heck is "50-state formula?" Doesn't the stuff work in some states? Always seemed to work around here, and makes a great all-day deodorant, mouthwash, and wound cleaner.


Once the cleaner has done its thing, the inside of the bearing carrier is dry and "frictiony", as in, it has a lot of friction. It needs a light lube, just for the assembly process. Grease, oil, and other materials are kind of risky, if they drip out of the sander onto your project, well, you can guess. . .

So I use what you should never, ever, ever, not even think about using around wood projects--Silicone lube! It should also be labeled "Finish Ruiner", and if you don't know what fish-eyes are, spritz a little of this on your next project before you varnish or finish it. So I use it very carefully, taking it outside to spray on a small piece of paper towel, that does not leave my hand until it's time to throw it away. That way, I won't inadvertently set it down on my bench top, where some slilcone could be transferred to a project.


Now, it's time for the new bearing to meet its home for the next uncountable number of revolutions. Some guys would probably use the BFH and try to pound the assembly back together. Not me. Once again, I turn to the proper tool the manufacturer specifies for the job. That way, it always gets done right! With a light coating of the silicone lube on the bearing carrier, she slips together like , well, something well lubricated slipping into --oh, forget it.


Now we align the little tabs on the new dust seal/brake with matching slots on the sander's housing. There are two of them, and the seal snaps into place.



We're almost home now. New bearing is in its housing, which is now screwed back onto the motor shaft, the dust seal is snapped into place, and now it's time to reinstall the platen.



So we take the platen, wipe the dust off of it and D'oh, WAIT A MINUTE HERE ! Double D'oh, the old failing dust seal/brake has worn a spot completely through the metal of the platen into the high-quality plastic material underneath. Why's this guy smiling? Hey, kid, want me to wipe that smile off yer face?



Well, that's kind of consistent with the rest of the day. I'll get the part and put it on sometime later. I got new brushes for it too, put those on at the same time. I'll just start the screws in the bearing carrier so they don't get lost. Hear the wife coming in with the mail.



Well, looky here. The day isn't a total wash after all! : lol:



I truly intend to have something much more interesting next time I post. Thanks for looking.

[RogerC]

I think you should get extra points for the tool refurb tutorial

[axedaddy]

Originally Posted by RogerC

I think you should get extra points for the tool refurb tutorial

+1

[R. Stratenstein]

Originally Posted by RogerC

I think you should get extra points for the tool refurb tutorial

Me, too, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if I don't produce a finished guitar, a shop full of refurbished tools won't pull me thru.

[R. Stratenstein]

Well, actually, the template's up--the neck template is up for work next, which is part of what I did over the weekend. I did get the remaining part for my RO sander, but forgot the memory card for my camera and didn't get any shots of the new one, or of the brush inspection--old brushes were fine so I put the new set I got away for a rainy day. Boring stuff mostly.

I had already bandsawed the neck template out, so it needed to be ROSSed as the next step.


And of course, mucho hand sanding. Master template needs to be perfect to make all those little working templates as good as can be. Thanks to flatfive's tip about scoring the line with a razor knife prior to sanding--with that, plus the clear layer of Krylon, fuzzing and obscuration of the line was minimized, and I got a pretty good template. Good enough, I decided, to save some time and use this one to produce my neck--I'll build a working template after the challenge is over.



Last week I stopped by Highland Woodworking and picked up a card scraper. One of the tricks to sharpening the things is to file a nice flat along the edge, perpendicular to the main face of the scraper. I was rooting around for something in a rusty old tool box I found in my Dad's stuff and found a rusty, but serviceable file made specifically for sharpening scrapers! A little TLC with a brass brush, and some camellia oil, and it's ready for duty. Little stick-on price tag on the back of the package said 25 cents!



Got down to a little hand-sanding. One aid I solicited arose out of a misunderstanding of Ron Kirn's excellent fret leveling instructions. As luck would have it, I live fairly close to, my wife is from, and I occasionally visit clients in Elberton, Georgia. Elberton is not known for much, except that it is one of the biggest producers of monumental stone in the world. (That would be Granite tombstones to you and me) It is not hard to find scraps of stone all over the place of various sizes and in various states of completion. I found this in a rubbish pile outside a granite shed, a cutoff from somebody's tombstone. It's face is nicely polished, and with my limited machining skills cannot find flaws with a dial gauge of any significance whatsoever.




I do not recall why, but I ordered 400 grit self-stick sandpaper. This would have worked fine, eventually, but I needed a little more action at that point. So I split a piece of 100 grit, shot the granite with some spray adhesive, and voila, I have a nice, flat, long 100 grit sanding surface. It weighs a good 65 lbs. or so, and is of course, "rock-solid"--no flex whatsoever. So I used it to help flatten out the sides of my neck template as I crept up on those lines.

But I don't think I'll be picking it up to lightly rub across my fret surfaces!

Anyhow, finished up on the neck template, and test-fitted it in my working neck rout template. Perfect fit.


. . . .except at the butt. Damn and %#$#@)(*&%% ! I'd screwed up the butt end of the template, and routed it so the bottom edge is not perpendicular to the sides.


In the photo, you can see the pencil lines I made, showing how far off the bottom of the neck pocket is.

I couldn't imagine how I'd screwed this up so badly, I had Ron Kirn's master template screwed down to the MDF, so it couldn't have possibly slipped. So I got out the master template to see if it might offer any clues. Unfortunately, it did offer a big clue:



My working template is a perfect match for Ron's master template.

I tried to get both of them together in the same photo for illustration--might be a little hard to see, but on both the end is not perpendicular to the sides of the neck route pocket.



So, I'm now wondering, is this something I've overlooked or done wrong? I've never seen a neck butt that has that shape, so any neck put into a pocket with the end like that isn't going to fit very well.

I used a file, mild rasp, and some sandpaper to clean up the end, so the neck fits better, but not as well as I'd like, and now I'm wondering about intonation, etc. I guess I'll measure carefully before I drill for string holes, to make sure I've got the right scale length. Don't think this is a fatal error, but something I'll need to remember when I cut more neck route templates.

So now it's time to lay out the neck. Among my original considerations was using bloodwood for the neck, with ebony for the fretboard. I think it would be a killer combination.



However, my finishing plans include cherry and burgundy red. I think the bloodwood red would likely not fit in, anyway, as I have mentioned, the bloodwood has sentimental value for me, and I want to use it in a project where it will be the "queen of the ball", and the center of attention it deserves. I decided to save it for another project, and use a cutoff of the nice figured maple for the neck, still with the ebony fretboard.

Laid it out and bandsawed it.



Carefully sanded up to the lines.



And approached the dreaded routing with some trepidation, having been stung once before.

I did, of course, have my new Whiteside spiral bit as my ace in the hole, and I had really sanded close to the line everywhere, so taking my fate in my hands, set up the router--



COWABUNGA, BUFFALO BOB--That's as fine a tool as I've ever used. Absolutely perfect, not only is there no tearout, but the wood surface is like it's been scraped, and the wood figure is brilliant.

I don't know who first started praising the Whiteside spiral upcut bit, but thank you, thank you, thank you! It's a shame so much of this is going to be lost when the neck is profiled.

I used the newly-rebuild random orbit sander, and my granite sanding block to flatten and smooth the surfaces of the neck. I discovered two flaws that I hope don't give me too much trouble:

A stain, looks like maybe somebody splashed some crud or oil, etc. on the board:


and some tearout from the mill's processing of the board. I knew it was there, but the other side (face side) had the grain and figure I wanted, so I'll have to deal with it.


Mixed up some maple sawdust and glue, heavy on the sawdust, please, and forced it into the voids. An old razor blade makes a great mini-putty knife.



Put the neck to bed, in a safe place, to converse with drawings of its soon-to-be mate.

[Barncaster]

Hey R,

Whatever you do, do not go backwards with that spiral bit or VERY bad things will happen. Trust me on this one! The build looks great!

Barncaster

[R. Stratenstein]

I've seen several different jigs for performing various operations on necks. My most immediate need is to route the slot for the 2-way truss rod I'll be using.

OpenGCapo4 recently showed some steps on his guitar build that showed how he built a neck box. I liked the versatility of it, in that by using inserts for the router to run on, he can produce flat routes or curved ones depending on the type of truss rod being used. I liked the idea, and decided to adopt (steal ) it.


Here's the start of the box, with some of the parts cut and laid out, along with my router, so I could get exact measurements and a good, tight fit. The green stuff is some kind of high-density sheet plastic 1/4" thick. A client of mine had a big pile of scrap green stuff after installing a large conveyor--it's used under solid supports, where rollers can't be fit, as an anti-friction material. It feels kind of soapy, although not exactly like HDPE or UHMW PE. Maybe Delrin or some such. Anyway, I thought it would be a better surface for my router to slide on than splintery wood I'd sanded poorly, so I faced the wear surfaces with it.

Some of the green stuff had been draped over stuff out in the sun, and had taken on some waves. It flattened out pretty easily, especially after a turn under Mr. Granite block--



The height rails--the ones the router rides on to make flat or curved truss-rod routes, are removeable, but I didn't want them flopping around. So I made 3/4 inch rabbets on each side of the base, 1/4 inch deep, for them to fit into. With end blocks, they're pretty secure there. This will be more important when I make the arched rails, but won't hurt for the straight ones.

WARNING--OLE GUY WOODWORKER TIP AHEAD--

I have a couple of dado blades, or could have just used my table saw to nibble out the rabbets, but my little jointer produces great rabbets with minimal fuss, so I used it.

If you have a jointer, and haven't used it to make rabbets (that is, "grooves" in the edge of a board), check it out. It's simple, easier to set up that setting the thickness of a standard dado set, and cuts a clean dado (if you don't rush like I did, and cause chipping)

Most jointers have a dado shelf, like mine, shown to the far right of the board. It drops with the infeed table, and by adjusting the fence, and depth of cut, you can produce a rabbet of just about any size. Here you can see I'm closing in on my 1/4" deep by 3/4" wide rabbet.


Here's what the set up looks like from above the jointer. Note the guard has been moved to the other side of the fence, to cover the larger portion of the exposed jointer head. This means the point of operation is now basically unguarded, and calls for your maximum attention and care. Take small bites, use push and hold-down blocks, and if anything doesn't seem right, stop and don't resume work until you figure it out and fix it.



The necks will be held in place with at least one screw, probably through a pilot hole for a tuning machine, but also with screw clamps that come in through the sides and push against the neck opposite each other. To make those clamps, I'm using 1/4" all-thread rod and some tee nuts pressed into holes in the sides. As an added bonus, the router rails have holes drilled in them for the clamp thread rods to pass through, helping hold them in position.

First step is to cut the allthread rod.



Clean up the threads, and screw a wing-nut almost to one end. The wing nut will become the "knob" to turn the threaded rod and adjust the clamping position. Split the end of the rod just above the wing nut with a hacksaw.



I then spread the split ends with a cold chisel, partially peen the end down, and screw the wing nut as tightly as I can into the spread end.

Then using the vice's pointy thing on the anvil (I know it has a name, but I can't recall it) and a cold chisel, I upset the threads on the underside of the wing nut, trapping it in place, to become part of the shaft.


It was getting late Sunday evening, with a good bit yet to do. I mocked up a setup minus the clamp rods for this shot:


WHY IT'S GOOD TO STOP WHEN YOU'RE TIRED--



You lose the ability to tell an A from a B, even though you marked them.

Also, you could install the "tee nuts on the wrong side of the fixture, so that tightening the clamp screws pushes the t nuts out of their holes. Of course, I didn't do that Not much. Grateful it was some little mistakes, and not big, electrically powered, bloody ones, so that's it for now. Next stop, complete the neck jig, get the neck routed, truss rod in, and get fretboard laid out and slotted.

Thanks for looking.
Rick

[R. Stratenstein]

Originally Posted by Barncaster

Hey R,

Whatever you do, do not go backwards with that spiral bit or VERY bad things will happen. Trust me on this one! The build looks great!

Barncaster

Oh, oh, that sounds bad, like the cold, hard voice of bad experience. Hope not! Thanks for the tip, though.

Thanks for the kind words. Are you back up to 100% shop-ready following your surgery?

[R. Stratenstein]

Hmmm--the 25000KB capacity here on the TDPRI photo gallery looked plenty big when I started this thing, but obviously I'm posting too many pictures, or being too verbose, or probably both. I'm now at 16000K used, with only about 9000KB of capacity remaining.

One approach is minimize the photos I post, always an option, but it doesn't seem like much fun. I enjoy each and every photo everyone else posts. I assume that if I remove photos from the gallery, they will not appear in the Challenge thread anymore, so I guess I need to think about another host site for my pictures, at least have a plan in mind.

Since I'd prefer to spend what little money I have on guitar parts, tools, and wood, I'd rather not use a pay site, if I can avoid it. Any advice?

[Barncaster]

Originally Posted by R. Stratenstein

Oh, oh, that sounds bad, like the cold, hard voice of bad experience. Hope not! Thanks for the tip, though.

Thanks for the kind words. Are you back up to 100% shop-ready following your surgery?

Hey R,

Getting better by the day thanks and am shop ready!

Barncaster

[Muzikp]

Try www.imgur.com to host your images. The first 225 images are free. Nice jig by the way.

[Ryden]

Originally Posted by R. Stratenstein

Then using the vice's pointy thing on the anvil (I know it has a name, but I can't recall it) and a cold chisel, I upset the threads on the underside of the wing nut, trapping it in place, to become part of the shaft.

That's a hardy, and I recommend www.tinypic.com.
I have almost 700 photos there at the moment and it's free.

[crazydave911]

Not too confuse you with too many choices, but if you have a Gmail account, Picasa Web Hosting is a good option LINK. If your signed into Gmail, simply click on "Photos" on the top toolbar and sign in. You can upload from the website or directly from Picasa's photo editor if you have it installed (it's free). You get 1 gigabyte of free storage (regardless of number of hits ) and can upgrade to more for a small fee (you'd have to be a VERY busy builder to exceed 1 gig). As a bonus, whether you use Picasa or just the website, you can edit the photos and tag them either place

My two cents

[emoney]

I use Photobucket and haven't encountered any issues as of yet. I use my iPhone for
taking pics, so I'm sure they're low-quality, smaller resolution, but to be honest, I've
never looked. I bet I have 8-9 albums, and take way too many pictures.

Of course, now that I've suggested this, I'll find out I'm at limit, lol. Loving the build, btw
so whatever you do, find a way around the issue if for nothing else but my sake!