View Poll Results: 1st Build Floater Suggestions
- Voters
- 25. You may not vote on this poll
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KA Handwound 12-pole PAF humbucker
15 60.00% -
Zoller AZ-48
5 20.00% -
Biltoft Dual Blade Humbucker
5 20.00%
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Originally Posted by sbeishline
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09-21-2019 11:41 PM
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Originally Posted by Sam Sherry
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To cut the body mortise with a router you will need a set of router guide rings or at least one guide ring that is 1" in dia. You will also need to make a holding fixture for the body with a opening above the center line approximately 1 3/8" wide and 3 1/2"long. Measure carefully and remember that the depth of your cut will effect the size of the cut in your body due to the use of a dovetail cutter. Here is a photo of my setup.
I suggest making some test cuts on softwood scraps before you put a body in for cutting. With a dovetail bit, your cut must be done with one single pass at full depth. To widen your opening, reset your cutter to a slightly shallower cutting depth and then cut again and that will widen your opening slightly.Last edited by Matt Cushman; 09-22-2019 at 12:58 PM.
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Originally Posted by Matt Cushman
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Your welcome. Yes, I will get a few photos of the neck jig for you soon. In my post earlier, I have 1 3/8 x 3 1/2 for the size of the guide opening. It should be 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" I should mention that the length may vary for the opening as the opening must extend beyond the cutting area for space to accommodate the router bit where your mortise cut is to enter the body. The crucial measurement is the width and where the cut stops as determined by the location of the end of the opening that is above the cutting area. I hope this makes sense. Needless to say but be sure to have everything well clamped before doing any test cuts. I mark my dovetail with a fine line in pencil before I begin cutting. Then I adjust the final width of the cut by adjusting the depth of the cut. My router bit is 14% 7/8" deep 1/2 shank.
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Originally Posted by Matt Cushman
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Got the body out of the clamps and cauls, and I think the overall glue-up is a success:
I was most excited to hear what the tap tone sounded like with the full hollow body. Being the first time I’ve built an instrument, I have zero clue if this is a desireable resonance or not. Can’t be any worse than a solidbody!
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Haven’t been able to be in the shop to work on the dovetail business, so I decided to get the truss rod cavity completed. I decided to abort the Dremel and have at it by hand.
My wife got me the Rikon wet sharpener for my birthday last month, and I gave it its first run to sharpen a shallow gouge that was with my grandfather’s carving tools- he departed in 1980 (before my arrival), so needless to say, this hasn’t been sharpened in probably 40 years, maybe longer! I think it worked pretty well, and then ran it on the 3 waterstones and finished on the Rikon strop wheel. It’s amazing how making just a few passes on leather will add a noticeable sharpness to the cutting edge.
Started slow and used the previous blank as a model, working my way to the main truss rod channel:
Then cut down to flatten the back with a 1/2” chisel:
Dremel on initial neck(left) and hand carved on right:
Gouge used:
Last edited by sbeishline; 09-24-2019 at 10:41 PM.
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Resonance frequency is a very important aspect to consider in archtop guitar building. It is a good idea to tap and check tones through the entire process of construction. Keep in mind that tap tone will change as parts are added. You really can't know what the final res. freq. will be until the guitar is nearly completed. Even the weight of your bridge can have an effect on the resonance freq. of the guitar when completed. The one thing that you are trying to avoid is a wolf note. A wolf note is likely when the resonance freq. of the guitar is the same as any whole or half note. My favorite tools for checking the resonance freq. are a variety of tuning forks. I try to make notes for myself as I progress with a build. The problem is if you find out that the final resonant freq. is a whole or half note then changing the freq. is a bit more difficult as it must be done from the outside somehow.
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Since the maintenance update and server change, uploading photos and posting isn’t working (even with Firefox), so the blog is on hold until it’s resolved.
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No shop access for a bit over a week and attempted to work on some small things in the meantime.
I needed to lessen the overhang of the edges as I had traced and cut a lot of excess to prevent shortchanging myself. I started to use 100grit sandpaper double-stick taped to a 6" broomstick handle, but this was way to slow. I switched to the LN 101 plane and this worked well, and was much faster. Even the D'A and Veritas double-convex planes wouldn't make contact with the curvy areas of the waist and cutaway:
For those I needed to use the spindle sander, which I did on Monday night. This is where the protruded edges stand currently:
I think I'm gonna go back to the spindle sander to bring them down closer to 1/8". It can be a bit tricky - gotta keep the piece moving so you don't stop and create a depression and ridge, especially as it gets closer to being unable to recover.
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In my continual pondering throughout this process, I figured that accurately cutting fret slots and accurately cutting the neck dovetail/body mortise are 2 of the most important steps in not screwing up this guitar. As such, I dropped the dough on the StewMac Fret Slotting miter box and Japanese fret saw, and I'm not sorry I did. Sure makes for slotting fingerboards in short order. I took the miter box home when I didn't have access to the shop, but I forgot the actual StewMac Japanese fret saw. I was able to spend some time learning the miter setup and was able to practice with my regular Japanese pull saw. It isn't straight like the StewMac fret saw, so it wouldn't cut even depth of frets and I couldn't get this dialed in. Here are some pics of the practicing on a piece of cherry:
On Monday, after I worked on the body edges, I took the milled ebony (real fingerboard) and decided to prepare how I'd secure the fret board to the 24.75" StewMac template. I came up with the idea to place the StewMac template up against the jointer fence before applying the fret board prepared with the double-stick tape. First, I checked to ensure the jointer fence was at 90deg:
Then I placed the slotting template on the fence held by a little tape:
From that particular photo, can you catch what error I would've made if I would've just placed it there? If you're not familiar with a jointer, the out feed part of the surface (left of the minimally pictured cutter) is 1/16" higher than the right side. That means it wouldn't have been flat. You can actually see the gap towards the cutter. Fortunately, I saw this and moved it all over to the right side of the cutter to ensure it was flat. There's probably an inch or so of fret board waste above the slot for the nut, so I took 2 passes to dial in the desired depth. I realized they weren't at 90 degrees, so I had to adjust the actual miter box to improve this. You can see from my 4th and final practice pass that it's still just a hair off of exactly 90degrees. I'll try to resolve that before slotting the whole fingerboard:
I think the slotting will go smoothly once I get the setup finalized and get started.
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Dovetail bit arrived a week or so ago. I trial placed it in the router with the 1" outer diameter bushing/collar (not pictured):
Being the other really important aspect of the project, I decided to bite the bullet and by the LMI dovetail/mortise templates to use with jigs I make. I'll incorporate the mortise into the body fixture like Matt Cushman posted. I haven't done anything with the neck dovetail jig yet.
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I went out and bought some french curves from Staples to use in designing a headstock. I have a few ideas from other luthiers out there I've borrowed, but haven't decided on one yet. I'm certain of going symmetric, but haven't finalized details. Here's my first sketch onto cardboard, which I don't really love:
I'll continue this in the off hours, as well as trying to design a tailpiece shape.
Of note, I was browsing pickup posts and came across someone's HJS "The Rose" that had a maple pickguard (as opposed to ebony) and I thought the contrast looked cool. I'm considering doing that as well. Or maybe I'll make both and decide before attaching the pickup. I ended up pulling the trigger on the Kent Armstrong Handwound 12-pole PAF pickup from WDmusic.
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The LMI templates for mortise and tenon look as if they may need to be used with a smaller guide ring on the router than the 1" guide ring that I use on my rig. I looked at the LMI template and it appears to be much more narrow than my set up is.
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Originally Posted by Matt Cushman
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Lookin' good, sbeishline! For trimming down the outer curves of the plates, I've found a spokeshave to be the right tool for the job, and actually doesn't take long with a nice, sharp iron. (Not much help for the waist, however... where a sharp chisel and a healthy dose of courage can get you most of the way.)
Matt will probably just tell you to use a router with a flush-cut bit, though. Philistine.
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I trim the plates on the band saw. This is not for the faint of heart. One slip and it is all over but the crying. I do take the precaution of wrapping the ribs in a layer of masking tape before I trim the plates down. After I trim on the saw, then I use a router with a flush cut bearing. I don't recommend this method to others. It is much safer to use a variety of hand powered methods. Slow but sure wins the race.
To cut the wedge for my neck jig, I used a band saw and a steady hand.Last edited by Matt Cushman; 10-12-2019 at 07:51 AM.
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I had another little look at the lmii dovetail templates and I noticed that they are V shaped. This could complicate fitting of the neck to the body. When fitting the neck to the body, you have to set the height of the neck, a process of removing wood from the under side of the neck to control the height and fit of the neck to body. With a V shaped mortise that could be a bit more difficult. With a straight sided mortise, the height is set by how far the neck can slide into the mortise. With a V shape mortise, the height is set by the fit of the two V shaped walls coming together. It is doable but could be a bit more involved as you will have to set both the fit of the dovetail and the underside of the neck depth. In the Irving Sloan book, "Steel-string guitar construction", James D'Aquisto is pictured hand cutting his dovetail and body mortise. It looks to be a slightly V shaped mortise. This shows that both a V shaped body mortise and hand cutting both work very well for him.
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After making my previous post I saw that LMII offers a straight sided version for a dovetail joint.
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Originally Posted by JehuOriginally Posted by Matt Cushman
No way I'll be finessing the edges on the band saw! I've got a long way to go to become a monster with skills like y'all have! I think I'll see how responsive the spokeshave is and if not, just either use the spindle sander a little bit or just sand it by hand with a sanding block.
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Originally Posted by Matt CushmanOriginally Posted by Matt Cushman
I'll plan to make the wedge on the band saw as well and see how it comes out.
Keep you posted!
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Welp, I finally made some tangible progress to show. On Saturday I decided to pull the trigger on cutting the fret slots. The StewMac miter box is nice, but it does take some fiddling to dial it in precisely. I went through the 22 frets and cut to 5/32”. I’d love to say it went flawlessly, but I noticed the slot was slightly shallower on one side. So, I lowered the adjustment on that particular side ~1/16” or so and ran all 22 frets again to even the slots, which resolved the issue. Using the fret slotting template with the box makes for fast cutting, especially if your adjustments are set.
Overall, it looks pretty good and being a somewhat novice in woodworking, I can’t imagine how I’d get a decently slotted fretboard without it:
Of note, I’ve decided to bind the fretboard with some ebony after all. After I radius the fretboard and taper the cut, I’ll nip off some of the fret tang ends before installing and gluing on the binding.
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If you are still trying to figure out the neck joint, here is a video of someone doing it with hand tools. I’ve done it similarly, but I use the LMII jig now. Watching this guy makes me doubt the power tool way is really all that better. Of course, his tools are really SHARP and he’s obviously done this a lot.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
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With the mandolin family, the fingerboard extension is usually added after the neck is attached. In the video it looks as if he is going to skip the extension on his mandocello as he does not mention it. With a mandolin, setting the neck height and angle is a different process than it is on a guitar. It is a very informative video nonetheless. But I thought I should point out that guitars and mandolins are usually a bit different when it comes to the fingerboard extension.
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