Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok only nerdy builders would ask these so here goes...

1. What type of tape are you using to cover your fingerboards and mortices when spraying??

I was using the 3M blue tape and just attempted to pull it off of a fingerboard without much luck, some of the finish had wicked around the frets. So now I get to scrape all that off to get a clean fingerboard

2. When you guys are carving necks, what method do you use to make the neck thinner at the headstock and thicker near the heel. Having just pulled one out of the drying closet I realized that the neck feels like a baseball bat , It's probably not that bad but it could be thinner.

3. Do any of you keep a checklist for when building?, I've been considering one so I can plan better my time in the shop. I can use all the help I can get to stay organized, I don't follow K&N's methods but have kind of devised my own as follows:

1. Send off headstock to be inlayed with logo (and rosette if I'm doing it this way)
2. Make a neck blank (for me this is a glued up neck with a working mortise and tenon joint ready to be installed and no headstock normally).
3. Join the top
4. Join the back
5. Cutout top and back to pattern.
6. Layout bracing lines for both.
7. Brace back
8. Insert rosette in top
9. brace top and voice.
10 Bend sides.
11 Glue neck and heel block.
12 Install kerfing and side braces.
13 Glue on top.
14 Cutout for mortise and set basic neck position.
15 Sign top, label back.
16 Glue on back.
17 Glue on headstock (should be back by now)
18 Glue fingerboard to neck and set final angle.
19 Set basic neck angle.
20 Route binding
21 Cutout end graft piece
22 fit binding and end graft and glue
23 voice top and back
22 Fret fingerboard
23 Final sand and spot fill
24 Tape and finish.
25 Hang in drying closet.
26 Make bridge
27 polish everything
28 Attach neck
29 glue bridge
30 Setup
31 Go drink a beer.

Do other builders do something similar?, the biggest pain for me is waiting for the inlay, the guys that do the headstock do good work but man are they SLOW. And getting custom rosettes always takes time, I can't brace until I do the rosette, I can't finish the neck until I get the top glued on and so and so on...

So what do others do??

Thanks all.

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

I inlay my own headstocks with a reverse phenolic of my inlay. So that isn't a wait. And I do my own rosettes, so that isn't a wait either. Gee, other than that Paul, I believe you got it covered, let's have that beer now!

For tapering fingerboards, I have a tapered board (tapered in thickness) with a spline down the center and a stop at the heel. I put the neck on it so that the spline is in the truss rod slot and use my safety planer in my drill press to thickness the neck blank. I thin it till it's about 9/16" at the 3rd fret, but do it to your own specs. Then I clean up the heal and nut transition on the drun sander. Be sure to do all this before you taper the width of the neck.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I started out doing my own inlay Bruce but it's a pain and I like being able to have it fit nice and tight, I do most of my own rosettes unless I'm having something special done to them. In fact I have a hawaiin themed one being worked on right now, it won't be back for weeks but it will be worth it

Are you going to Healdsburg Bruce?? if so we can grab some brewsky's there

John...

I tossed my safety planer because it grabbed a piece of a headstock I was thinning once and took a piece of my thumb, this was before I had the thickness sander.

I was thinking of making a jig for the bandsaw to do the same thing...

Think I'll give that a try...

Cheers

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

I passed on a booth but may come to see all the hoopla, so brewski's it is.... Anyone else want to imbibe?

Healdsburg...I'm in. I'll definitely be there as a wide-eyed spectator. We need to keep a count of OLFers who are planning to attend. As we get closer, let's plan on having a proper get together. As far as the brews, I recommend Johnny Cool's favorite...you'll love it! So far I'm pretty sure of the following who are planning to attend: JJ, John How, Tim McKnight, Hank Mauel, and ???

Hey, Dave, would the trip tax deductible for commercial luthiers and suppliers?

I was speaking with the Zootman this morning trying to talk him into making the trip from Buffalo. If he can't make it, I promised to take pictures of any guitars using his outrageous wood.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I would start with the Beer first!!!!!
Walter

Paul do you have a radial arm saw? If so you can mount the neck in a jig with the nut end shimmed up by the amount of taper you want then lock the arm in a position and adjust the depth of cut so that you are just touching at the heel end and then slide the jid back and forth under the blade untill it's cleaned up and tapered. Go slow the blade will cut sliding sideways. It only takes a few minutes, the finish is not bad at all and your going to shape the neck anyway. Just have some hand holders on the jig to keep your hands out of harms way. I have done this many times and it works very well. You can also thin the bottom side headstock to rough thickness in the same manner.Bobc38394.3447685185

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Any trip that has a business purpose is generaly deductible on that businesses return. Attending a few seminars to keep up your skills and get an edge up on the new gear etc...sounds like a deductible trip to me. Now the cost to bring along the wife...I don't think so...so maybe the wives should stay home. Remember to keep those receipts for all that beer (entertainment) and talk a lot of shop or other business topics with everyone...but don't drink too much or you won't need a CPA...you'll be calling Sylvan or one of the other attorneys

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

Regarding checklists, I picked up a best practice from Al Carruth from a session he did at the ASIA conference last year. He documents each guitar's details so that if he needs to recreate one or figure out why that one came out sounding so good, he refers to his checklist of details. I believe that it even included details such as chaldni pattern frequencies and such as well. In addition to just a build checklist, I now have started to record details that come up that I would otherwise have forgotten. Thanks Al.

Regarding thinning necks, I cheat...at one time I wanted to get into building just archtops so I bought a duplicator. While I love playing them, building them was less fun for me so I use the duplicator to rough out necks, head and tail blocks and all sorts of other kinds of things. It is the kind of duplicator that uses a router to carve and a stylus to follow the part to be dup'ed.

Duplicators dont have to cost alot although the commercial ones can (I bought BEFORE I saw homemade on MIMF). On MIMF there are seveal plans for ones that people made that work and can be built easily.

I'm pretty well set in the financial department Dave, my wife has a degree in accounting, is a certified financial planner and both her brothers are tax attorney's

If it wasn't for her shall we say 'Guidance' on what I buy and spend I'd be polishing shoes for a living...

Bob I was thinking doing the same thing with my bandsaw, at least that's my current theory, I'll make some jigs this weekend and give it a shot, thanks for the idea...

I would love a duplicator and may just build one at some point, sure whould save alot of hassle, I've also been really seriously starting to look at CNC for stuff like this, building bridges, rosette blanks etc etc... They are still expensive but if I could build my necks to be
%100 consistent and all the other little parts it would be a huge boon for me.

After this next batch I'm building mortise and tenon jigs similar to what John Mayes is using, right now I fit each one by hand after they are built, it works but it stops me from swapping necks which would be cool and it takes extra time. And until I get to a point I can build for a living (that's a way's off yet) I need to be as effecient as I can.

Cheers

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Paul, as far as thining the neck, this is what I do.

with the headstock veneer on, place the neck on the flatest surface you have, I use my cabinet saw. Now clamp it down at the tail and with a wedge under the headstock. Running along the length of the neck would be two pieces of scrap the same thinkness at least the length of the neck plus some extra. Next I mount my laminate trimmer to a piece of 3/4 baltic birch with the bit down. I use the veneer of the head stock as the tapper, taking several passes, I remove material from the back of the neck till I reach my desired thinkness at the nut area.

Hope this is clear.

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

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To thin the neck taper I've just been using a Safety Planer set in the drill press. Of course the drill press has an extra long (shop built) table mounted on it, which the neck can run back and forth on. I shim the neck up at the nut area by the amount of taper desired. Works well for me.

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

I use the blue tape too, but I fret the neck after
spraying the finish, but before rubbing out. Then you
can just peel off the tape, sand down the little ridge
of finish along the fretboard edge, and fret. Also, if
you fret the neck before rubbing the finish out, you
don't have to worry so much about little dings and
scratches that might happen during fretting. You'll
level them out and buff later.

I understand that the green tape seals out finish
better, but it also sticks more aggressively so it's
harder to remove after a couple of weeks cure time.
The blue stuff works well enough if you burnish the
edge down with a fingernail.

I do use a checklist, in fact a notebook with a page
per operation (top bracing, rosette inlaying, back
bracing, side bending, etc). I don't refer to it quite so
much any more, but it's nice to have all your
dimensions and assembly sequences written out in
one place.

Yes, I do use a checklist for each guitar and tick it off as I go, I don't build that many each year that the progression from one job to another is automatic.

I'm a research scientist so one thing that is ingrained in my very soul is keeping full data. My training tells me that photos, though interesting, are of no use in accurately recording a process, so I have a record chart for each guitar with accurate details logged of all measurements. I can tell you the top thickness at a dozen points, bending temperatures for sides, the position and full dimensions of all braces, blocks etc., etc. I can then refer back to these measurements for any future project. Nerdy, no, just scientific.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.