Paul M
Forum Replies Created
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I built one of these, it works well, pretty common for builders to have one. Takes up a bit of space. The bench mounted ones might work as well, or you can make a shorter one that attaches to your bench.
https://app.box.com/s/1h0r6vzsvm
app.box.com
Guitar Troji instructions.pdf | Powered by Box
Guitar Troji instructions.pdf | Powered by Box
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Maybe ask other Ireland luths? @gerryhayes
Maybe your shop should be somewhat dryer than the dryest that your customers homes would be?
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Capping in with epoxy would give you the opportunity to use whatever glue you wanted for the board.
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I used epoxy. I haven’t yet put a cap on it. Mostly for new builds and I usually put the board on with epoxy (g flex) also.
I did one restoration and I can’t remember what I did. Probably taped off the area around the rod and epoxied it then taped the rod and tightbonded the rest.
I do like the capping idea though. If you want the most from the rods, (I think) it makes sense to get them deeper in the neck where they will have increased (insert the engineering term here). Obviously as deep as you can go without routing out the back of your neck…..
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Where are you again?
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Thanks that’s helpful!
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Just going to offer you the possibility of not doing anything, it looks like a very minor mark and it’s under the strings and it’s your third guitar. Just throwing it out there….
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this review of the Chinese sander ends up sort of trashing the Mirka. I think I’d go with the festool if I was going to lay in a bunch of money, that 125 ends up not being hugely expensive compared to the chinese clones. I’m still not convinced it’s necessary though.
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There’s a chinese clone that’s only available to Euros I think, maybe now they are here, I haven’t looked in a while.
There’s also one Festool that’s pretty affordable (I think it might be their lure to get you to drink the coolaid).
I’m using a $50 Makita that I’ve had since I had a sailboat. I don’t totally get what these sanders would offer me, I feel like when I have scratches its usually because I didn’t move through grits smoothly enough and/or maybe had some grit on my pad. I’m open to having my mind changed, but right now I’m saving my money.
So I don’t have direct experience with these. I hear the Festool stuff is nice though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlJaS-iiL10
woodcraft.com
Festool - ETS 125 REQ Random Orbital Sander in systainer³
The versatile ETS 125 Random Orbit Sander has the finest sanding stroke at 5/64" and is the ideal one-handed machine for maximum surface quality when finishing or pre-sanding.
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Someone gave me one, I just made a bunch of binding and forgot that I have it. I will try it for my next batch.
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This is the program that was highly recommended. I haven’t actually used it but I might.
I think if you buy the cheaper version, you can use it for life if you don’t have a monster spindle.
https://www.cnccookbook.com/gwlitesignup-2/
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Check out Super fast Matt on YouTube, he has a bunch of scanner comparisons. That looks cool!
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For me it’s been a lot of trial and error. For the most part I run a 1/4″ flat mill at 100 in/min, but will oftentimes slow it down or speed it up based on my perception of how the cut is going. If I think the machine is working too hard I’ll stop the program and rerun it slower, if it’s dragging I’ll do the opposite.
Pretty clumsy but it works for me.
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1) No
or2) No one knows
Without someone doing a bunch of guitars that are otherwise identical but changing this one detail it would be hard to have any definitive opinion on that.
There might be a way to differentiate the stiffness from the two sides of the top but you’d be getting into pretty heady air there.
I think in general the tighter grain lines go in the middle, aesthetically, but it’s your guitar.
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<div>Probably the v bit is an upcut which is giving you that fuzz? I wonder if you could find a small downcut mill and do a flat bottom channel.</div><div>
</div>
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my guess is your rpms are probably way too fast for plastic
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no cam makes it a dead end for me. It’s not an issue if you’re 3d printing stuff but if you get to the cnc stage and you don’t have CAM I think you might find yourself screwed. Maybe Ian’s combined approach makes sense.
After 2 years at this, I’m considering paying for Fusion, I find subscription stuff irritating but my shop is basically based around it at this point. It’s cool that it’s been free but ultimately if I’m actually doing this then it becomes part of the cost of the business.
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Not saying I’m a Fusion Fan but even in the 2 years I’ve been using it, it has improved in some significant ways. I have no idea what it was like 20 years ago. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as buggy. There are some kind of annoying things I wish they would fix, mostly about navigating the environment. But it mostly works and is pretty powerful.
It also appears to be closer to an industry standard than Rhino (Tom might disagree) and there are a lot of resources for it, in particularly it seems to be somewhat commonly used in garden variety machine shops, so for CAM there’s a lot of stuff there.
Lately the more I use it the more it works. It has been pretty rough but now I’m starting to be able to maximize what I’m doing.
Part of the whole thing is basically teaching yourself to be a machinist, whether you know it or not. A lot of my issues with the whole process come from starting as a kind of shitty hand tool/router woodworker and then just landing into the machine world.
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Does Blender have CAM?
To me that’s the thing that keeps me in Fusion, integrated CAM. If you’re running a CNC machine, and you frequently make changes, to be able to bounce back and forth from the modeling environment to the CAM has become absolutely essential to me. I’ll often times run a test of whatever I’m making and find some flaws, remodel it and then Fusion will update the CAM for me.
And on complex stuff the CAM can take quite a bit of time. Not as much as the model, usually, but a lot.
Even for simple stuff I’m doing this pretty constantly.
If I had to export a model from Fusion or another program to something that would write CAM, I would find that pretty miserable.
It’s different from 3D printing where you basically have one slicing operation and you’re good to go.
Maybe I’m missing something though.
There’s definitely frustrations about Fusion for me, and the learning curve was miserable, it really took me a year. Now I feel like I can more or less do what I want, sometimes with outside assistance.
I also went at it like running into a brick wall, the first big job I did was modeling a whole acoustic guitar and that was pretty dumb,
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I use the thickened version in the toothpaste tubes. It is thickened enough to fill gaps and it stays where you want it.
The thin version is probably useful too but for me the thick version is perfect for everything I’ve used it for.
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For me I just use the West system G Flex for everything in the shop, other than maybe 5 minute epoxy and epoxy putty. It’s easy to mix, close to as strong as you can get and also flexible.
JB Weld is more a specialty epoxy for metal stuff afaik. People seem to love it but for a guitar shop I don’t think it’s super useful.
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Doug what is the tubing you use for making other jigs for the Total Vice?
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I talked to Ian the other day, I managed to drop the end of a bar clamp on the top of my guitar #7 and put a narly but small gouge in the top. Then I proceeded to manically try to fill it and just screwed up the whole thing even further.
Ultimately I did a bit of a gouge scoop but most importantly, I finally decided to pop the bridge off, I sanded off all my old finish and now I’m starting from scratch. I’m glad I’m doing this. My fill looks pretty ok now that the finish is consistent, I actually had some imperfections in the top anyway, so it will be all in all a lot better.
I guess it’s a go big or go home thing.
It was valuable to to me to know that I can pop off the bridge of one of my instruments if needed without damaging anything.
I also spent a number of hours dicking around with the fills and stuff. Going sooner to the terminal repair saves time.
Real pro repair would probably be replacing the top entirely but this guitar sounds killer and I can handle this emotionally.
Personally though in your case I’d probably leave it, it’s like one pick strikes worth of a scratch.
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what slicer are you using? I had best results with Prusaslicer. I’m sure there are reasons not to use it but it worked for me.
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there’s all sort of very specific calibration files you can get. The Benchy boat thing though is a sort of torture test so you can test out a bunch of problems at once.
I made a bunch of 12 sided musical note dice as test pieces too so I didn’t have 8 million boats floating around.
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I printed up a bunch of these when I got started
https://www.3dbenchy.com/I haven’t used my printer in months…I will probably need to print a bunch more, it’s been moved in the meantime.
Your filament may be old/damp depending on how it was stored. That’s a big problem with PLA.
I don’t have the 2nd z slider thing but never had an issue but I might not know what I’m missing.
The problem with Ender upgrades is you might end up paying for a Bamboo labs printer after not too many of them.
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A lot of this depends on your machine rigidity and your clamping. If you are taking a super shallow depth of cut that might work on any machine. But the chiprate calculations don’t take account of machine rigidity.
Basically the chip rate and speed calculations are the same whether you are taking a .1″ depth of cut or a 1″ depth of cut. It is a calculation on how much material the flute is cutting as it turns. . So it’s the same regardless. I’m not explaining it well but it’s true.
If your machine is rock solid you could push it that fast at 1″ and survive I think. But hobby machines are not that solid and I think more importantly if you are using blue tape or really any clamping other than a machinists vice you will probably blow the piece off the table. I have done that many times.
Many people understand this much better than I do. There’s a program that people use that I’ve heard is really helpful I’ll try to track down the name. It’s $70 but I’ve heard it’s a game changer.
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you can very easily move files in an out of your 10 active files, it’s a non-issue.
You can work offline some if you don’t have internet access but it’s kinda clunky and I probably would not.
I would advice sticking to Fusion 360 or Rhino for the very important reason that most people doing instruments are using one or the other and unless you are a super genius, you’re going to want to ask someone questions. There may be a Solid Works guitar community but I am unaware of a lot of instrument makers using it. Having people to help you is a BIG DEAL, I would have been SOL without the people on Austin Shaner’s Discord page. Tom here is a master with Rhino.
Fusion can be frustrating but is totally free and very very powerful. I haven’t used Rhino, I’m taking a wild guess from watching people that it’s mildly less frustrating, somewhat less powerful and totally not free. Tom and his students do beautiful work, I’m pretty sure if Tom tried Fusion he’d be doing beautiful work too.
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When I was at Sergei’s I had a set of potato chipped Mahogany and he was just like press it flat and join it, it will be ok. That guitar is now 4 years old and ended up going from Quebec to New Mexico and apparently is still in one piece.
I don’t know if I’d do it that way going forward, I’ve had other builders tell me the same thing.
I am wondering if a clothes iron would flatten them, perhaps with a wet cloth in the middle?
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my hardware store had a pretty small long bit, I can’t remember the diameter, but it was close enough that the foam cutter got stuck-ish. You don’t need a hugely long bit.
