Finally an opportunity to post something about guitars!

A little while back, Tim dropped in his Hagstrom Viking. After a good deal of gigging round Germany, the neck was very loose, and shifting unpleasantly in the pocket. Closer examination revealed the neck block had slipped, and string tension had deformed the arched top and back plates. To return the guitar to it’s original problem would have been prohibitively expensive, but since the neck block seems stable, a carefully shaped shim will do the job to keep the neck in place.

Whilst it’s here, Tim also wanted to upgrade from the cheesy stamped TOM to an archtop style bridge.

The new bridge is shaped to fit a much more dramatic arch than the Hag’s, so it only contacts at the very edges - no way it can work well like this.

Out comes the blue tape, and the bridge is taped and the curve of the top marked onto it with a pencil. A quick trip to the disc sander, and a few shavings with a plane, and it’s already much closer. Still a way to go though - and gaps will lead to reduced sustain and volume so a perfect fit is the aim.

To get there, some 120 grit paper is taped to the guitar top, and the bridge is rubbed back and forwards until it had been sanded over the whole width. After the 120 grit, I repeated the process with 240 grit to refine the fit.

Et voila - perfect fit!

The job didn’t finish here, because the new bridge is significanlty taller than the original. So, I made a tapered shim to adjust the neck angle for a nice low action. The shim tapers from about 3mm to a feather edge, so the neck is fully seated on wood, rather than raised up on a shim at one end of the pocket. I much prefer this method to the old standbys like a folded business card or a matchbook, and think it’s beneficial to tone and (particularly important in this case) stability.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of this before I put the neck back on, but you can see the results - with the guitar strung up, the action is spot on, with scope for adjustment in either direction. Should keep this Viking fighting fit for a good while longer…

I’m not dead. Honest.

I do, however, seem to be having some email problems. If you’ve tried to get in touch and got no reply please try again, and failing that leave a comment here and I’ll try to get back to you.

Unless you’re posting spam (I just deleted about a brazillian spam comments - burn!)

Pressing frets has a good few advantages over hammering, not least the noise - hammering frets at 12.30 in the morning isn’t a good way to make friends and influence people. I didn’t want to lose workbench space to a dedicated arbour press, so I decided to convert a tool I already had, but didn’t use (unless you extend the definition of ‘use’ to include tripping over it. I did that *a lot*).

Here’s the victim, a Black and Decker drill stand. This was a staggeringly crap tool for it’s intended purpose. Assuming you could finally get the drill clamped square and true (not a safe assumption, as it happens) the first time you introduced the drill bit to wood the stand would flex and the bit would take the path of least resistance, which invaraibly took it somewhere you didn’t want it to go.

The first thing I did was to remove the front half of the drill clamp. This effectively disarms it, removing any risk of innocent parties trying to use it as a drill press…

I drilled 2 holes in one face of a scrap of english oak, then turned it 90 degrees and drilled a 3/8″ hole, into which I screwed an M6 threaded insert.

I shaped a a block of glass filled nylon to make a fret arbour, narrowing one face so it was a little over 2mm wide, and cutting a 12″ radius into it, then drilling a recess to accept an M6 crossdowel in the other face. I screwed a short length of M6 studding into the crossdowel to act as a shaft. I screwed this shaft into the oak block, using a nylox nut as a rotation stop so the studding won’t come loose.

I then attached the oak block to the drill press, using the allen bolts which held the drill clamp. Et Voila - fretpress! The cross dowel allows the radius press to self level, so that it matches the alignment of the fretboard, and pressing the fret is as simple as cranking the handle.

The press works very well on RW fretboards, though early tests suggest it struggles with harder woods like ebony. The flex which made it so useless for drilling is still apparent, but really doesn’t alter it’s effectiveness as a press, and the conversion gives it a chance to acrue some positive karma for all the times it let me down as a drill stand. Best of all, it cost less nothing to make, since had all the components already.

Today was a genre defining ‘I should never have got out of bed’ day. One of those days where everything you touch turns to shit, and just when you think the pile of indignites is heaped so high that nothing else can possibly go wrong, somebody manages to balance another one on top.

Based on the uncanny accuracy of Tuesdays’ prediction, I imagine my stars for today looked something like this:

To have had a flat battery this morning would have been annoying. Likewise, to dent the crap out of the landing door whilst parking would be annoying. To lock the keys in it 5 minutes after getting it home would be annoying too. Doing all 3 in 1 day would be enough to convince you the van was cursed.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, there’s not been much happening guitar wise; my current builds are unchanged since I started the new job.

That’s not to say I haven’t been making sawdust in the garage - the last week I’ve been out there full time, fitting out the locksmith van which I will ultimately be turned loose in. In light of my less than comprehensive driving experience (read: 6 months driving in the 3 years since I passed my test) my bosses decided it would be unwise to release me on an unsuspecting world in a Transit, so I was set the challenge of shoehorning a transit-sized amount of stock and tools into the rather less than transit sized Vauxhall combo.

Quite apart from the size, the shape is enough to make for some serious headscratching - nothing in the van is geometric or straight, and there’s no reference for square or plumb (moving from one side of the van to the other changes what’s upright - great!) - I got pretty good at scribing and fitting to curved surfaces by the time I’d got all those shelves in! I also got to break out a few tools I’ve not used much before, not least the air nailer, which allowed me to channel my inner Norm Abraham and thunk nails into everything in arms reach.

It all looks nice and square there - but if you look at the first couple of uprights in place you can see how curvy the interior is - every component had to be trimmed to height or length, tried in place and scribed to fit before being cutout on the bandsaw.

Aerodynamics be buggered - if you ask me, this is how a van should look.

…or to look at it another way; job.

It had to happen eventually, and it has. This morning I accepted a trainee locksmith position with a local locksmith. Hours are long and the pay during training is pretty tight, but the work should be interesting, they seem like a nice bunch, and they were very keen to employ me, even after I initially declined the position.

It’ll inevitably mean having a lot less time to spend on guitar building, but I’ll still keep working on them in my spare time, and posting progress on here.

So there you go, I’m employed, and I start on Tuesday.

Every now and then, despite the best efforts to keep him locked out of the workshop, I’m paid an unwelcome visit by the cockup monster. He’s a tenacious little bugger, and if he’s really determined to visit there’s not much you can do to prevent it.

What you can do, is learn to clean up his footprints so nobody but you knows he was ever there*. With a little bit of creativity it can even work to your advantage.

So, exhibit A:

One pair of Rosewood P90 pickup covers, made entirely to satisfy my whim, and not at all inspired by a template shifting slightly and making my routes a tad too big for a regular P90 cover…. honest!

These’ll be going in my LP jnr style, which (fingers crossed) will be getting some finish very soon. I’m still trying to decide which P90s to use - I’ve heard great things about Lollar and Fralin, but I’m also tempted by Vintage Vibe.

Any thoughts?

*Unless, of course, you post it on your blog. That might give the game away.

Or: Scarfed headstocks continued.

In the last post I explained why I like scarfed headstocks - they’re stronger, and less wastefull. So - why are they not used on expensive instuments like Gibson’s and PRS’s? The answer is pretty simple - tradition, and aesthetics.

Tradition I’ll set aside for the time being - it’s a whole can of worms. But aesthetics are easier to address. With a little thought, you can make a scarf jointed head look as good (hell - better!) than a 1 piece, and still keep all the benefits it brings to strength and conservation. Here’s how I do it…

After the scarf joint has been cleaned up with a plane, I mark the headstock thickness, and sand a radius upto this line. There are several ways to do this - with the idle roller of a belt sander, with a spindle sander, or with a drum in the drill press. Once the radius is sanded, I thickness the rest of the headstock. In these pics I have used my router thicknesser to thin it, but I now use a drum sander and fence in the drill press, which thicknesses and sands the radius at the same time.

Next, I glue ears onto the headstock to make up the width. This is another concession to saving wood, but also hides the sides of the scarf joint. I trim the headstock width before attaching the ears, so that after shaping the ears will taper to practically nothing. That way there’s no evidence of the joint in the end grain near the nut.

(Sorry about the crappy pic - I forgot to take one, and had to blow up a fragment from the back ground of another image)

After attaching the ears, I trim them flush front and back with a plane, scraper and chisels. Then, I prepare a piece of constructional (1.5mm thick) veneer. I prebend it, otherwise it’ll crack when I try to bend it into the curve on the back of the headstock. I spritz it with distilled water, wrap it in foil, then heat it with a heat gun. Once it’s steaming, it bends like butter (What!?), and I clamp it up with a matching caul. I don’t apply glue yet - the dry run holds the veneer whilst it cools, and lets me check everything fits nice and tight. After the dry run it holds the curve nicely:

The glueup is just like the dry run, except with about 10 times as many clamps… no pics I’m afraid. Here it is after drying over night.

Once it’s dried, I trim off the excess with a veneer saw, shape the headstock with a template and template bit in the router, then profile the neck and carve the volute. Somewhere along the way I apply a headplate to the front of the head, and in this case, bind it too. With all that done, there is no evidence of the scarf joint left - the ears conceal the sides, and the veneers cover front and back.

IMO, every bit as slick as a 1 piece headstock ,and a good deal stronger and stiffer to boot!

I’ve been scarfing my headstocks as long as I’ve been making guitars, because it’s a stronger and less wastefull than sawing out a 1 piece neck. Because both of the parts being glued in a scarf joint are wedge-shaped, getting the joint glued and clamped can be a bit like wrestling a buttered ferret. There are many ways round this, from pinning the joint in areas which will be cut away, putting some nipped of staples on one of the glueing faces, or making an elaborate clamping jig to hold both pieces. Here’s my solution, which I think is pretty much foolproof (to this fool at least…).

With the pieces cut and planed, I first check fit and alignment:

Then, with the pieces arranged properly, I tape one side of the joint with common or garden masking tape, so that joint can be hinged open:

I hinge it completely open to expose the glueing faces, apply a generous amount of titebond original, and spread it out:

Then, I close it and clamp it. 2 small g-cramps apply most of the pressure, and 4 spring clamps hold down the feather edges at each end of the joint.

As well as clamping the joint closed, the clamps push down on the masking tape, and prevent it lifting or slipping, which in turn keeps the joint perfectly aligned as you apply the clamps - simple, but it works really well.

The result:

Coming soon: Back strapping the headstock.

I’ve had a few requests to post details of the top carving jig which shows up in some of the progress pics of John’s guitar. It’s a simple project to knock together, and makes roughing out a carved top much faster. It’s also an impressively efficient way off spreading wood chips over a large area…

One of the common techniques for roughing out carved top instruments is using routers to cut a ’step’ pattern into the wood. This technique works well, but is pretty nerve wracking (it’s very easy for the router to tip and cut deeper than you want) so I settled on this solution. The pictures should be pretty self explainitary, but questions and suggestions for improvement are welcomed.

Here a shot of the jig with a roughed out top. This was my first test, so the contours are not at final dimension yet - the edges were later thinned down to .25 inch.

The router is suspended about a little over 2.5 inches above a flat workboard, enough height to carve a top glued onto a body for a Les Paul style instrument. The router is attached to the base with 2 M6 machine screws.

At the moment the jig is attached to the workboard with 2 clamps, and is perfectly stable and solid, but ultimately it will be screwed in place. However it’s done, you must be completely condfident it can’t move *at all* - You really don’t want it getting lose and coming to find your fingers…

The guitar body registers off a wooden guide which runs in the body of the jig. The radius at the end of the guide matches the radius of the cutter in the router; a 1″ dish cutter bit.

This image shows the guide removed from the jig.

This shows the cutter and guide. The guide is adjusted by sliding and clamping with an F-clamp. In time I’ll add thumbscrews and an adjustment slot to the guide piece.

Here’s the body registering off the guide. The depth of cut is adjusted with the router plunge mechanism and depth stop.

With the cutter speed up high, and taking no more than 2mm with each pass there is no tendency for chatter or grabbing, which I think is helped by the rounded edges of the bowl cutter. The steps end up very smooth, though care has to be taken to keep the edge of the body square to the jig, otherwise the width of the rebate created can vary.

The jig is also great for routing binding with a bearing bit.

You can space your contour lines equally, which will create an even stepped surface, but I drew out the curve I wanted to create, and then mapped the steps required to come close to this shape if I removed 2mm each time.

Then, I transferred these measurements to the guide - I line up each mark with the edge of the jig, and drop the cutter 2mm each time.

Here’s the result - hopefully a few minutes with a small carving plane and a spokeshave will get me very close to my final shape. In this shot I’ve planed the neck angle into the top with a jack plane - the jig doesn’t do that bit for you