NG&NBBD - New Geetar & New Bass Build Day

[MisterE]

The trouble with Graphtech:

After sanding the headstock binding down (I forgot to take a pic) most of the day was spent thinking and measuring thanks to GraphTech. If you read the paperwork that comes with the trem unit they say it is a direct replacement for a standard Floyd Rose. So, if that is the case I can just use my incredibly clever jig with interchangeable templates to fit it in the guitar. But it doesn’t look right so I dug out an original FR and a Schaller FR to compare to the GraphTech version.

I usually fit the Schaller version on my guitars which is slightly different from the original but I can use the same templates for both. Not so for the GraphTech which has a narrower and less wide baseplate. You can see this (if you have perfect eyesight and a good imagination) when I put it on top of the Schaller trem in the Stocklist Pointy thing.

But with a few measurements it turned out to be worse than that. If I were to use the same pivot holes as I normally do relative to the scale length it would be impossible to get the saddles on the Graphtech to intone - the guitar would not play in tune! This is because the saddles they use to hold the piezo elements have different break points to the normal FR.

I then went to the internet and downloaded a dimensional drawing of the GraphTech to compare with the Schaller drawing and found a Strat body which had a FR fitted at the factory. Then I spent a long time looking, comparing and thinking.

Eventually I made a decision on where the pivot points should be and drilled the holes for the inserts. You can see the guitar clamped in my lovely FR routing jig. A thing of beauty and clever too.

The way the jig works is that the body is clamped in the jig and lined up with several markers on the jig and then various templates can be inserted into the opening in the top and the router used to cut the correct holes and cavities that the FR requires. The clever bit is that once the body is clamped you can turn the jog over and it exactly lines up the back with templates to cut the spring cavity and cover. I hope you will see this tomorrow if I still have the will to live after today. That is for a regular FR. In this case I will have to alter my templates by glueing in some shims (temporarily) to allow for the GraphTech’s weirdness. Here is one.

And even with these shims I will still have to do some extra routing to get the nasty thing to fit. For example the front of the spring block cavity will have to be enlarged to allow space for the piezo leads. Also the string locking screws on the GraphTech are longer than the Schaller or Original FR so will need extra clearance at the rear of the unit.


Anyway at the end of the day I had made a start on the routing with two templates.

Did I mention that I have a sore hand? When I was removing some wood in the area of the string block cavity using a powerful hand drill a 14mm drill bit broke and jammed in the hole. The torque of the drill twisted my hand and arm through 90 degrees and it hurt. I’ve never had this happen before and it goes to show how careful you need to be with power tools. My medical bill will be added to the final invoice.


So I hope things go better tomorrow.


‘bye for now,


ChrisSwollenHand.


p.s. I hope I got the measurements right otherwise this rant will be a bit embarrassing!

 

[BBN]

Man this guy is talented....

 

[H3O2]

This level of background and detail adds to the anticipation.

 

[MisterE]

Man this guy is talented....

You have no idea
Just take a look at some stuff on his website or his newsletters. Lofts of tech stuff in there.
No wonder they asked him to join as a board member for the European Leonardo Project.
I also feel his prices are more than fair for the quality he delivers.

 

[MisterE]

Some more news:

You know some of what went on today. I got the trem routing done, the spring cavity and also the rout for the humbucker. It took ages doing little adjustments to the trem rout with makeshift jigs.

Adjustment for the Graphtech rout:

Template for the humbucker:

Back jig with some templates:

Back tremolo cavity done:

The a hard afternoons routing the bass body. No nice jig here, just old fashioned templates and clamps - the way our grandfathers did it. Character forming. To save routing time I often remove excess wood using a drill and try not to injure myself. Safer using the drill press.

Routing the control cavity:

Template for the pickup cavities for the bass

I had to stop here because JJ Cale was on the radio playing Magnolia and I had to grab an acoustic guitar and play along! I’m OK again now.

Cavities for the pickups done:

Drilling the wiring channel

 

[MisterE]

As I said to you earlier today I had to make new templates for the router to fit the components. And this is how I did it.

First I made rough drawings on the body top of the various components that have to fit in the cavity and then adjust them so that the controls what will appear on the outside look pretty! I then transfer the various shapes to a sheet of clear plastic which is my first template for the template making. Note the reference marks that line the plastic up with the body shape.

Turning the guitar over and using those same reference marks I can see if what i want to do on the front looks OK on the back - that it will work in practice.

In this case the lower edge of the template is too close to the body edge so I have to make adjustments.Once I was happy with that I drew on the places where I would want the screws to go that will hold the backplate on. I cut out the plastic template and draw around it onto plywood. Since the ‘real’ final template for the router needs to be 3.2mm larger in all directions I make sure to add this amount to the plywood.

I can now cut around the enlarged drawing to create the ‘real template.

I compare this to the guitar body. It looks good but I need to test this with the router just to be sure it is OK so I do a shallow rout on some scrap wood. and compare to my plastic template.

So the hole will be Ok. Now I need to make a second template for the cover. Using the hole template I draw around it with a 3.2mm felt tip pen which gives me the right size for the cover. This shape needs to be tidied up so it will look smooth.

As with the hole template I cut this one out and then do a test rout over the hole test rout to see if they work together. If they don’t at this stage I would have to open a bottle of wine to drown my sorrow. Unfortunately they do work perfectly so no wine.

I use the real templates to mark the position on the body back where I want to go routing making sure I have the correct clearances. Then I remove most of the wood using the pillar drill.

And rout the hole first and then the cover.

Looks good. I have not routed to the finished depth yet. That will happen after I carve the top.

So that was my day and I’m happy with the result. These new templates will be useful in other jobs I’m sure.

ChrisTemplateMeister.

 

[MisterE]

So most of the holes on the body are complete now. I made up more templates (somebody has to do it) so that I could rout the cavities for the batteries and for the single coil pickups. I had a template for a single coil from another job but it didn’t look great to me so I made a new and better one. Making templates is time consuming so I consumed some time.

Cavity for the battery:

And the bass pickups arrived and, luckily, they fit.

 

[BBN]

It blows my mind that the back of the neck is still square....and that he's going to make some type of tool and shave it down by hand.
Just crazy talent.

 

[MisterE]

It blows my mind that the back of the neck is still square....and that he's going to make some type of tool and shave it down by hand.
Just crazy talent.

It's all done by hand.
Just check out the threads on some guitars he made for me:
http://forum.fractalaudio.com/lounge/74598-ngbd-new-guitar-build-day.html

Larkin ASAD 7-string - The Gear Page

I expect Chris to start working on the necks some time this week.
Wait until he starts on the carved top

 

[MisterE]

Well, here it is: the carving of the neck of the bass:

I glued the fingerboard onto the guitar.

And then here are some stages in carving the bass neck. First I marked out the rough depth.

Then rough cut the neck out on the bandsaw.

I need to get a flat surface of the correct taper as a reference point so I do this with the hand plane.

The shape is further refined with a small block plane (forgot to take the pic) and then I shape the volute..

..and refine the shape further using a rasp….

…remembering to check the dimensions from time to time.

The carving is smoothed with a scraper which removes tiny amounts of wood with each pass.

I also shaped the bass body to it’s final profile. The slot where the bridge will be is the canal for the piezo cables into the control cavity.

 

[Sidivan]

That is insanely awesome.

 

[MisterE]

Continued:

Nice slim bass neck carved. How I am looking forward to doing the inlay for that and the guitar. You can’t imagine how much.

Any way, a bit more scraping and a lot of sanding and then the rest of the day at the computer doing the Newsletter which is almost finished.

This sanding the neck level with a long block.

And this is fine sanding to get a good finish.

And this is the finished carve.

It suits the body.

The guitar looks good with the fingerboard on too.

 

[BBN]

I can't imagine how long it must take to master that craft.

Keep the pics coming please!

 

[MisterE]

Sometimes Chris' working methods are rather unconventional. Just have a look at hou he removes the excess wood from the neck :shock

So I’ve almost finished drilling the guitar with holes, just the tuner holes and the two outlets - technically challenging those two - which will be fun.

Speaking of technically challenging we don’t need a CNC machine to do tricky things. This is how I removed most of the excess wood from the neck so I could carve it.

Cunning eh? So now the real work started with hammer and chisel, chisel, spokeshave, rasp, plane and, most importantly, scraper. Never underestimate a good scraper which actually does the final shaping. All the time remembering to check the dimensions at fret 1 and 12.

 

[MisterE]

There was an amount of sanding with blocks and by hand and this was where I finished tonight. It still needs fine sanding which I’ll do tomorrow. I like the profile and feel of the neck.

 

[MisterE]

In the afternoon I first fine sanded the guitar neck (nice!) and then I had to confront the problem of drilling the holes for the two socket outlets. They require an Imperial 7/8th of an inch hole and there is very little space in the lower part of the side to fit this in so they have to be drilled very accurately. My plan was to make a jig that would hold the guitar solidly on the drill press but, despite modifying the supports for the drill press, it would not go low enough to manage this. So about an hour wasted. But knowledge gained. After much head scratching I came up with a cunning plan. I put a drill head on the drive shaft of the radial arm saw with the 7/8th cutter in it, made a raised bed for the guitar body and clamped it to the bed aligned with the cutter.

I was then able to lean over and slowly, very slowly, pull the body of the saw towards the guitar so the cutter could do it’s work.

The saw motor runs faster than the cutter likes so, despite my slow pulling, it still produced burned sawdust but made the accurate holes I needed.

I told you there were technical problems with this guitar. So far they have been managed!

After this I was mentally exhausted and decided to have an easy afternoon sanding the two bodies after rounding both edges of the bass and the bottom edge of the guitar.

Quilted maple has very interlocked grain so, even with sharp cutters, it tends to machine with ‘fluffy’ edges that have to be sanded smooth. You can see this on some of the earlier pictures where I cut the pickup holes.

So a couple of hours hand sanding made the bodies look a little better. I have just noticed that the second picture is of me sanding the sides level before I did the rounding.

The arm cutaway and the back cutaway on the bass body were made.

So at the end of the day I had two pretty well sorted bodies ready for working on the fingerboards tomorrow. That is, if no German ladies arrive!

Later tonight the August Newsletter will be published. If anyone is interested this is the link that will get you to it. Nice recipe for crab cakes amongst other things.

ChrisTiredArms.

 

[MisterE]

Good evening dear WineDrinkingTwin - don’t deny it!

So the dreaded inlay process begins. First the fingerboards have to be radiussed and for that to work they have to be straight. Double acting trussrod helps here.

And then I use the long, sharp plane to make the correct shape and check it with a template.

Then I drill the dot holes. For a regular neck I can do this on the drill press as with the bass but for the through neck I have to use a reversed drill stand.

And then fit the dots in the bass

 

[MisterE]

Now for the start of the cutting of the pointy bits from pearl slabs. Using a pearl saw I cut the shapes - 9 minutes for Each

As I started the first one the doorbell rang and some Belgian bloke was there with his wife from Leuven. They were on holiday and could he see and try some basses? Of course he could! So some 2 hours later he had tried the three stock basses to death and his wife was so bored she was considering suicide. They left and I continued cutting pearl into the night!

I stopped when I had completed the bass pieces and I was ready to commit suicide. On the 7 string all the pieces were more or less the same size but this time they start smaller at the headlock and get bigger as they go down the neck.

Before I inlay them I have to make the moon shape in the short end of the triangles. That’ll be a job for Monday

ChrisInlaidOut.

 

[BBN]

This is the epitome of 'hand made'....

 

[MisterE]

Not a lot of news this week. Chris had a lot of visitors.
The good news is that he sold some guitars amongst which the ones he made for the Leonardo project.

Dearest PatientTwin,

More Belgians today but they came to see Syra’s paintings and bought one. Somebody who works for the EU in Brussels so had loads of money.
For my self I started inlaying the bas neck.
First the triangles had to have the ends shaped to fit around the dots. I did this with a round file.

Then I had to cut out the holes for the inlays to go in. I start with a large(ish!) cutter to do the rough work and then a fine cutter to do the pointy bits.

First routing

Big cutter

Smaller cutter

Once each piece fits in it’s hole I can start to glue them in with superglue.

And that was a day’s work. Actually I could have sanded the inlays down but two guys came as i was finishing who wanted to see the guitars and I think may have sold the lacewood Leonardo guitar. I’ll know tomorrow.

ChrisFingersStuckTogether.