woodfab Posted December 26, 2023 Report Share Posted December 26, 2023 Looking Good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Akula Posted December 27, 2023 Author Popular Post Report Share Posted December 27, 2023 9 hours ago, woodfab said: Looking Good. Thanks! After unclamping, I have indeed got a set of hollow "wings" glued and mechanically fixed into the maple neck. They will be much stronger with the tops glued on, but even at this point there is no wiggle, they're firmly attached in place. I did take full advantage of epoxy resin's gap-filling properties, and filled a few places where shrinkage had left a hole. Okay, ready for the secret ingredient? These will fill the hollow wings. ......Ready? Ohhh sh*t yeah! I'm a psychopath! With a little creative direction from my wife, we glued all these dismembered barbie heads into the wings. Just a small dot of glue required to stop them rolling around inside the cavity. The bandsaw action was needed to cut some of the heads in half - or faces off, if that sounds any better - to leave an empty space underneath the pickguard for electronics. The hardest part now is to glue the tops, without smearing glue over everything. I had to do some creative pre-placement of wiring, too. First up, mix up a batch of epoxy and coat the inside of the dado groove. With the edges of the sides still dry, insert the top into the dado groove. The alignment holes worked perfectly, and 2mm aluminium tubes perform their job as locating pins. I wedged an offcut of acrylic between the top and the sides, to create a gap. That allowed me to get the glue to flow along the underside surface of the top to where it needed to be. The annoying part was trying to keep Barbie's hair out of the glue join! Remove the wedges, and use the clamps to close the gap. There will be a little bit of squeeze-out on the inside of the joint, but I'm hoping the average person's eye will be drawn to the decapitated dolls heads, and not the tiny glue mark. - Jam 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted December 27, 2023 Report Share Posted December 27, 2023 56 minutes ago, Akula said: The annoying part was trying to keep Barbie's hair out of the glue join! That's the issue with long haired women, be they wives or dolls. Yesterday I had a strand of female floss in my salad. And pulling a hair from under your foreskin has to be done delicately... Had to check out if that was going to be a headless guitar but by no means no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodfab Posted December 27, 2023 Report Share Posted December 27, 2023 That's pretty crazy! My wife hates Barbie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted December 29, 2023 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2023 On 12/27/2023 at 9:17 PM, Bizman62 said: That's the issue with long haired women, be they wives or dolls. Yesterday I had a strand of female floss in my salad. And pulling a hair from under your foreskin has to be done delicately... Hahaha duuuude! On 12/28/2023 at 5:18 AM, woodfab said: My wife hates Barbie. Mine too! That's why she pulled all their heads off! Right, so that WeldOn glue is pretty strong. After taking the clamps off, I couldn't twist or squeak the wings at all. They've formed a triangular box section, so geometrically they should be very sound. I routed the tops and backs to the exact profile of the sides, and while routing acrylic always sucks, it came out pretty good. Now it's time for the finishing phase. This comprised of sanding all the exposed timber until it was glassy smooth, and staining it black. The stain seems to raise the grain a little, but I'm always reluctant to sand it again and risk going through. I tried something new - I burnished the wood with a scrap of MDF, and then with a rough rag. The maple ended up glassy smooth, once again. Now it's time for a few coats of Tung oil - well technically it's a product sold as "kitchen oil", and it's made for benchtops and cutting boards, but a look at the data sheet tells me it's basically just Tung oil. I'm going to do a few coats of oil for sure, I think a matt finish wouldn't fit the aesthetic as well as satin towards gloss. - Jam 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor Woozle Posted December 29, 2023 Report Share Posted December 29, 2023 Seeing that front on, I'm getting Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" going through my head... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted January 1 Author Report Share Posted January 1 Whilst waiting for a bunch of tung oil coats to cure, I figured I'd make a jack plate and pickguard. I had previously made these items, but then I screwed them in using 2mm screws in 2mm holes, and cracked them. Whoops! So I cut the jack plate using a hole saw, and carefully removed the "plug" to reveal a mostly round-shaped mirror object. Attached an M6 bolt, nut, and washer, stuck it in the drill, and wiped it on some coarse sandpaper at high speed until it was rather circular. Got my bevel done in the same way. Pickguard was pretty easy to cut, three straight lines and a bunch of sanding on the edges. This mirror acrylic stock has been lying around in the shop for a few years, and the backing has definitely detiriorated in that time. Heads up - mirror acrylic will get damaged if you leave it on the sheet stock shelf for long enough! When I wet sanded the sides, the watery gunk flowed over the face of the pickguard and made these awful stains that I can't seem to remove with metho. These imperfections almost made me order some new stock, but when I screwed it onto the guitar in question, I realised that it would fit the style nonetheless. Interesting thing about the jack plate, spinning it lathe-style against sandpaper gave it quite the thermal shock, and it cracked, but just around the edges. Same argument, I figured the broken mirror effect sort of fits the corpse-filled guitar look. It's staying. I masked off the sides leaving just the router-milled surfaces of the tops and backs exposed, then sanded the machine marks away. I could've gone much higher with the grit numbers, but the cloudy finish gives the impression of some sort of binding. If I wanted to go super glossy I could've flame polished the edges, but I didn't want to risk the glue joint opening up. Here we are, all rigged up with another coat of oil to cure. I've done four coats of this tung oil, and I'm thinking I might do one more tomorrow and call it quits. The horns and edges of a guitar are normally the main points to protect, but the timber doesn't see any of these parts. And I'm aiming for a satin finish at the most. So yeah. One more coat, assemble, show the world my most insane creation. - Jam 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted January 1 Report Share Posted January 1 1 hour ago, Akula said: show the world my most insane creation. That insanity will be hard to beat... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted January 1 Report Share Posted January 1 Acrylic cracks easily. Counter sinking the holes may help some. But better alternative is to use polycarbonate for clear parts that are fastened with screws. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted January 1 Author Report Share Posted January 1 42 minutes ago, henrim said: Acrylic cracks easily. Counter sinking the holes may help some. But better alternative is to use polycarbonate for clear parts that are fastened with screws. One of my first experiences working on live TV was screwing in an acrylic facia to a riser during a changeover, and I went too hard and cracked the corner off. About thirty seconds to air, back from an advert break. Camera tape saved my ass, but I learned all about how easily acrylic can crack! Polycarbonate would indeed be a better solution, but acrylic was easier to source, and it's a known material to me - sometimes it's all about the devil you know. - Jam 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjiscooler Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 I love this! HOw did you size the fingerboard to the neck? looked like you glued the full blank onto the neck, but a router wouldn't make it past the body? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 This definitely needs to be a prop in a horror movie! It's so creepy it's cool. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 On 12/27/2023 at 4:17 AM, Bizman62 said: Had to check out if that was going to be a headless guitar but by no means no. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted January 5 Author Report Share Posted January 5 On 1/3/2024 at 1:08 PM, tjiscooler said: I love this! HOw did you size the fingerboard to the neck? looked like you glued the full blank onto the neck, but a router wouldn't make it past the body? Thanks! Yep most of the fretboard was trimmed flush with a router, but you are correct, the router won't follow past the point where neck meets body. For the last little bit, I used a chisel. On 1/4/2024 at 8:16 AM, ScottR said: This definitely needs to be a prop in a horror movie! It's so creepy it's cool. SR One day it might be - Jam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted January 11 Author Report Share Posted January 11 Oil's cured. Wax, assembly, electronics, strings, fretwork, strings, and setup. Normal story - guitar's far from normal. Just need to make a truss rod cover with my logo, and this atrocity is complete. Shall I make it out of steel sheet like my other builds, or do it with mirror acrylic? - Jam 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 7 minutes ago, Akula said: do it with mirror acrylic That would tie up with the other damaged mirror acrylic parts. Is the mirroring surface easy to scratch from the bottom side? If so, scraping the mirror off for your logo might look interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted January 12 Author Report Share Posted January 12 9 hours ago, Bizman62 said: That would tie up with the other damaged mirror acrylic parts. Is the mirroring surface easy to scratch from the bottom side? If so, scraping the mirror off for your logo might look interesting. Yep, that's the direction I was going as well. The backing is easy to scratch off, I'm thinking if I do it with a Dremel it'll have a clouded look on the underside of the acrylic. My headstock design is rather slim, too, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for a large cover, so the logo will be quite small. - Jam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShatnersBassoon Posted January 15 Report Share Posted January 15 Definitely ideal for Metal Great work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nakedzen Posted January 23 Report Share Posted January 23 On 1/11/2024 at 6:43 PM, Akula said: Just need to make a truss rod cover with my logo, and this atrocity is complete. Shall I make it out of steel sheet like my other builds, or do it with mirror acrylic? - Jam Mirror is my vote. Make it oversized to fill the entire headstock for extra obnoxious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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