demonx

Part 8: http://youtu.be/xIoAQrLLo1U

That is fantastic Looks like airbrushed true fire!

I have 60 grit on my smaller drum sander and 80 grit on my big drum sander. That's fine for perfect joins. The op is right. If spraying, the paint will "shrink" into anything that it can. So I'd agree, even if doing a clear coat only I'd still use a grain fill/sealer and get the thing coated before spraying the clears or colors.

Looks like you've got a fair but on the go I hear what you are saying about colors getting lost in multilaminates A couple years ago I did a neck with ebony and rosewood and you can't really see the difference at a glance. Waste of good timber Also can relate to not building many sixes. I'm doing one at the moment and it just feels weird and tiny!

My g/friend calls me a tool all the time! Nah, you have CNC! You're still in the lead! On the tool topic though, the Laguna SUV should be in the country by the end of the month. I decided I'm not selling the old bandsaw, I want to run two saws with different sized blades. A friend of mine just ordered the "heavy duty" drill press I've been thinking about, so when he gets that in I'll be taking some blackwood and a forstner bit around to see how much better it is than my piece if crap. If it doesn't slip or jam then ill probably order one. I'm also doing a bit of looking around at dust extraction. I want a unit large enough to hook up everything overhead to the one unit. I'm sick of having to drag the trolley extractor around. I have thoughts if running a 4" PVC pipe down the centre of the roofline and then have flexible hoses going up from each machine to connect to Y sections in the PVC. Problem is getting an affordable extractor unit that is powerful enough. Carbatec's most powerful unit is $3000.00 and their sales person tells me its up for the job, but I've found in the past they don't mind overselling their products, so I'm not 100% convinced. Ledacraft is their main competition in this country and their units in similar price range are not as powerful and any larger go up to 3phase power. I only have 1phase in my workshop.

As I said before, drawers. All my bridges are kept in drawers. I buy tuners in bulk, they come individually wrapped in bags, all the washers in another bag, all the nuts in another bag, no shop packaging, so I leave them like that till I use them. There'll be one large bag of lefties and one large bag of righties. The tackle box above wouldn't even store all my capacitors let alone anything else and I'm not a massive builder or anything, ormsby would be pumping out WAY more than me hense needing even larger storage solutions. I use drawers and then everything in the drawers seperated by boxes or bags

For guitars I'm building, I have large zip bags for each guitars parts. These are kept in drawers that I built and theyre around 1500mm wide. For nuts, washers, screws etc, I have small boxes with lids, each labeled and stored in a drawer. For parts in general, I have eight more smaller stackable drawers near my desk, each with its own theme. Everything else is kept on shelves.

Today was another shop upgrade day. Picked up a second hand twin drum sander. When I say second hand, I was told an old guy bought it, got it home, used it a couple times and realised he needed a thickneser, so it was returned to the shop. Shop owner can no longer sell it as new, so I picked up a bargain as he needed it out of his way! Problem was moving the thing, I had to hire a forklift! I was informed by the dealer it's best to leave these on the skid as they're too hard to move otherwise, so on the skid it'll stay. Inside - I'll need to invest in some rolls of paper. I have them on order, just haven't arrived yet.

The brand is good AND a pain in the arse at the same time I think I used half a bottle of propane getting it to temp. I did heaps of test runs. The brand you saw in the video I actually had to re do as I didn't think it was pressed in enough, which you can imagine is a tricky procedure. For an extra three hundred plus bucks I could have bought an electronic temp control, but since this on its own with freight was already a couple hundred I thought I'd try my luck with propane. I think in the future (during winter) ill heat it in the fireplace in advance then touch it up with the propane torch. So yes, it's handy but it comes with a whole new set of issues which I'm still dealing with. Its a trial and error game just like everything else we do There's a close up pic on my Facebook page, but that's a pic from before I re branded. It looked much better the second time and I'm just lucky I managed to get it in the same spot or I'd have a bit of fix it work ahead of me

25.5" at customer request

Sanded and waiting for its first lot of finish:

Haven't had much time for building lately, spent a day hanging the room air filters I picked up last week and I've been busy trying to get the majority of the workshop setup with overhead power so I'm not untangling power chords all the time. So far so good. On top of all that, I've had to move half the whole workshop to the side so that on Thursday a forklift can come unload and position a new twin drum sander I bought. Anyway, heres the latest video installment. Part 7: Fret level, crowning, polishing and cleaning up the fingerboard http://youtu.be/iSJ1t_tlBUE

I won't bother writing out my whole process as its similar to what RAD already described. I will however be doing a fret level and dress today and I will be filming it for part 7 of my current video set. A few important notes though. Most people think they're getting the board flat/straight at the radius stage when they're really not. Took me a long time (years) to realise mine weren't as good as they could be when I thought they were perfect. I now use a longer radius block and harsher grits of paper. Also control of the block, getting it straight is a major player as well. A lot of people think that if they mark the frets with texta and level then it had to be flat. It'll only be as flat as you set the supports under the neck, otherwise you're creating waves when you think its level. Hammering/pressing the frets is an art form on its own. Neal Moser once told me that you'll never get the hang of it until you've done a hundred fret jobs. He uses that hundred number to do with most things when talking about experience building guitars. The thing is he's probably right, I haven't built a hundred of my iwn brand guitars yet but I've probably done way more than a hundred fret jobs when including my refurb/repair days and I can tell you that as the numbers rise you start to nut out little things that make a massive difference. Little things like feathering in the frets rather than smashing them in. Little things like hitting the fret in the exact right spot every time so its not moving around wrecking your fret slot. Little things like getting neater at filing and better at levelling all come with numbers. The more you do the better you get. I still have my first ever fret job here. Its on an old 80's guitar neck and it looks like a crime scene.

The new tool for my new range of guitars arrived today - I've been telling the missus that when it arrives I'm branding her arse!

I'm on the computer now as opposed to my iphone - looks like a complete different bit of timber with the pic bigger than an inch or so wide! Even the colors are different on the PC.

That top timber looks awesome, the rear timber itself is worthy of being a top. Some very beautiful timber pieces there! Great work too!

No idea what that mystery top is, I have four pieces here that look similar which are sassafras, but I very seriously doubt you have sassafras over there, but it may be some type of relative EDIT: I just did a google and it appears North America has its own native variation of sassafras as well but its a complete different bio name to the Australian native. So I'm sure there's other relatives over there also

I had a guy working here for a bit, i was training him to do everything I do. He doesnt work here anymore, moved interstate, so I lost my assistant. Anyway, he was a spray painter at an truck/trailer manufacturers and left a jackson guitar body here that he'd sprayed at his work in some high fill white primer. I have no idea what sort, but its now all crows footing and cracking apart. Only time I've seen white primer. All that I've bought have been either light grey or dark grey.

I dont even know what Mohawk is, I use 2k automotive clears. At the moment the brand I'm using is Upol, for years before that I used only PPG. I just replied to your PM.

Was there any noise from the chains with the air filter? I was thinking of hanging my two on chains, but with some sort of dampener, probably rubber, between the roof and the chain.

You can't grain fill with clear coat. It'll sink back Even if you do keep spraying and sanding it back until its flat, after 3-6 months it'll all sink back. This is how all my earlier builds are which is why I changed to using west systems as my grain filler then clear over it.

That is BIG !

Lets just say I buy a lot of them. I think there was about twenty something pickups give or take in that shot you're thinking of, many boxes had pairs in them

Today was another "no work done in the shop" day. Travelled out of town into the big smoke to pick up some new workshop accessories and some timber. A couple massive room air filters in an attempt to save my lungs: and a bit of new stock to play with: African Magohany Victrorian Blackwood Tasmanian Blackwood Queensland Maple Black Walnut Brazilian Walnut Rimu American Ash Sycamore Should keep me going for a while.

If that's all you're on about, that happens to EVERYONE and its fixed in maybe two minutes with a razor blade to do the entire board as Perry said.