Official Luthiers Forum!

I was flipping through the pictures of my first build ( I am on #2 now!!!) and I came across this one and thought it was a great example of what you think of when you don't know better.

My dad and I were working to build a radius dish with a 15' radius. We had suspended a router by a chain from the high rafters in our shed. How many of you Pros would have thought of that one?

What else have people done that is just funny to look back on?

Interesting Approach!!! How did it work?

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Eddie Lee

I spent an entire day crawling around the shop floor, looking for the peghead inlay. Next day found it stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Surprisingly, it worked out pretty good. I don't know if I see the need for perfectly machined dishes yet. Maybe after some more builds, but for now, this one is working!

Are those OSHA approved steel- toe sneakers your dad is wearing?

René

I love it!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

So far, almost all my "Jigs" are a mixture of "Cobble together" and "Gets the Pig Clean"

I cut purfling strips out of Veneer with a razor blade on a sheet of MDF, a board for a straight edge and a bunch of clamps holding it all together... 1 package of veneer sheets is *WAY* cheaper than $1.00/purfling strip...

My "Binding cutter Jig" is 2 pieces of wood left over from neck cutoff scraps... I stick them to the bottom of my router with Carpet tape and an itty-bitty C-clamp!

Clamping the top onto Esteban -- I didn't have nearly enough clamps or rope or anything else... so I laid a bunch of 1x4's and bits of plywood on top of the guitar and just clamped it down with whatever I could get ahold of... I was using Rope on 1 end and clamps on the other as a hinge... Etc...

Same for the bridge on Esteban -- I didn't have any clamps that would reach inside... so I just wedged a couple pieces of wood inside it and clamped it from the outside with a couple pieces of wood to smoosh it all down... No signs of creep after 1.5 years with Mediums....

Amazingly, all this stuff worked!

I really need to get some pix of it and post it... so you can see "How the Other Half Lives!"

Thanks

John

Looks like a fun time Justin!

Looks like it would work Justin. I guess the proper length of chain would give you the correct radius.

But did you make a 25' radius bowl for the top or did you run out of roof height?

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Wow, that looks like the setup in our local hospital's operating room

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It's not the miles ahead, it's the stone in your shoe


In Markham,Virginia

Head to the barn, I suppose.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yes, those are Walmart special, velcro steel toe safety sneakers my dad is wearing

And, nope, I don't have a 25' radius dish. I just went with the Cumpiano technique of creating a shim/pad that just hits the rims and I used a closed-cell foam sleeping pad to cushion it all. It seemed to work fine as 25' is pretty close to flat.

But my problem with not having the 25' dish is getting the right taper on the rims to joint well with the top. On my 1st build I rigged up a funny pivoting sanding block that approximated the angle you would see at the edge of a 25' dish. It worked ok, but I will have to re-think that part on this next build. To bad the barn is not quite 25' tall!

I see some tree climbing in somebody's future.

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Evan McCartney

I like the invisble safety glasses, dust mask and ear defenders too. (That's not MDF/chipboard/ply is it?)
Sorry, pet hate - safety glasses have saved my eyes from probable major damage at least twice in my life. Started wearing them regularily after a incident where I nearly lot an eye.
I know here on the forum they like to encourange us to use safety kit.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

i dare you to cut the truss rod channel with the chain and router!!

Couldn't you stand the MDF form vertical and pull the chain with the router on the end horizontal (maybe use string instead of a chain) to do a 25' radius dish?

Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

It's stuff like this that I think just shows the passion for trying to build guitars, love it .

You can't really tell, but I am wearing yellow ear plugs. As for safety glasses, I wasn't at that time. But, I will say that now I wear them for all power tool/hammering/go-bar deck/anything that can break or explode processes. I do almost everything with hand tools (all I can afford) so not to many high velocity chips in my shop.... except for when we are dangling power tools from the rafters.

As for the 25' radius, I imagine you could hold it horizontal - that's how I made my 25' radius template because I had yet to discover the magic of a long compass.