Official Luthiers Forum!

Anyone making their own wooden knobs on a lathe?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Do you mean electric guitar knobs?

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Yes. Like these:

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Old growth, shmold growth!

In that case, no. Would be easy, though.
Those look nice!

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Just these...I made all wood ones but these work better with rest of the hardware.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Lovely.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Nice work!

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Old growth, shmold growth!

More slick stuff. Nice knobs! I like how the wood extends through the side. Is the wood one piece?

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Yes...one piece...epoxied in and then cut flush along with the final aluminum surfaces.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Slick. Makes me want knobs on an acoustic!

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Beautiful, Fillipo.

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Sorry, I meant Filippo.

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Nice job Filippo!

Have you ever made bell knobs like these?:
Looks like it would require some kind of duplicating setup to be ultra consistent.

I'm wondering if anyone's made anything like that? I don't really want to spend $400 for something decent, nor $200 for something flimsy and cheap.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

doesn't the metal get blazing hot during milling, and risk burning the wood core...?

You generally want to use a coolant when cutting aluminum. I get these to an "almost done" state on a metal cutting machine and do the final cut on another. After the wood inserts are glued the last cut takes off .005" from the aluminum surfaces and the wood cuts flush to that. There's no heat at all generated in this operation.

The hardest part of this was making a tool that would hold these when it came time to polish them. I made a little fixture that mounts in a drill. The knob mounts on the end using small allen screws to spread a split post. Then I can go to a hard fiber wheel on a grinder...and rotate the knob with the drill as the wheel brings the wood and aluminum to a high polish in a half a minute. Ez peazy.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Well if you spell it backwards its Pizzayn ......... maybe hes Italian ??

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Stuart that is some beautiful work! I can't imagine taking the huge amount of time to make a complete instrument then to only have to take so much time on embellishments... Kudos to everyone in this thread who does.