Neck shaping videos / Fretting tips and technique

Shaping the headstock and neck transition area.

Bear with this one - the video glitches, but my short commentary at the end will still be heard, just out of sync! Apologies on behalf of technology everywhere!

Neck heel/body transition area.

Rough neck contour completed.

Fretting tips and technique.

God bless you,

Mike

Bandsaw

I was fortunate to have a friend whose father was a retired carpenter and happened to have a saw which totally suited my needs - a good tool as well! I picked it up last week and here are some of the things I have been working on before putting her to use.

This is how it looks (if these photos look odd it is because I rotated them online).

And the reason it is called a bandsaw - the blade is a band of toothed steel which runs around 2 pulleys, 1 of which is driven - in this case by a 550w induction motor.

One of the top guide wheels was supported by a fractured piece of cast aluminium (rubbish material really) so I set about replacing that. Firstly the wheel, and a look under the top guide mechanism. The left wheel support is fine.

Here you can see the fractured holder, and the 1/4" metal strapping which I planned to cut to suit. The hole in the strapping both suited the bolt position and size! Nice, eh!?

I really just break things so that I can angle grind stuff... or take pictures of me angle grinding stuff... honestly! (not really)

This is the replacement shoe which needs a slot ground in it.

There is the shoe with the slot ground - far from perfect, but close to "good enough"!

Here is the top support set correctly - all guides are not touching until pressure is applied in that direction.

And a cut from a piece of 2 1/4" Ash - all working well!

The owner before Ronnie had this set very poorly. (Ronnie used this saw once or twice, but never had the call to, so all comments apply to its previous owner) Out of interest I checked the bottom supports, and the right hand ceramic pressure support thingy (technical term) was deflecting the blade by almost 1mm - BAD. The rear support wheel was about 10mm from the blade!! BAD. All set properly now!

To get to those fixtures I had to remove the cast iron work top and the bolt that secured it was cast into a plastic wing-nut which had rounded and didn't grip any more. I broke that away, removed the bolt with spanners. I then cut a large washer and had my dad weld it to a suitable nut. I cleaned it up with an angle grinder (woo) and it works better than ever! (considering it never worked...)

I will do the same thing for the guide stanchion on the front of the tool - same plastic rubbish nut. I put a wing-nut on there, but it is too small for my delicate fingers to work with! Here is an example of a rip-cut from a future guitar neck:

MUCH to my surprise the starting capacitor blew while I was lightly using the saw!! Now load on the motor wouldn't cause this, and there wasn't even much of that, so I guess it was defective, it is 12 years old after all. Still, I didn't want to see this:

And for the grand price of £5.95 inc. postage I have a replacement part! For anyone running the Elektra Beckum or Metabo BAS315 (and 316/317 - the updates) the start capacitor for the 0.55kW motor is labelled "16400". It is 16 micro-farads @ 400V.

I have some good examples of scroll work to post up, but this post is long enough. I will sign off with a few points.

5/8" (15mm) blades for rip sawing large depths coming - 6 and 3TPI versions.

1/4" (6mm) blade @ 10TPI for general finer sawing on the way.

I found some suitable hardwoods locally. When I manage that bank job I will drop a bit of cash and start building more instruments.

I have 2 bass body wings cut and ready, and 1 guitar body wings cut and ready.

There will be an 8 string guitar this year.

Finally, since no-one would believe this unless they saw it - this is half of the workshop... and tomorrow I start tidying.

Good night and God bless,

Mike

Computer Build #5

Right, this will be the final instalment until one of 2 things happen:

1) I decide not to get water cooling (in a month or 2) and make the outside pretty.

2) I decide to get water cooling and replace the drive bay covers.

If I decide to pretty it up now and get water cooling, I will not need that big fan at the front - or I *may* not need it, so I would quite like the case to go back the way it was, looking all normal at the front. Though I might decide to keep that fan. Actually I probably will, but I don't want to make a rash decision, so there is no rush to pretty this up, so I can leave it as it is until I make a final decision.

The advantage of the water cooling - 4.5GHz. Need I say more?

The purpose of this post is to show off the lighting. I couldn't resist putting a cold cathode lighting setup in this - I figure that if the chip catches fire, I may as well have the case glowing red so that I don't notice at first thus lessening the blow of my i5 processor going down the toilet, hahaha! I am usually not one for "speed stripes" or "things" but I just wanted to do this, after all I did build this with an angle grinder, so here goes.

2 RED CCTs, mounted to the side panel - the tubes cannot easily be seen here, so aesthetically this is the best choice.

This is how they look when running:

This is the wee transformer. Note the black switch (out of focus due to wide aperture for light) - it is huge. Where exactly did they think it would fit? Was I going to drill a 12 or 13mm moutnting hole in my case? Seriously guys, thanks for supplying it as a quick fit, pre-wired job, but that switch is a real huge ugly brute.

All set and whistlin' dixie!

Here is a picture showing a little... unconventional wiring. Well it is conventional in the sense that + to + and - to -, fingers in the mains socket standing in a pool of water barefoot next to a lightning conductor on a stormy day, but since I ran out of fan jumpers, I pushed single core wire into the back of one of those 3 pin plugs to create the connection. People are too precious about the power drain through these. News flash: the fans are about 2 watts each... I'm not loosing sleep. I know, I know - I can't control the fan speed by jury-rigging them, but my motherboard only supports speed control on the CPU fan and *maybe* 1 peripheral fan. I have speed control disabled - I want these working hard :D

That is all for now, computer wise. Here are some things that I plan to do in the next month:

Collect a bandsaw (all being well, tomorrow! Amazing to have found one, what a God-send)

Chamber ensemble and Indian (Haydn, Handel and Bhuna... Friday night sorted!)

Design some more instruments

Continue preparations for "Sweeney Todd" which will be performed in the Mill Side Theatre as the NI Première (Theatre at the Mill). This is running from 2/2/10 to 13/2/10. Again, on my birthday I will be playing trumpet, and I wouldn't change that for the world :)

Write more music - I plan to write maybe a head-chart a week and post it to my blogger as inspiration, I might start with one I have already written to give me some buffer time!

I will have to clear a workspace in the workshop. I have been preparing for this day... I am still delaying! Man alive. Could it be more messy? The answer is no, and I will post a picture soon, no-one will expect the level of mess. Only people who have seen it will believe it.

Keep to a better sleeping routine: 8-9am bedtimes and 1-3pm getting-ups is horrible, I feel like such a waster when I do this and I hate waking in the dark evening! Last night I managed a 12am bed, sleep by 2am, up with no alarm clock at 9.30am. More like it!

That is all for now, I won't continue an endlessly boring list for no reason, besides there are things which I don't want to be accountable for, like clearing the back drain - but I did that already. Horrible day that was!

Here's hoping! (hopping)

Mike