Citaat:
In the afternoon I first fine sanded the guitar neck (nice!) and then I had to confront the problem of drilling the holes for the two socket outlets. They require an Imperial 7/8th of an inch hole and there is very little space in the lower part of the side to fit this in so they have to be drilled very accurately. My plan was to make a jig that would hold the guitar solidly on the drill press but, despite modifying the supports for the drill press, it would not go low enough to manage this. So about an hour wasted. But knowledge gained. After much head scratching I came up with a cunning plan. I put a drill head on the drive shaft of the radial arm saw with the 7/8th cutter in it, made a raised bed for the guitar body and clamped it to the bed aligned with the cutter.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p...holeanswer.jpg
Citaat:
I was then able to lean over and slowly, very slowly, pull the body of the saw towards the guitar so the cutter could do it’s work.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-W...2B-%2Bpull.jpg
Citaat:
The saw motor runs faster than the cutter likes so, despite my slow pulling, it still produced burned sawdust but made the accurate holes I needed.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...acksawdust.jpg
Citaat:
I told you there were technical problems with this guitar. So far they have been managed!
After this I was mentally exhausted and decided to have an easy afternoon sanding the two bodies after rounding both edges of the bass and the bottom edge of the guitar.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...Broutedges.jpg
Citaat:
Quilted maple has very interlocked grain so, even with sharp cutters, it tends to machine with ‘fluffy’ edges that have to be sanded smooth. You can see this on some of the earlier pictures where I cut the pickup holes.
So a couple of hours hand sanding made the bodies look a little better. I have just noticed that the second picture is of me sanding the sides level before I did the rounding.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...Bblocksand.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...2Bhandsand.jpg
Citaat:
The arm cutaway and the back cutaway on the bass body were made.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0...ttle-plane.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-u...apecontour.jpg
Citaat:
So at the end of the day I had two pretty well sorted bodies ready for working on the fingerboards tomorrow. That is, if no German ladies arrive!
Later tonight the August Newsletter will be published. If anyone is interested this is the
link that will get you to it. Nice recipe for crab cakes amongst other things.
ChrisTiredArms.
