Remodeling The Studio....Again

[Track Rat]

A shot of the racks.

 

[Track Rat]

View from the front door.

 

[Track Rat]

My new baby.

 

[Track Rat]

Last one. I promise.

 

[RickW]

Well, I'm impressed! Great job, Track! You should be proud!!

 

[Phyl]

That console is just F**ing fantastic.

Do you have access to a shaper? How did you do all those sweet large radius roundovers?

 

[Track Rat]

Thanks man. I glued two 2"x4"s together and cut the basic shape on a table saw. Then I shaped it by hand with a disc sander, then hand sanded till I was happy with it. Not as hard as it sounds.

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Very very handsome there Track. As to the mixer, I've wanted a 3500 or 3700 for so long I forgot what they do. Woodworking tools ate up last years gear budget. Maybe this year. Unless a nice shaper comes up first. Anyway, nice woodworking and cable job.
fitZ

 

[Light]

Unless a nice shaper comes up first. Anyway, nice woodworking and cable job.
fitZ

A couple of years ago we bought This Grizzly shaper. Now, we build guitars, and so we don't have any need for a large shaper. If you are doing large scale panel work, or architectural work, it might be too small. We, however, have been extremely happy with it. It is very stable, and works great.

Just a little temptation for you.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Hello Light, thats wierd. About an hour ago I was searching the net for "machining abalone".
A post by you on HR was listed so I went to it. I was going to respond but figured the post was
so old you would think I was crazy. Anyway, so you build guitars huh? Cool. How bout some tips on abalone? Ever machine it from the shell? I read that the dust is real poisonous. I'm makeing some artsy fartsy boxes for fun, and thought I would inlay some abalone. Not only that, but I want to inlay some guitar perfuling or specialty stuff you only see on guitars.
So you like the Grizzly huh? Never used one, or seen one for that matter. We use a Powermatic, and 2 deltas at work for raised panel, and architectural millwork. I really like the powermatic. Its much heftyer than the small deltas. But I'll check the grizzly out. thanks. Probably will use the bucks to by parts for a diy CNC first though. I'm REALLY jazzed about that. Small CNC for engraving, laser work, routing and whatever else I can make it do.
Heres a cool site for CNC DIY'ers, if your interested.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=5

fitZ

 

[Light]

Hello Light, thats wierd. About an hour ago I was searching the net for "machining abalone".
A post by you on HR was listed so I went to it. I was going to respond but figured the post was
so old you would think I was crazy. Anyway, so you build guitars huh? Cool. How bout some tips on abalone? Ever machine it from the shell? I read that the dust is real poisonous.

Pearl dust is unbelievably hazardous. It is so fine it will go right through a mask, and the particles are very sharp, so it tears up your lungs something fierce. Larry Robinson (who is one of the best inlay artists in the world) has a dust collection system built into his v-board (the little board with a notch on the end which you use to cut pearl) so that all of the dust gets carried away. He has a mesh screen over the intake so he doesn't loose small parts. If you don't have a dust collector, you should really be using a respirator with the purple cartridges (organic vapors, you know). Horrible stuff.

We used to have a pearl artist who worked for us, and she would sometimes split it from the shell. We still have a few shells lying around the shop (we never throw anything away), but rarely use them. One of our repair folks did have to cut out some extra thick pieces for an old harp mandolin she was working on, but that is rare.

On the rare occasions when we do pearl work ourselves (it is toxic and very difficult to get good at, so why not get someone else to do it), it is all hand cutting, just with a jewelers saw and some files. We rout out the cavities free hand with a laminate trimmer, for the most part (we HATE dremel tools, the bearings just suck). Most of our pearl work is the repetitive logos on our headstocks, so we get that done by Precision Pearl down in Texas. They are owned (at least in part) by a guy named Tom Ellis, and they do CNC machining of pearl, and they do it really well. It is cheap too, as long as you are getting enough pieces done.

If you need a good source for pearl, www.lmii.com has a nice selection and a small minimum order. If you want a lot, you need to talk to Chuck Erickson, aka The Duke of Pearl. He is very knowledgeable, and a very memorable character. He is one of the inventers of laminated and veneer pearls. Most of the big factories, and lots of small builders as well, are using the laminates for all of their pearl purflings. Old fashion planks are still popular for artistic inlay though, unless you need a really big piece.

So you like the Grizzly huh? Never used one, or seen one for that matter. We use a Powermatic, and 2 deltas at work for raised panel, and architectural millwork. I really like the powermatic. Its much heftyer than the small deltas. But I'll check the grizzly out. thanks. Probably will use the bucks to by parts for a diy CNC first though. I'm REALLY jazzed about that. Small CNC for engraving, laser work, routing and whatever else I can make it do.
Heres a cool site for CNC DIY'ers, if your interested.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=5

fitZ

We have been very happy with the Grizzly. They sell some of the same cheap imported crap that other importers do, but when you get above the bottom part of there line, they make some really great machines at really great prices. We got their large spindle sander last year, and my father (who owns our shop) can't stop gushing about the thing. He says he can't figure out why it took him five years to actually decide to buy it. Building guitars, we have a lot of hollow curves to shape, and the spindle sander is amazing for that. Now the shaper we have is a rather small one, and if you are doing big stuff, or are used to a big Powermatic, you probably would need a bigger one than we got, but for what we are doing (roughing out guitar necks, and a lot of rub collar jig work) it is a really great machine.

I build electric guitars with 5/8" thick figured maple tops, so the Grizzly machine I want is the 20 inch jointer. A huge machine, but one which could actually joint the gluing surface of my tops (which never, ever stay flat once they are glued up). I also would love to get the Wood Mill, but I am not entirely sure what I would use it for. I am sure I would find something. What can I say, I am a tool junky, and I never saw a tool I didn't want to own. And I already have all the cheap ones, so now all I can do is lust for the really expensive ones.

Building your own CNC seems like a cool project to me. We have a luthier friend who, back in the early eighties, was so frustrated by using other peoples Timesavers (oscillating wide belt thickness sander), that he built his own. He had never done any machine work before in his life, so he took a machine class, and his project was his own timesaver. The damn thing is at least as accurate as a real Timesaver, and considerably more accurate than most of the copies I have seen. His machine will give a consistent thickness on a 0.090" piece of wood, three feet long and two feet wide, and be accurate to within 0.001" on the whole board. And he built it himself. Damned impressive, if you ask me. He bought his Fadal, though.

O.K., enough high jacking of the thread.

And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

HEy track, sorry for carrying on here. I'll be done in a second.

Hey Light, that wood MILL is totally cool! Cheap too, for what you get. But for practicality, I think a small CNC makes more sense, even at twice the price. But thats neither here nor there cause I couldn't afford ANY of them at the moment. Ha! Anyway, thanks for the links and info. The abalone thing may just be a brainfart. I have about 30 shells, and thought I'd make use of some of it. Ha! Maybe NOT! I'll probably stick to veneers. I have a ton of em. I'm also interested in a finish product that a guy here turned me on to. He owns a paint store, and turned me on to tinting compounds. In every color imaginable. Not the tinting stuff for regular house paints. These are industrial tints for lacquer, polyureathanes, etc. He gave me a "trade secret" WoW! You can't beleive the color on woods. Double wow! He showed me a piece of maple that I would have bet a thousand bucks it was Jade. Ha! He even told me it was, untill I lifted it. Well, time to let go of this thread. Good luck with the GEETAR biz Light.

fitZ

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

OOPS, just found this Light!! TOO COOL> Mini CNC routing for guitar inlays. Router bits at .03 diameter. JUST WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!!
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145

YEA!! Perfect for routing anything miniture. AND from True Type fonts, no less, with a Windows based CNC controller program. Ok, that does it. Now I am hooked and going to diy a CNC. Just think of the possibilitys.

fitZ

 

[Light]

Hey Light, that wood MILL is totally cool! Cheap too, for what you get. But for practicality, I think a small CNC makes more sense, even at twice the price.

Yeah, but then I would have to program every thing, and I spend so much time with the computer and CAD in my stagehand/lighting design life, that I kind of like having the shop be a refuge from the digital realm. Don't get me wrong, I draw every thing in CAD, and I would love to remake all my jigs on my friend's Fadal (which was WAY more than double the cost of the Wood Mill, I think he got it used for $70,000), but I want to avoid it on the guitars themselves. I just like building without it. Silly, I know.

Oh yeah, by the way, THIS GUY is my favorite inlay artist (and he is also a great song writer). Larry Robinson does work for others (including the 1,000,000th Martin, which he worked on for 18 months), so he is who we use, but if Grit Laskin would do job work, I would use him every time I had a customer who would pay for it. THIS is my favorite inlay I have ever seen. Those are all individual pieces of pearl, there is no ingraving in that piece.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Track Rat]

Actually, I'm loving the high jacking. Light, hows this for factory work?

 

[RICK FITZPATRICK]

Light, I don't blame you. Kinda like me a recording. After drawing in CAD all day, staring at a computer screen to record is not my cup of tea. Thats why I pretty much stick to analog. Say, what program do you use for lighting? For planning layouts or what? Or actual midi programs for sequencing? I run Autocad 2002 myself. I draw all day, everyday, except when one of the shop guys gets sick, then I do woodworking. Hey, actually I think hand inlay is analog. THATS my cup of tea. My thinking was off a bit earlier. Track, that design is beautiful. Nice geetar.
My budget falls in a different range. Dots only Well have a great day, time for work... Later guys.

fitZ

 

[Light]

Say, what program do you use for lighting?

Vectorworks if I am just using it to design a plot, or WYSIWIG if I want to do a lot of preprograming.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi