The Luthier Community

I'm sure you'll be able to find plenty of people who want to see your "blind walleye." Are you going to route heat into the area and make a cozy speakeasy, or leave it at 57°F and make it a place to "chill out?" (Of course 57 degrees sounds pretty damn warm today, being 4°F here right now.) Is there going to be a single access point to the speakeasy area (a ladder in Christy's summertime above-ground daylight workshop?) What if someone gets too pickled to climb the ladder to get out? hahahahahaha

A little bit more 8/4 lumber (some curly Cherry) may show up there - if it gets in the way, stoke the fire with it. I have been trying to get over and see you guys, but just as Basia's indoor soccer season ends, the high school dance team gets underway - my next 2 Saturdays will be somewhere near the Twin Cities, all day affairs to watch a 2-1/2 minute dance routine. But you know what, I wouldn't miss those 2-1/2 minutes for anything.

Ron is finally a member here ("geezer"), and man-oh-man is he ever excited about the joint venture the two of you are planning.

Keep warm, my friend! Squeeze to Christy (and Bonnie too!)

Dennis

whitespruce wrote:

Dennis Leahy wrote:What you been up to, lazy bones? Watching Oprah on your 84" flat screen TV?

Well, I finished the repair, and started cleaning the shop. But we also (Christy, Bonnie, and I) cleaned out the cave and are doing plans and starting work on our speakeasy. Made molds from some old used bricks and started casting brick veneer for some of the walls. And the beer kegs ran dry in the kegerator, but I have 3 new batches to keg up next week, so all will be fine.

And trying to stay warm. Wood for the fire place is stacked inside the back porch. The pace is not fast, but we are staying busy

G

Well, thought I better issue a warning......I am about to activate this thread again. So, I have one workbench cleaned off and a start on the second. Yesterday I had my Son get out the lab oven and we checked it out, so I can heat treat the beryllium copper frets. It is going to be warm at the end of the week, so I will be bending sides Friday or Saturday (I heat the cocobolo sides in hot water outside before I bend them).

My plan for the moment is to build one box on which either the beryllium copper fretted neck or the phosphor bronze fretted neck will fit. I may well build a normally fretted neck, also.

Will feel god to be back into building again.

G

Good to hear Grant, looking forward to seeing this play out.

Damn glad to hear Grant, that has to feel good getting back in the shop.

I will be toasting my Minnesota friends as I close the shop this evening with a nice Imperial Russian Stout, "to an early spring"!

Tim

As I warned.

Spent some time in the shop today working on the second neck, the one to get the beryllium copper frets. I had previously cut the frets to length and radiused the top (to the 16" radius, not the crown) as shown in one of the posts above. The stock metal was anneal temper, so now I needed to harden the frets by heat treating. Three hours at 600 degrees F would get them hard as cast iron. My lab oven tops out at 518 degrees, and I figured that would get them hard enough. So I loaded them in...

...and turned it up to max


I only had a cheap dial thermometer and at the top of the oven away from the heating element it only registered 425 degrees. I knew that the temp would be higher close to the heating elements where the frets were. But I left it going for 4 hours, just in case. Here is after heating

A bit discolored, but it comes off with a scotchbrite pad. Tried a scratch and a file nick on a heated test piece and an unheated one....there is a definite difference. Then I grabbed an end with a pliers and tried to bend the end. As you can see...

...the unheated piece bent easily, by hand. But there was no way I could get the heat treated piece to budge. I have no idea the actual hardness, but I suspect it is at least equal to stainless steel frets, so that's gonna work.

While the frets were heating, I went to work on the neck. Needed to install the truss rod and glue on the fingerboard.

First I drew the outline of the peghead so I had something to line up to


Then I put in the truss rod

I used some 2-part silicone mold making putty (probably similar to what RusRob mentioned) in a few spots between the two parts of the rod

Then I glued on a mahogany spline and leveled it down


Then I put in a couple of brass locating pins after I got the fret board positioned...


...and glued it on


So that is this afternoon's accomplishment. Sure feels good to be back working in the shop

Stay tuned for more,

G

January 23, 2015: Grant airlifted to Duluth for open-heart surgery.

February 23, 2015: Grant is back working in his shop.

(Is that incredible, or what!)

Very interesting that the heat treatment got the bar frets so damn hard. What a great project!

Well, not many comments on this thread. Either I haven't shown anything interesting or folks just think I must be nuts going through all these gyrations .....Yah, just get some fret wire and pound it in. Well maybe I can stir the pot a bit.

So, why is it that we do what we do? After all, it is getting to the point that if you sit down and play 2-3 dozen Chinese imports, you will probably find at least 1 that sounds pretty decent....and you probably won't need to spend much over 500 bucks. Hell, you can easily spend that much on parts and materials. So......

Beyond the fact that most of likely enjoy doing this, what is it we are after? An obvious thing that comes to mind is that we want to get the best sound, or at least a better sound. And we probably have quite a variety of what that is. And we try lots of things in the quest. Different wood, bracing, left brain testing, right brain intuition. etc., etc.. We have discussions, share ideas, take advice, disregard advice and march to our own drum, whatever. For the most part, we do seem to end up doing something that doesn't stray too far afield....X braces, 2 bouts and a sound hole, and so forth. Even within that relatively narrow formula, we manage to end up with quite a variety. But every now and then, one of us strays off into the bushes. Dennis built Angelina, John explored the falcate braces, we see carbon fiber here and then a few other odd things there. I have to admit that I have all my life kinda walked crosswise to the beaten path, so when somebody asked me about a dozen or so years ago if I could maybe come up with some different kind of bracing pattern, I jumped right on it. And with some minor modifications, I still use it. it sounds good to me and I like the idea of doing my own thing. Does it sound better than what most are doing? Probably not, but I think it does give a distinctive sound that I like. Is a bit more complicated and takes more time, but I like that aspect, too.

So what gives with these crazy frets?? When I built my "Organic Soundport" guitar a couple of years ago, I ended up making hand made copper bar frets, not for the sound, but for a unique look. But after a few really good players noodled around with it, I was hearing all sorts of good comments on the sound and the suggestion that maybe it had something to do with the frets. So my constantly curious mind has brought me to where I am now. And I want to explore this a bit further. Where it will lead, I know not, but I am optimistic. Obviously, this is taking a lot more time, but most of that is a learning curve. But any building of a guitar by hand, from scratch is a lot of time, so I don't look on that as a big issue. I anticipate that once I get things worked out, it will maybe add a couple of days to the building process. If I can really get an improvement (in my own opinion) to the sound with a couple of days work, bring it on, because that is only a fraction of the total effort that goes into the building process. Gets back to the original question...."Why do we do what we do?"

So that is my explanation of my crazy obsession FWIW. If it goes somewhere, great. If not, you can bet I will be exploring another obscure road, soon.

Just trying to explain my thoughts. Comments and questions are welcome

G

No Grant, you're the "good kind of nuts and crazy"!

Believe me I know, I've been dealing with the "bad kind of crazy" lately and it ain't pretty. Long story I won't go into here.

Let's hear it for the "obscure road"!

One thing that surprised me the tempering of the beryllium copper. In working steel if you heat it up to red hot and just let it cool down naturally, it anneals the metal. To temper it you have to heat it up and then quench it at the right temp to achieve varying degrees of hardness. So I would have thought that heating it up like that and just letting it cool down would have softened it. Your bending test shows I'm wrong about that.

Happens most every time I start thinking these days.

Anyway, yes I am following along to see what you learn working your way down this obscure path.