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Need a good sanding block? You throw one away every time you discard the drop from a body blank. The sections filling the
waist area are nearly perfectly shaped for the hand. A little rounding off for comfort and it will make a great, narrow sanding
block. My flame maple one is the most expensive looking tool in the shop!
The guys at Audere Audio Engineering have a great solution to getting a pot shaft to fit a hole that's much larger. They suggest
rolling a couple of neoprene O-rings onto the threaded shaft to take up the extra room. Brilliant!
If it bugs you that the silks on the ends of your strings are getting wild and frayed, just rub a fingerprint full of petroleum
jelly over the silk to trap all of the fuzz together.
Want to make marks on your light colored, raw wood that you don't have to sand off? Try one of the embroidery pattern pens
available at fabric stores. They come in a light blue ink that when wetted with water, disappears like magic ink!
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| TRUSSROD REPAIR |
Toothpicks are one of my essential tools. I rarely jam them into strap button holes these days, preferring to do a real repair,
but for mixing and applying glues and small amounts of finish, they can't be beat. I've even use them as sidemarker dots.
The quality of round toothpicks can be spotty at best. What's good enough to pick your teeth isn't a high enough "instrument
grade" to do anything with. But I've finally found the best, high quality toothpicks. Buy the ones with the turned decoration
on the end. These will be stiff, solid, white, and without the imperfections of structure and color the cheap ones possess.
The fancy ones are sometimes hard to find but they're out there - keep looking. I imagine they are better because they are
made from better wood so that the decoration can be turned without splintering.
If you use spray can finishes, one of the best things you can do
to raise the quality of the end product is to warm your cans before spraying. I do this by running hot water in a sink and
letting my can sit there for several minutes. This is a safe way of doing this because hot tap water is never above 110º and
as it warms the can, it's constantly decreasing in temp. Warming the contents allows it to flow out easier for smoother finishes.
It also gently increases the internal pressure of the can and that makes for a finer atomized mist which, again, goes on smoother.
My only warning is that using any other method of heating is very dangerous and should be avoided.
A useful tool that I think every builder should have in his shop is a long stiff aluminum bar. Mine is 2" x 48"
x 1/4" thick. You can use it as a straightedge, router guide, or a line-up tool, among other things.
This is what I use to bend frets. The design is based on a "wiping shoe" tubing bender I used when building racecars.
It's a 7-1/2" disk made from 1/2" expanded PVC board with some simple hardware. The disk has a slot cut around it's
perimeter and a hole drilled in the edge. I put a right angle bend in the end of the fretwire and insert it in the hole with
the tang resting in the groove. Then I bring the shoe around and begin forming it into the groove. As I push the shoe around,
the fretwire just bends in place all the way to the end. It's not adjustable, just handy.
To ease the insertion of tight wood screws or neck inserts, try putting some soap or beeswax on their threads before screwing
them in. The waxy substance will act as a lubricant
To make a good recessed jack plate for the edge of a body, try a 1/2" or 3/4" copper pipe plug. That's what I use
almost exclusively. It's easy to install, easy to ground, and it polishes up very nicely.
A very useful sanding tool can be made by cutting a 1/4" x 1" x 18" strip of ash or hickory and curving it
like a bow using a 1" wide strip of 80 grit sanding cloth. Staple the ends of the cloth over the ends of the ash strip
while arching it into a bow.
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| SANDING BOW |
If you can't do without your steel wool as a cleanup tool, you know the problem with the residue sticking to pickups. Use
tape to remove steel wool droppings from anything magnetic. You can get all of it with just a few stabs around the object.
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All router bits aren't created the same. When you want a great finish on your router cuts, I recommend using spiral bits instead
of straight cut bits. Spiral bits make smoother and quieter cuts than any other type of bit because they "shear"
rather than "chop". Using a spiral up bit helps clear the chips from the cut, making it easier to see what you're
doing. A spiral down bit is used when you don't want to fray the fibers on the top of the wood - like when doing inlay. There's
even a spiral up AND down bit that has characteristics of both. And don't mess with the high speed steel bits. Stick with
carbide tipped and solid carbide bits. They'll stay sharper longer.
If you've tried to put a 2 sheet veneer layer between the top and back of a body, and had problems with the sheets sliding
alongside each other, try putting them together on the shared edge with a couple of drops of superglue. It won't take a lot
of handling but it will keep the pieces together as you add the top layer and clamp it up. You can also use this technique
to keep the sheet in place on the larger blank by putting spots of glue just outside the cutting border of the body shape.
You can use brown paper bags - the type you get from the grocery store - as a substitute for 1500-2000 grit sandpaper. It
really works well on cured TruOil finishes for getting them super glossy without using polishing compounds.
I admit you might use this idea only once in your building career but it's going to be useful if the need arises. What if
you stripped out a trussrod nut on your ultra rare Hagstrom and they stopped carrying them at Walmart? Tap out the inside
of the rounded nut and twist in a hardened steel setscrew. The screw should bottom out at the end of the threads and let you
tighten up the trussrod
To avoid bunging up your screw heads, it's a good idea to have a complete set of screwdrivers of different sizes for every
screw. Just because a bit fits in the head of the screw, doesn't mean it's fitting correctly. You'll get less slippage so
your bit won't chip plating or leave a burr you'll have to file off.
Need a quick 9v battery connector but the Buick is out of gas and Radio Shack probably wouldn't have them in stock anyway?
Try dismantling a 9v battery for the top. By prying the case apart, you can remove the hard phenolic top with the contacts
from the rest of the battery. Simply solder your polarized leads to the back of the contact for a perfectly usable battery
connection.
To make a perfectly shaped and repeatable dome on turned knobs, split a 2" diameter piece of PVC pipe and line the inside
with 80 grit sandpaper. As the knob is turned, just "saw" the pipe back and forth across the top and it will form
into a perfect dome every time.
Routing woods like walnut or rosewood without tearout can be daunting. One tip to help with this is to always be aware
of the direction your router bit is turning in relation to the grain of the wood. As you view the router from above, the bit
rotates clockwise. Moving the router in a clockwise motion around the workpiece allows the bit to "bite" into the wood
as it removes chips. This is called a "climb" cut and it's easy to remember if you think of the bit as walking it's way through
the cut. The opposite of this motion is called a "machine" cut. That's where the router is moved around the workpiece in a
counter-clockwise manner. Now the bit has the action of lifting and shearing the wood as it moves through the cut. This is
where tearout happens. With a body shape, the edge contours cut across the grain and run with the grain in alternating patterns
around the perimeter. By approaching each of the curves from different directions to make sure a climb cut is always used,
you can avoid lifting out pieces of these woods.
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| FRET BENDER |
Keep a white plastic art eraser around the shop for removing pencil marks from the tops of your good wood. This type of eraser
can be bought at most good arts and craft stores.
My favorite way of applying the first several coats of Tru-Oil is to work it into the wood with 0000 steel wool. As the oil
thickens, stop and wipe off the excess with a good paper towel and let cure before going to the next coat
If you're using a preamp that requires the small 2-prong plugs (like a computer jumper) to connect the pickups, an easy source
is one snipped off of a dead portable phone battery. Solder it into the line and use heat shrink tubing over the joints.
You can run the leads of a neck pickup through the bridge pup cavity by drilling a connecting hole between the cavities. This
is done by using a long bit and boring the hole from the neck pocket through the neck pup cavity and into the bridge cavity.
Run the wire from the front pup into the back cavity and from there to the control cavity. The hole in the back of the neck
pocket won't affect anything.
While a lot of guys like the smaller soldering irons, I've never had a problem with a larger gun like the Weller 100/140 watt
to do even the smallest of tasks in a guitar. I've never liked how long it takes for the smaller irons took to melt solder
and that extra time could mean a damaged component. With a large wattage gun, you are on and off in less than a second usually
and that's it. There's definitely a technique to it but it will pay off when you solder to the back of a pot.
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