Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

At the risk of getting anal about this!... Link below has some useful info. If you want to read through it you'll see that thinning epoxies with a solvent always compromises the performance (that basically means hardness). You can use heat to lower the viscosity without causing probs, but it does me...

Here's what's happening. Zpoxy is a fairly viscous (thick) fluid. As you drag it on with the credit card it's actually trapping air bubbles in the pores. These get 'opened up' when you sand back. I don't like to thin 2 pack resins because you can easily compromise the correct curing (hardening). Inc...

Martin, Squadron ?
-J

I think this bloke may run out of stock pretty quickly!
-Jools

Beautiful Kim

Those Piezos are available at Jaycar stores - couplabucks, -you just need to remove them from their plastic casing. Easy, just grind around the edges.

Mmmm I know, should've cornered the market (to quoin a phrase), THEN let the cat outathebag!
-Jooils

Why not make your own pipe bender. Dead easy. I used an element from a small old electric hot water service, mounted in a short length of S/S pipe scrounged from a truck zorst factory (mine's 4"dia). Just a simple switch mounted in the end, and a tough right angle bracket to mount in the vice. Turn ...

The idea is to insert the (slightly bent) fretwire, ends first into the slot, then tap progessively in from each end towards the fret centre. This means that as the fret flattens the little 'barbs' on the tang shift slightly sideways giving a better grip.
-Jools

Tod, I wouldn't bother with light globe heat. When you start cold, the side/slats are sticking straight out so the heat from the globes can't get to the ends. I found I needed to pipe-bend the bout curves by hand first, which then meant I couldn't load into my bender without disassembling the top ((...

Yes, Martin's good. He can also supply shell custom cut to your pattern.
-Jools

Knew you'd love 'em!
I know the whereabouts of a big box of them, got to work out how to extract them though.
(And don't forget quoins next time you're playing scrabble)
I've got another one with velcro and re-stringing, but you must all know that lurk ?

-Jools

Blackwood may seem an unlikely choice as a top wood, but I recently finished a Blackwood top Jumbo -built more or less as an experiment. Now I've got a customer desperate to buy it. But I don't want to sell it, -sounds too good! It is a comparatively thin top (2.0 - 2.2mm from memory) and I used Bla...

Ahh durn it Peter -missed my stand!
-Jools

I just finished an all Blackwood body Jumbo, with a Blackwood top. (and Maple neck!). I did thin the top more than I would Spruce and did a lot of work on the bracing scalloping. It has a distinctively different tone, very nice, sort of twangy/glassy without being harsh in any way. That difference i...

Joining plates... I use QUOINS (good scrabble word!). -Really useful for many clamping/holding jobs. These things are used by printers, they're small metal blocks about 35mm x 15mm x15mm, and with the use of a square key they expand a few mm in one direction. So you just set up your glued plates aga...

Note that Ashok will not supply small quantities.
He asked me for a minimum order of 3 sets.
-Jools

That'd make a beautiful neck Tod. Huon is so sweet to carve, -perfect for a sculpted headstock and heel. My Huon solidbody neck (also Huon) has a carbon spar in place of trussrod and hasn't moved a thou in about 5 years. And also, having passed a finger over Bob's Huon topped Weissenborn at Port Fai...

Death to ALL ants!!!

This is the final re-constructed message of this topic posted by the ANZLF help team.

Just a bit of a larf! I caught this machine just before it went to the recyclers. Had no idea what it was for at first, -the bed travels right and left, and there's a toolslide behind that travels at right angles to the bed. When it dawned on me that the whole bed pivots around it's centre the light...

Good thoughts Puff, cheers. I had thought of using the lower impression roller as the feed method -(it's got a manual drive, but I'd need to put some thought into precise alignment of the impression roller with the bed rollers), I did a test a while back and it showed promise, though I didn't have t...

I have an etching (printing) press which I'd like to convert to a thickness sander. It's basically like a mangle (old enough to remember those!)- it consists of 2 beautiful steel rollers about 24" wide x about 5" dia -perfect. Questions I have are... what sort of rpm would be in the ballpark?... is ...

Reply by "joolstacho"

Well we may be all too thinly distributed for woodshed groups, but it struck me today as I was sanding 3 necks that it might be possible to get together for a big group-buy of sandpaper! (How much do you use?!)

Well, thanks all for your responses. I've tried the Bunnings flashing, and whilst my first set is usable, it does have a hint of thuppeny bittin' (50c piecin' for the rugrats) The flashing is very soft and malleable, obviously ok with a blanket, but I'm using lights as the heat source and am probabl...

Thanks all for your advice. I got 10m of ally flashing yesterday and will give that a try today.