190310

Friday 19th March 2010

We left off last week having strung up the Green 45rpm..

The nut slots are brought down to an acceptable height..

Finally a workable design, I think, for the actual bridge for steiner’s headless erb..

another start in the spray booth..

my planes all need a little sharpening, even contact with air takes the edge away over time..

Using razor sharp tools really really makes a difference!!

Igor, after some menial hard labour to start the week, starts real work with Gary’s paf, the fretboard is cleaned up..

The neck pocket area in the bookmatched solid rosewood top is carved away to make marking out easier..

The neck pocket is marked out, carefully…

After bandsawing out the excess the neck pocket is carefully rasped and chiseled to a perfect fit..

And here she is, fitting nicely, a rosewood top is a really lovely idea, I can’t wait to see her finished..

The wiring channel that goes from switch to main cavity via the pickups is shielded off..

Finally the rosewood top is glued to the purpleheart body and left to cure.. Mm, lunchtime methinks..

After ten years thinking about it we finally have the best way to store G clamps! Yay is all I can say!

The aluminium blank for Steiner’s new extended range bass bridge is bandsawed out..

The saddle holes are drilled out on the mini pillar drill..

Gary’s paf with tuners and some hardware installed.. I’m aiming at a day of wiring sometime this week..

The bulk of the waste material is then milled away.. Normally Igor’s job but I want to keep my hand in!

The basics are here, a fairly standard bridge, tomorrow we’ll turn it into something special! G’nite..

The saddles are checked for fit.. Nearly there..

and the screw heads recessed, the clever bit is how the strings get to the saddles.. and it’s not through the body!

Jasper has a new toy to obsess over.. Like me and a new guitar..

The final shape of the headless bridge is achieved with a disk sander..

And after milling the slots for the piezo wires a new eight string bridge is ready for tidying up and anodising.. Yay!

While I mark out the designs for our new single string bridges we see how Igors lefty trem is turning out.. Nice..

having a blast creating a solid steel tremolo block.. Much hard drilling!¡

I’m still on the single string bridges, here we thread a bit for a grub screw.. Or seven..

an almost complete steel trem block and the saddles well on the way.. G’nite..

Each saddle is cut from the mother block (is that too geeky??)

And here is the final idea, for the saddle at least, solid but entirely adjustable as well.. Not to mention custom cool!

I need a woodwork fix.. Excess glue is scraped away from the new top on one of the twins..

The excess top wood, bookmatched rosewood in this case, is bandsawed away..

And the twins really start to look like guitars I would want!

Pulled a late one sorting through the drill bits, with all this engineering we need all the sizes clearly marked..

Now, after some re-organising of storage, we have two big drawers full of size ordered drill bits! Yay!

Igor has some fun rubbing down a few guitars mid lacquer…

I now have a small play with the green 45rpm’s setup..

Igor starts the long, boring, job of rubbing down all the custom guitar hardware we’ve been building recently..

She’s already fully loaded with a couple of switches and a set of matched cts pots..

We test the guitar using various different caps to find the best tone..

Turns out Russian military, 1986 stock, is best for this beastie..

The plan was to use a big toggle as the kill switch but it’s just too clunky..

And here it is, a case of neccessity breeding invention.. A very pretty new option for our custom guitars..

The strap button pads are cut from a strip of real leather..

The strap buttons and jackplate are installed…

I’m in love, this baby sounds stunning!

The LR Baggs piezo bridge is installed on Gary’s paf..

And her strings are installed.. She too is ready for wiring now… Not that I’m looking forward to her variax bits!

The best thing about our job is every guitar has to have a long, intensive, shake down play.. :)

This has been percolating in my head for weeks, a second coffee this morning helped finalise the idea..

igor has been happily sanding some hardware to a point where it can be polished.. Slow job but worth it!

Work commences on the new tunematic type bridge..

I change the bandsaw blade to the big one and it’s high time for some woodwork..

And a section of the padouk is cut away for the green 45rpms backplates…

The igor is making progress on the tunematic type bridge..

While I make the padouk dust fly.. I do like padouk.. Very pretty stuff..

The igor is having a longish weekend and here’s where he leaves the lefty trem and tunematic types..

This is a poorly designed tool.. To put on a new sanding disk you have to take the whole assembly apart..

The padouk plates are shaped on the sander.. For the most part..

The two recessed plates are … Recessed…

The trem plate is tidied up with my record block plane..

This cool little clamp is used to hold the control plate to the bench while I carve it..

Finally the plates are all carved and fitted.. We have to wait till Monday to fit them now.. Have a great weekend!

All my best, Ben

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