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Building Your Own Custom Truss Rods
- Thread starter Bruce Johnson
- Start date
Great work and process. Thanks for sharing.
I do my building in my house and wanting not to deal with the clean up. I use a Accu-lube gel paste - a vegetable-based gel lubricant. You brush on very little amount and remove any excess which I will apply to the holes in the soft metals to make sure I have enough lubricant. I have been very happy with the results with no mess or smell. Wipes clean with a paper towel.
Accu-Lube
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Lurbi-Cut - is a wax and vegetable oil blend.
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Thanks for suggesting that, I'll take a look.
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You can make a set of pads to go in the vise you have that have channels. Quick and dirty vertical (not-a-V) is as easy as a set of sacrificial jaws (ones you don't mind modifying) and drill a slightly smaller hole than the stock you want to hold, after carefully centering the closed jaws on the drill bit point. Be sure to think enough to avoid the screws holding them to the vise.
Yes, I put wax on the socket head, the brass barrel, and the exposed length of the rod. But not on the square aluminum Sleeve, the aluminum Cross Bar, or the Anchor.
Grease inside the threads of the Barrel and in the mating surfaces of head assembly (done before assembling and pinning).
Grease inside the threads of the Barrel and in the mating surfaces of head assembly (done before assembling and pinning).
I am wondering if any brave luthiers have experimented with using a Dyneema/Cuben cord to act like a single rod-single action relief adjuster?
This stuff is extremely light, and super strong. Hi-tech sailboats and ultralight camping gear are typical applications, and there are a couple companies using Dyneema strands to replace the SS spokes on mountain and road bikes. it would be unbelieveably light for sure!
It’s an interesting idea that would have the advantages of strength and light weight.
You’d have to figure out how to keep the adjustment end from rotating (probably not too difficult).
The distinct disadvantages I see are:
-Strictly single action (you can’t push on a rope).
-If slack or close to slack it could rattle unless it’s damped somehow.
Hello dimarquez;
Back around page 6 of this thread, we had some discussion about using things other than metal rods to make adjustable truss rods:
I'm not familiar with Dyneema/Cuben cord, but I assume that it's a refinement of Spectra and Kevlar. A very high strength/low stretch flexible fiber cord.
Yes, it's probably possible to make an adjustable SA truss rod using it as the main tension length. The tricky part would figuring how to attach it to the adjusting mechanism and the anchor. Probably pre-cast it into a strip of epoxy, which could then be set into a slot in the neck.
But would it really save much weight over a SASR rod made from 7075 aluminum? Probably not enough to be worth the trouble.
It would be a fun R & D experiment. Go for it, if you like!
thanks for the encouragement Bruce! As for me going for it, I am 76 now, retired and living in Medellin Colombia. All of the great tools I had back in my field service engineer days are gone, and I was never really any good with wood, much better with metals and electronics. but I do enjoy reading your threads and posts and I truly appreciate the spirit in which you so generously share your expertise, experience, and wisdom.Hello dimarquez;
Back around page 6 of this thread, we had some discussion about using things other than metal rods to make adjustable truss rods:
I'm not familiar with Dyneema/Cuben cord, but I assume that it's a refinement of Spectra and Kevlar. A very high strength/low stretch flexible fiber cord.
Yes, it's probably possible to make an adjustable SA truss rod using it as the main tension length. The tricky part would figuring how to attach it to the adjusting mechanism and the anchor. Probably pre-cast it into a strip of epoxy, which could then be set into a slot in the neck.
But would it really save much weight over a SASR rod made from 7075 aluminum? Probably not enough to be worth the trouble.
It would be a fun R & D experiment. Go for it, if you like!
The Dyneema thing is an idea that just occurred to me while reading this thread. I don’t think Dyneema comes from the Kevlar/Spectra family.
its pretty amazing stuff and it seems to resist solar degradation better than the Kevlar/Spectra stuff according my sailing friends.
Anyway…thanks for sharing your wisdom! always enlightening to read your posts!
It's been two years since I started this thread. I've said from the beginning that I wasn't really interested in building these truss rods for other Luthiers, at least not as one-off custom orders. I didn't really have the time, and I figured my price would be too high for most of you.
I openly encouraged anyone else to take this up as a side business, but I don't think anyone has. And only a few of you have been brave enough to make your own.
I'm re-thinking this. These days, it would be easy for me to have the blocks and bars made up by a mail-order company like SendCutSend, a hundred at a time, for $1 each or less. That would take away a lot of my labor. I would only need to cut the rods to length, thread them, and pin the parts together. And I've got good machines for that.
I may be able to offer one-off custom length truss rods for around $40-$50, plus postage.
Would any of you be interested in them for your projects? Is that a workable price?
I openly encouraged anyone else to take this up as a side business, but I don't think anyone has. And only a few of you have been brave enough to make your own.
I'm re-thinking this. These days, it would be easy for me to have the blocks and bars made up by a mail-order company like SendCutSend, a hundred at a time, for $1 each or less. That would take away a lot of my labor. I would only need to cut the rods to length, thread them, and pin the parts together. And I've got good machines for that.
I may be able to offer one-off custom length truss rods for around $40-$50, plus postage.
Would any of you be interested in them for your projects? Is that a workable price?
I would consider that a fair price for a custom truss rod, however, I DO intend to make my own, using a variation of your recipe. I haven't posted about it, but I have started working on jigs and processes.
On the other hand, some places online sell a 5-pack of truss rods for less.
Probably not the cost advantage it sounds like. I recall someone in LC saying that they buy these with the expectation that some or most in a set will be bad, and test them all before using any.
Yeah, I get that! Not commenting on the quality of the more affordable truss rods, just the cost.
On further consideration, I guess the person who needs a custom one-off probably isn't going to buy in bulk, off-the-rack truss rods, anyway.
Yeah, that's it. My offer is about custom length truss rods, which I'm assuming that you guys would order one at a time. I expect that most small shop and hobby builders would just buy standard Bitterroots or whatever if they fit and work okay. I understand that they may not think that my truss rods are worth the extra money, in standard sizes.
I currently make up custom truss rods in small quantities for several other Luthiers. These are all the DASR Embedded style, like I use in my own basses. They order them in batches of 5 or 10 at a time. And sometimes they have me do the routing and installation of the truss rod into their neck blanks.
My question here was more about the DADR style rods that I showed at the beginning of this thread. How many of you would be interested in one-off custom-size DADR rods? Whether for new instruments, or replacements like the Pedulla and Roscoe that I showed. I'm just trying to get a feel for whether it's worth it for me to order batches of the parts in advance, to get the price down lower. How many orders per year am I likely to get? If it's only a couple, then it's not worth my investment or time.
There have been times when I've ordered truss rods in the past. My building has gone way down these days so I don't know how often I'd put in an order but I can imagine that I'd order a couple of truss rods every year or two.
Bruce’s truss rod design is different from DADR rods you can buy everywhere at low cost. I see this like why buy a Ferrari when you can buy Toyota. Both will take you from place A to place B, the experience is just quite different. In my own builds I like to use the best truss rod design I know, that’s why I make them like Bruce. To my ears they do make an audible difference. That difference is worth the extra work (or costs) for me.
Thanks, Marko! Yes, I'm coming to the conclusion that the builders who really dig into the engineering side of electric basses, are also capable of making their own custom truss rods. If they want them. It really isn't that hard. I wrote this thread as a guide, to help them along and save them some experimenting.
The builders who are content with the commonly-available DADR rods aren't really looking for custom length versions. I don't think there's enough market to justify me getting involved.
