What's On Your Workbench?

[Flamingo21]

As of today, I own a band saw.

It arrived in early evening, so after assembly I just briefly fired it up to verify that it works, but I wasn't going to upset my neighbours by testing it.

And with day shifts coming up, it'll be a few days before I'll actually be cutting anything with it.

But hey, no more cutting out entire slab bodies with a jigsaw!

 

[Slidlow]

As of today, I own a band saw.
View attachment 4910895
It arrived in early evening, so after assembly I just briefly fired it up to verify that it works, but I wasn't going to upset my neighbours by testing it.
And with day shifts coming up, it'll be a few days before I'll actually be cutting anything with it.
But hey, no more cutting out entire slab bodies with a jigsaw!

 

[RichterScale]

That's awesome. Band saws are a game changer.

 

[JIO]

As of today, I own a band saw.

View attachment 4910895

It arrived in early evening, so after assembly I just briefly fired it up to verify that it works, but I wasn't going to upset my neighbours by testing it.

And with day shifts coming up, it'll be a few days before I'll actually be cutting anything with it.

But hey, no more cutting out entire slab bodies with a jigsaw!

A band-saw and a drill-press are two imperative shop machines.

 

[TerribleTim68]

As of today, I own a band saw.

View attachment 4910895

It arrived in early evening, so after assembly I just briefly fired it up to verify that it works, but I wasn't going to upset my neighbours by testing it.

And with day shifts coming up, it'll be a few days before I'll actually be cutting anything with it.

But hey, no more cutting out entire slab bodies with a jigsaw!

It even says "BAS" on it, it's meant to be!

 

[TerribleTim68]

Well, the StewMac order arrived!
Luckily, it was still on my porch when I got home too! I call that a win!

I know, you're asking the question....

Here you go!

So we've got the fret slotting guide, a Japanese pull saw, a bass slotting template and a Fender scale slotting template along with the StewMac mat and neck rest -

However.... here's the sad part. My fret slotting guide was damaged in shipping -

Yup, I'm fully aware that I could fix this myself and move on with life. But, I reached out to StewMac about it and I'll see what they come back with first.
The part that really bothers me is, I was literally just defending them earlier today and this is the very first time I've ever ordered from StewMac. So we're gonna see how this plays out before I cast judgement.

 

[Flamingo21]

A band-saw and a drill-press are two imperative shop machines.

A drill press may follow. I even considered ordering both at once, but that felt like getting ahead of myself.

 

[TerribleTim68]

The response from StewMac this morning was that they would like to send out a replacement part for the grey piece that the roller guides mount to. I am totally fine with that and see no reason to replace the entire unit. Just ship me the part and I'll perform the swap myself. So now I wait for the replacement part. Oh well, it's Christmas anyways.

For those of you wondering what life is like in the PNW this time of year, my morning started off with this -

I'd say it was a solid 1/8" of ice encasing my entire truck, every square inch.
I know to some of you in Buffalo or whatever it doesn't mean much, but consider this, you get a dryer freeze that you can actually scrape off. Imagine ice as hard as concrete. Took a fairly solid 30 minutes to get the windows cleared enough I could see...somewhat. Good times.
Also, literally everything is encased. Not just my truck, but the house, the driveway, the porch, the roads, the trees, everything. I slipped stepping off the porch and landed on my J-Lo Muscle, my morning tea went flying. Luckily I have a 4 wheel drive or I'd have never made it to work. Just getting going was just spinning the tires and going nowhere. You can see in the pic the condition of the roads. Today is a fun day! I'm over it already.

 

[RichterScale]

I know to some of you in Buffalo or whatever it doesn't mean much, but consider this, you get a dryer freeze that you can actually scrape off.

Nope. That's a regular winter occurrence here. Sometimes it's bad enough to pull tree branches and power lines down.
Also, down wind of the largest fresh water bodies on the planet. It's almost never dry here. And I'm not bragging. I hate it.

 

[ctmullins]

Things are serious all over the continent. Here along the 30th parallel, the water in our birdbath was frozen solid this morning!

 

[TerribleTim68]

In other news, less than 10 minutes after responding to StewMac's email they have already shipped out the replacement part and I already got the order shipment confirmation email. So I will say this about StewMac, so far, customer service is like no other. This is my very first StewMac order, and so far I'm pretty happy with how they are handling things.

 

[Zooberwerx]

Continued from #5416:

"There's always something" or "Maybe I should leave well enough alone".

*Once re-assembled, the new Gotoh bridge saddle was still ~1/32 too high at its lowest adjustment. Pulled the neck and added an addt'l 1/64" maple veneer shim (partial) in the pocket. Now able to wrestle the G down to 1/16".

*Hardware limitation: the column-esque bridge became stock on later APB5's. What I didn't realize was the individual saddle tracks were offset / compensated which limits their forward movement much like the staggered monorails on Ibanez Soundgears. Each Gotoh saddle has small nylon and brass washers screwed on the underside which which "rides the track" and acts as a stop-pin.

*Yeah, I broke it: I have one lic'd Hipshot Ultralite that has never tensioned correctly. Had to slot the cap screw for removal. The gear shaft "keyway" and matching washer were over-compressed hence the loss of adjustability. I dis-assembled and filed-down the trouble spots. No spare gold cap screws so I used a chrome one from a long-ago project.
Works like a charm but the mismatched screw will fuel my OCD for weeks.

*The sandwich skewers at Denny's are 1/8" with a taper starting at 1/16"...excellent for plugging holes and such. Ask for a handful from the kitchen and tip accordingly.

Now, the finished product. I was even able to reproduce the alignment tolerance after adding the shim:

 

[StereoPlayer]

 

[RichterScale]

Things are serious all over the continent. Here along the 30th parallel, the water in our birdbath was frozen solid this morning!

wow, what a crap vaca for the birds.
the least you could do is put a heater in it.
you don't want bad reviews.

 

[Lo-E]

wow, what a crap vaca for the birds.
the least you could do is put a heater in it.
you don't want bad reviews.

And birds are quick to gripe about things on the internet. They don’t call it Twitter for nothing.

 

[Zooberwerx]

Also, down wind of the largest fresh water bodies on the planet. It's almost never dry here. And I'm not bragging. I hate it.

So do I...that's why I'm down here (headquarters was in Tonawanda).

The kids here don't get sleds for Christmas. Not to worry: when we do actually get snow, the youngsters (...and adults) show-up en masse with all manner of improvised devices including plastic trash can lids, cafeteria trays, cardboard carton remnants, etc.

Riis

 

[Deleted member 365158]

The response from StewMac this morning was that they would like to send out a replacement part for the grey piece that the roller guides mount to. I am totally fine with that and see no reason to replace the entire unit. Just ship me the part and I'll perform the swap myself. So now I wait for the replacement part. Oh well, it's Christmas anyways.

For those of you wondering what life is like in the PNW this time of year, my morning started off with this -
View attachment 4911526
I'd say it was a solid 1/8" of ice encasing my entire truck, every square inch.
I know to some of you in Buffalo or whatever it doesn't mean much, but consider this, you get a dryer freeze that you can actually scrape off. Imagine ice as hard as concrete. Took a fairly solid 30 minutes to get the windows cleared enough I could see...somewhat. Good times.
Also, literally everything is encased. Not just my truck, but the house, the driveway, the porch, the roads, the trees, everything. I slipped stepping off the porch and landed on my J-Lo Muscle, my morning tea went flying. Luckily I have a 4 wheel drive or I'd have never made it to work. Just getting going was just spinning the tires and going nowhere. You can see in the pic the condition of the roads. Today is a fun day! I'm over it already.

Same here but the ice covered the snow and packed snow on the roads…. Pretty darn slippery out there. Also all the islands lost power last night from 4:30pm to 3am. It was a bit of back and forth between properties to keep wood stoves burning and a generator going to power heat tape on the barn pipes…. Good times!!

 

[TerribleTim68]

Same here but the ice covered the snow and packed snow on the roads…. Pretty darn slippery out there. Also all the islands lost power last night from 4:30pm to 3am. It was a bit of back and forth between properties to keep wood stoves burning and a generator going to power heat tape on the barn pipes…. Good times!!

Yeah I had a feeling you guys were hit good. I'm just kinda waiting on trees to start snapping, we're at that point.

 

[lbridenstine]

For those of you wondering what life is like in the PNW this time of year, my morning started off with this -
View attachment 4911526
I'd say it was a solid 1/8" of ice encasing my entire truck, every square inch.
I know to some of you in Buffalo or whatever it doesn't mean much, but consider this, you get a dryer freeze that you can actually scrape off. Imagine ice as hard as concrete. Took a fairly solid 30 minutes to get the windows cleared enough I could see...somewhat. Good times.
Also, literally everything is encased. Not just my truck, but the house, the driveway, the porch, the roads, the trees, everything. I slipped stepping off the porch and landed on my J-Lo Muscle, my morning tea went flying. Luckily I have a 4 wheel drive or I'd have never made it to work. Just getting going was just spinning the tires and going nowhere. You can see in the pic the condition of the roads. Today is a fun day! I'm over it already.

Nope. That's a regular winter occurrence here. Sometimes it's bad enough to pull tree branches and power lines down.
Also, down wind of the largest fresh water bodies on the planet. It's almost never dry here. And I'm not bragging. I hate it.

I live in Michigan in the Lake Effect area and honestly, it seems like NY has been getting it worse than us the past couple years (I say as I'm currently in a Blizzard Warning).

But, either way, I would rather have the snow we're getting than the ice sheets!

I don't know if this will work for the type of ice you have, but I saw a video recently of someone using a leaf blower to blow sheets of ice off the road. I can't find the exact video, but here's another one. Might be fun to try.

 

[Gary_M]

I live in Michigan in the Lake Effect area and honestly, it seems like NY has been getting it worse than us the past couple years (I say as I'm currently in a Blizzard Warning).

But, either way, I would rather have the snow we're getting than the ice sheets!

I don't know if this will work for the type of ice you have, but I saw a video recently of someone using a leaf blower to blow sheets of ice off the road. I can't find the exact video, but here's another one. Might be fun to try.

Yep, I'm in the Lake Michigan lake effect snow region as well and I agree. We've gotten off easy compared to Western NY.

The current storm has only dropped a few inches of system snow here so far. But, it was -10 F (actual air temp, not wind chill) this morning when I got up with 40+mph wind. That's enough winter to last me the rest of the season, I'm ready to move directly into spring!