What's On Your Workbench?

[Lo-E]

in violin-making, we use lycopodium powder with hot hide glue, sometimes inserting it with a sawing needle, in order to make the chip line (or cracks) either more discreet or disappear, not sure you want to try that, maybe

I’m calling this repair finished, ugly or not, but I’m interested to know more about this for next time. I’ve never heard of lycopodium powder before and I don’t know what a sawing needle is. Please elaborate!

As far as hot hide glue goes, I’m not really set up well or experienced with it enough to use it in my shop - a glue pot and some practice would correct that, of course - but even if I was, I chose CA glue for this repair specifically for its properties. I wanted the finished repair to be, essentially, a block of maple-reinforced acrylic. Hide glue is amazing stuff but this particular application required gap-filling and the CA was better suited to that.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Latest salvage job. A Wolf five string. it's been stripped of hardware (I have most of that laying around) and needs a new truss rod and fretboard. The hardware I have is black and I need to decide on fretted or fretless. View attachment 5372599 View attachment 5372600

Definitely worth saving, that's a pretty bass!
No comment on fretless/fretted. That's your call. I'd think resale-ability would be higher on fretted since more people play frets. But again, your call.

 

[JIO]

One project just wrapping up - https://www.talkbass.com/threads/egmond-rambler-typhoon-bass-projects.1633292/page-3 - starting post #49

before:

after:

 

[Gervais Cote]

One project just wrapping up - https://www.talkbass.com/threads/egmond-rambler-typhoon-bass-projects.1633292/page-3 - starting post #49

before:
View attachment 5374656

after:
View attachment 5374660

Goodness, this red color brought it to life ! Excellent choice.

 

[Slidlow]

Definitely worth saving, that's a pretty bass!
No comment on fretless/fretted. That's your call. I'd think resale-ability would be higher on fretted since more people play frets. But again, your call.

Thanks and I appreciate the input. I am leaning heavily towards fretting it as I have enough fretless lying around. Likely I will not have inlays on the front though and just side markers.

 

[JIO]

Goodness, this red color brought it to life ! Excellent choice.

The finish was one of the many things that were done to revive the Typhoon!

 

[Lo-E]

This piece of brass, once I’ve rounded the ends, will sit flush in a routed channel on the front of the bandsaw table I’m building.

And mostly done:

I was going to round the ends with a sharp hand file but the 12” production disc sander at work was a much more attractive choice. I’ll step up to a finer abrasive but it’s essentially the finished piece.

To cut the piece to the correct width I was going to use my little bandsaw, which would have then required a lot of cleanup but I decided instead to try my little Dremel table saw. I wasn’t sure it could cut 1/4” brass stock but it handled the job with aplomb. It gave me a nice, clean, accurate cut in much less time and with hardly any cleanup needed. That little 4” Dremel table saw is absolutely a great tool. No wonder they have a bit of a cult-like following! I’m surprised they were discontinued and even more surprised that nobody has made a similar machine.

EDIT: I stand corrected; it seems there are a few similar saws on the market.

 

[llmk]

My first homemade luminous side dots. It's been quite a struggle but these results are encouraging. The UV resin I'm using right now is quite thick and it's a pain and a half to fill the tiny 3mm/6mm holes without air bubbles. It's a work in progress but I think I'm getting a hang of it.

 

[Deleted member 365158]

My fretless is back on my workbench.
Im going to do a few different things to it(again). I pulled the frets and filled in the old grooves with color tinted epoxy. All that seems fine but I also clear epoxy coated the finger board. That has worn a bit and now Im thinking of coating it with CA instead. If I do this, will I have to take it down to wood again to get the best bond and finish or just sand it smooth. Im just not sure how durable it will be if of the clear epoxy is still on there.

 

[StereoPlayer]

My LED strip is loose(already) on my babinga neck. Just in a couple of spots. I cleaned the surface before applying. I suspect it’s the lightly oiled finish on the neck.
My mind says to use contact cement, I don’t have any. I don’t really want to buy a quart of it, but would if I have to.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Beej]

My LED strip is loose(already) on my babinga neck. Just in a couple of spots. I cleaned the surface before applying. I suspect it’s the lightly oiled finish on the neck.
My mind says to use contact cement, I don’t have any. I don’t really want to buy a quart of it, but would if I have to.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
View attachment 5376583

A few pieces of strong double sided tape may be your friend here.

 

[StereoPlayer]

A few pieces of strong double sided tape may be your friend here.

I don’t think I could get it in the space. Unless I remove it entirely. Not sure I want to do that.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

View attachment 5375633
My first homemade luminous side dots. It's been quite a struggle but these results are encouraging. The UV resin I'm using right now is quite thick and it's a pain and a half to fill the tiny 3mm/6mm holes without air bubbles. It's a work in progress but I think I'm getting a hang of it.

Looks good, so far! Have you tried using a lower viscosity marine epoxy? That's what I ended up using when I was making them. Also, from companies like Smooth-On, you can casting resins in a wide range of viscosities and cure times. For small deep castings, you need low-viscosity slow-curing resin.

You can also build up a little vacuum chamber. I never found it to be necessary.

 

[llmk]

Looks good, so far! Have you tried using a lower viscosity marine epoxy? That's what I ended up using when I was making them. Also, from companies like Smooth-On, you can casting resins in a wide range of viscosities and cure times. For small deep castings, you need low-viscosity slow-curing resin.

You can also build up a little vacuum chamber. I never found it to be necessary.

It's getting better:

I realized that my main problem was the fact that the air couldn't get out of the tiny molds because of the viscosity so I took a syringe, removed the needle from its support, and used it to introduce the resin directly to the bottom of the molds. I push until the air gets out and the resin mushrooms up. I remove the excess resin after it's cured under the UV lamp.

I now have very few, small bubbles. That last batch had 20 dots, 2 unusable, 2 acceptable, and 16 perfectly usable ones. That's not too bad.

Sadly the 2 part epoxy is quite a big no-no because I have to work in the house (I don't have a garage) and it could harm my birds, the fumes are nasty to us but potentially deadly to them.
If needed, I'll make a vacuum chamber before considering the A+B epoxy. I know that there are less toxic kinds available but I can't find any in Romania at this point.

Right now I am using a very fine glow-in-the-dark powder for my testing, I want to see how much of it I can use in the resin without hindering the curing process. Once I find the best ratio I'll start using the good powder with bigger particles.
The cured dots, although quite hard, are easy to cut cleanly. The diameter is pretty close to the original 3mm at 2,84mm. I'll need to do a test to see how the cured resin reacts to sanding and then the mounting test to see how they stay in place once glued. I already tested superglue on little pieces of cured resin and it sticks very well to cardboard, I expect it will stick just as well to wood.
Thanks again for the help, Bruce!

 

[Lo-E]

My LED strip is loose(already) on my babinga neck. Just in a couple of spots. I cleaned the surface before applying. I suspect it’s the lightly oiled finish on the neck.
My mind says to use contact cement, I don’t have any. I don’t really want to buy a quart of it, but would if I have to.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
View attachment 5376583

Duco?

 

[TerribleTim68]

On my workbench today? Templates!

I know, not very exciting. But kind of exciting for me, because I'm cheap!

So Wednesday one of my friends brought over his Ibanez SR300. He picked it up for really cheap but it had some problems. During his tear down he discovered that the P pup was really super tight in the cavity, so he purchased a set of P/J templates and asked if I would buzz around the P cavity and clean it up. I didn't get any pictures of the work, but pretty simple really, masking tape and draw a lot of lines to find all my centerlines, double sided tape the template down and run around it with the trim router and my favorite little pattern bit. I expected to just be buzzing off the paint and maybe a millimeter or two, but that thing was way off! I'd say from long edge to long edge it was probably 3mm too narrow, so you could get one half of the P pup in, but the other half was so tight against the first half that it wouldn't move at all, much less adjust the height. So we got it all fixed up and he's gonna refinish it (stock black...boring) before reassembly.

But, I told him my fee was.....I'm gonna use his templates to make a set of my own. Oddly enough, I don't have these templates. But now I will. You're talking about roughly $60 per template from StewMac, so a P pickup, J bridge and J neck, that's $180 by my old school maths. I'm good with that. Even if you go with the cheaper Amazon templates, you're still talking $20 each, so $60 total for the three. I think I was done in like 30 minutes including some of our BS'ing time, so let's call it $100 an hour on this one.

 

[Lo-E]

The barter system is alive and well!

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Even more important: You are building up your skills making your own templates! Soon, you won't need to buy any stinkin' CNC plexi templates! You'll just make your own, whatever you want, whenever you want them.

 

[JIO]

Even more important: You are building up your skills making your own templates! Soon, you won't need to buy any stinkin' CNC plexi templates! You'll just make your own, whatever you want, whenever you want them.

yep - I have a pile of them!

 

[Lo-E]

The ongoing saga of the new bandsaw table continues with the little brass bridge piece mounted:

When I installed the brass inserts for mounting the fence I had a hell of a time trying to keep them straight. This time I took no chances and used the drill press (unpowered) to keep them aligned:

This piece will bridge the slot that enables blade changes and keep the top flat. Cutting that slot and inlaying a throat plate are next on the list after the table edges are mounted and the miters reinforced.