What's On Your Workbench?

[TerribleTim68]

Okay, I think I've worked out my program here. Big thanks to @Matt Liebenau for that post that mentoned how you hold these.
Let's rewind a bit so it's all on one place. The blank I glued up...

I then took it to the band saw and cut it into roughly 1"x1" squares. 25.4 millimeters for those of you not in Liberia, Myanmar or Trumpville.
I can chuck the cubes up on my lathe chuck, backwards, and drill the hole with a 15/64" drill bit. 5.9 millimeters....roughly.

I chose to step down that 64th just to make sure my work piece held for the next step, where I stuffed my Rockler adjustable length pen mandrel up its ... You know...

You'll also see that I placed a jam chuck against the end just to keep my mandrel from coming out while turning. I've had that happen before. A bit unnerving.
Once I get the shape done I can remove the jam chuck and round off the top a bit...

then started sanding. Once sanded up to 400 grit...

I chose to finish this in "Ack's Abrasive Paste" and "Ack's Polishing Wax"...

Ack's Wood Paste LLC
I use it a lot as a finish on turnings and I really like it. So are they perfect? No. But as a trial run it helped me work out a method that I think is pretty solid, provides great results and I'm confident I can easily replicate.
I think the only thing I'm not happy with here is how the bottom didn't flush up like I wanted it to. You can see they lean, because the bottoms aren't square and flat. But in reality, I could put these back in the chuck and work on the bottom a bit more if I really wanted to. Or, I can just stick them on that 5 string fan fret that I built that never got knobs and just call it good.

Again, thanks Matt. And everyone else who offered suggestions on this topic. I've been dancing around it for like 3 years now and finally have my method all worked out.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Okay, I think I've worked out my program here. Big thanks to @Matt Liebenau for that post that mentoned how you hold these.
Let's rewind a bit so it's all on one place. The blank I glued up...
View attachment 7107430
I then took it to the band saw and cut it into roughly 1"x1" squares. 25.4 millimeters for those of you not in Liberia, Myanmar or Trumpville.
I can chuck the cubes up on my lathe chuck, backwards, and drill the hole with a 15/64" drill bit. 5.9 millimeters....roughly.
View attachment 7107431
I chose to step down that 64th just to make sure my work piece held for the next step, where I stuffed my Rockler adjustable length pen mandrel up its ... You know...
View attachment 7107432
You'll also see that I placed a jam chuck against the end just to keep my mandrel from coming out while turning. I've had that happen before. A bit unnerving.
Once I get the shape done I can remove the jam chuck and round off the top a bit...
View attachment 7107433
then started sanding. Once sanded up to 400 grit...
View attachment 7107434
I chose to finish this in "Ack's Abrasive Paste" and "Ack's Polishing Wax"...
View attachment 7107435 Ack's Wood Paste LLC
I use it a lot as a finish on turnings and I really like it. So are they perfect? No. But as a trial run it helped me work out a method that I think is pretty solid, provides great results and I'm confident I can easily replicate.
I think the only thing I'm not happy with here is how the bottom didn't flush up like I wanted it to. You can see they lean, because the bottoms aren't square and flat. But in reality, I could put these back in the chuck and work on the bottom a bit more if I really wanted to. Or, I can just stick them on that 5 string fan fret that I built that never got knobs and just call it good.

Again, thanks Matt. And everyone else who offered suggestions on this topic. I've been dancing around it for like 3 years now and finally have my method all worked out.

If I may suggest, before you drill the hole for the pen mandrel start with a Forstner the same size or slightly larger than your finished size, that will square up the bottom. Then use a smaller Forstner for the recess for the potentiometer nut. I’ve been using 9/16” but have also used 5/8”. The 9/16” leaves the lip a little thicker.

 

[TerribleTim68]

If I may suggest, before you drill the hole for the pen mandrel start with a Forstner the same size or slightly larger than your finished size, that will square up the bottom. Then use a smaller Forstner for the recess for the potentiometer nut. I’ve been using 9/16” but have also used 5/8”. The 9/16” leaves the lip a little thicker.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense and it's clearly the step I couldn't think of.
Thanks!

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense and it's clearly the step I couldn't think of.
Thanks!

Happy to help. It took a few tries to come up with a good order of operations especially with working around the limitations of a less than state of the art lathe.

 

[Lo-E]

Happy holidays, everyone!

Another day off means a little more time in the shop and, for today, a little more of the old, heinous house paint removed:

I did the entire back today and I know I said that the heat gun made it easy but the truth is it was still a fair amount of work. There’s still all the paint left to remove from the sides and cavities (not sure yet what I’ll use to scrape the cavities) followed by a metric butt ton of sanding and grain filling remaining before I can even think about refinishing but each step gets me a little bit closer.

…and there’s the neck to contend with! That’s gonna be a bear.

 

[Gervais Cote]

Happy holidays, everyone!

Another day off means a little more time in the shop and, for today, a little more of the old, heinous house paint removed:
View attachment 7108069
View attachment 7108070

I did the entire back today and I know I said that the heat gun made it easy but the truth is it was still a fair amount of work. There’s still all the paint left to remove from the sides and cavities (not sure yet what I’ll use to scrape the cavities) followed by a metric butt ton of sanding and grain filling remaining before I can even think about refinishing but each step gets me a little bit closer.

…and there’s the neck to contend with! That’s gonna be a bear.

Very nice wood grain, certainly worth the effort ! Hope you will leave it natural……….

 

[Lo-E]

Very nice wood grain, certainly worth the effort ! Hope you will leave it natural……….

My plan is still to leave it natural although it’s actually going to make more work for me; the nice grain takes some tricky turns on some of the body contours, leaving me with gaping grain to fill. It’s a lot harder to prep such open grain for a clear finish but I’m going to give it a go.

 

[Gervais Cote]

My plan is still to leave it natural although it’s actually going to make more work for me; the nice grain takes some tricky turns on some of the body contours, leaving me with gaping grain to fill. It’s a lot harder to prep such open grain for a clear finish but I’m going to give it a go.

A few scares here and there showing its story isn’t bad either…………

 

[Lo-E]

A few scares here and there showing its story isn’t bad either…………

That paint job left it with emotional scars that will last an eternity!

 

[dune]

Finally finishing these up after 2 years.

 

[TerribleTim68]

So much yes!

 

[TerribleTim68]

Figured I'd share some pics of the finished chair. Our oldest daughter made some "stickers" on her Cricut for us.
The youngest daughter was super excited and the granddaughter even sat in it for a bit. She just turned 1 so she's still rather indifferent about pretty much everything.



Turned out good. The wife was happy.
The real significance here is that our three kids had a chair just like this when they were growing up, made by their grandpa. So it's kind of continuing tradition.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Okay, so I took some time during my day off today to turn those knobs for the Tele. This time I used @Matt Liebenau 's advice on with the forstner bits, worked like a charm. I don't have a 9/16" bit, but the 5/8" worked fine. I even chucked up the two I had already turned in some cloth and drilled them out too, so they are now fixed up. I set aside the best two for the Tele and the other four went on my fan fret. I forgot to take any pics. Sorry. I'll post the video link when it goes live tomorrow, so you'll just have to wait till then.

Oh, and I also made a template for the upcoming Bird build....

Yeah....I like the pointy ones.
So I ended up using my sketch I made from tracing an image in AutoCAD, and this is a fair bit different than the Mothership's Bird. I know that because I verified it against the actual shape.
My corners are rounded off a lot more, because I feel like the sharper they are, the faster they chip. Just look at any older V shaped guitar, you'll get where I'm coming from.
The entire lower section is also shifted about 1/2" toward the headstock end. I'm not exactly sure how that happened. I'm sure that's just the reality of sketching over an image that never comes in exactly to scale or perfectly top down centered, you just end up with a bit of skew.
That being said (because I know one person is gonna ask), I thought about fixing it when I verified it against the actual shape, but really I think it looks just fine. If I hadn't told you, I doubt you'd ever know the difference. And if I end up in a lawsuit I can lay my template over the real one and say "Look right here, it doesn't line up at all."
So yeah, I appreciate the help on this shape. You know who you are. But ultimately I chose to leave mine alone because it was close enough but still different enough to "CYA" a bit, you know?

Anyways, that's a decent amount of work done today. It's almost time for the wife to get home, because she didn't have the day off. I better go get dinner gathered up.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Went ahead and made a headstock template today. Work has been really slow.


So I think I'm about ready to go on the next build. You know, aside from the party where I have to finish the Tele before I start this one.
Part of me wants to go 35" scale on this just because I really like the tone of a 35", but then it would neck dive even more. Prolly better stick to 34".

Oh, and I did change the angle of the headstock some from the Mothership, just to ease up on some of that string pull thru the nut. So it's still pulling thru the nut sideways, but not near as bad.

 

[Lo-E]

Part of me wants to go 35" scale on this just because I really like the tone of a 35", but then it would neck dive even more.

Not if you flip the body over and put the long pointy bit on top…

 

[TerribleTim68]

Not if you flip the body over and put the long pointy bit on top…

Yeah, but then it wouldn't look like an Ironbird.

 

[TerribleTim68]

So for those who might be interested, the knob turning video is live over on the YouTubes.

 

[Lo-E]

The house paint is finally gone.
It was not a graceful operation. I got a little too aggressive with both the heat gun and the scraper in spots and I’ll have to pay for those mistakes one way or another but the evil has finally been exorcised.

The grain is extremely…. 3D in spots. There really wasn’t any way to use a scraper and not have it dig in deeper in the less-dense parts of the grain. I guess sanding would have been better. Maybe. I’m not really sure there was any way to remove the super thick ‘70s Fender base coat without being left with grain like a topo map.

There’s some serious sanding in my future.

I also put it on a scale just to satisfy my curiosity. At 6lbs, 11oz this is definitely not going to be a featherweight bass! Maybe I’ll fill the control cavity with helium.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Helium control cavities are all the rage.
Might be a good candidate for one of those ceruse finishes!

 

[Lo-E]

Helium control cavities are all the rage.
Might be a good candidate for one of those ceruse finishes!
View attachment 7111092

That’s very cool.

In my heart of hearts, I’d like this to look somewhat stock. I’m not able to do a spray finish unless I do rattlecans and a sunburst doesn’t seem like a good first finishing project to me. I also don’t know for sure it was originally a burst (although I have my suspicions). A slightly ambered clear finish and a black guard is a fairly classic look for a ’75. That 3-piece body wouldn’t have likely been used for a natural finish in the wild but I’m willing to suspend disbelief a little here. The bass is so hammered, and so far from original, any restoration is more about just saving its life but I’d still like it to look somewhat believable as a ‘75.