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What's On Your Workbench?
- Thread starter HaMMerHeD
- Start date
Yessir, they are cherry. They were originally stiles on some unfinished cabinet doors I found. Everything in this build is salvage wood with the exception of the Home Depot maple.The body is spruce... Which led to my adventure today: Fabricating and inletting a 1/2 x 3/8 aluminium block into the back of the body threaded to receive 2 8x32 dome-head bolts to help secure the bridge. I'm not sure I liked my chances with just 4 wood screws!
Best regards,
John
Best regards,
John
And then the body got a roundover...
I just cleaned up these terribly battered feeler gauges.
They languished for decades in the bottom of my sister’s late father-in-law’s metal toolbox in a wet basement.
I only met him a few times but he was a nice guy so when my brother-in-law asked if I could use them I (sort of lied and) said sure.
I don’t need any more feeler gauges and these are well past being accurate measuring tools but I am to old tools like a little kid is to puppies. If they follow me home I’m inclined to keep them.
They languished for decades in the bottom of my sister’s late father-in-law’s metal toolbox in a wet basement.
I only met him a few times but he was a nice guy so when my brother-in-law asked if I could use them I (sort of lied and) said sure.
I don’t need any more feeler gauges and these are well past being accurate measuring tools but I am to old tools like a little kid is to puppies. If they follow me home I’m inclined to keep them.
Back to the neck rescue:
I cut a much better fitted cap for that truss rod anchor. A wee piece of maple and tiny chisel cuts to fit it snugly in the space.
Once it’s cured I’ll carve the top to fit cleanly into the underside of the removed fingerboard piece so it sits flush but completely traps the truss rod anchor underneath.
I’m not sure if I’ll need to do the same to cover the walnut plug. It depends upon how the fingerboard piece sits. If I need to it won’t be any harder to make than this piece was. It took about 20 minutes to make this one.
I cut a much better fitted cap for that truss rod anchor. A wee piece of maple and tiny chisel cuts to fit it snugly in the space.
Once it’s cured I’ll carve the top to fit cleanly into the underside of the removed fingerboard piece so it sits flush but completely traps the truss rod anchor underneath.
I’m not sure if I’ll need to do the same to cover the walnut plug. It depends upon how the fingerboard piece sits. If I need to it won’t be any harder to make than this piece was. It took about 20 minutes to make this one.
Yeah, there's three #4s, a #5, a #6 and a #7. One of the #4s is a Stanley, one is a Stanley Handyman and the other is a Corsair that someone gave me. I also have one more #6 that isn't on the till, because it's a Stanley Handyman with the purple "japaning" and it doesn't match the rest of them. The #6 and #7 are original Baileys, not Stanley.
These are all planes I got in a pretty rusty state and did a psuedo-resto on. I need users, not show pieces, so some patina is fine, they don't need to be flawless. There's still some pits on the soles, but the majority of the soles are flat and smooth and the sides are square. That's good enough. I will say, the #6 is probably my go-to plane. I love it for so many jobs. It has enough heft to plow through and it's still small enough to not get unwieldy. The #7 is just fun when you want to pull out "the big guns".
But I rarely use it. I reach for that #6 more often than not. I'm eventually going to turn one of my #4s into a scrub plane, I just haven't done it yet.I got the #78 because I needed something to do rebates/rabbits (depending on what part of the world you're in). It's missing the edge guide, but it still works just fine for what I need, which is to be able to clean up and square up that inside edge of a rebate. It's a bit bigger than a shoulder plane, but I couldn't find a shoulder plane at a price I could live with. Eventually I'll get a real shoulder plane.
Hand planes are fun if you spend the time to get them working right.
100% on the money.I need users, not show pieces, so some patina is fine, they don't need to be flawless. There's still some pits on the soles, but the majority of the soles are flat and smooth and the sides are square. That's good enough.
Hand planes are fun if you spend the time to get them working right.
Most of my planes are a little ugly but they’re clean and flat and sharp. Lie-Neilsens might be nice to look at but they don’t cut any better than my tuned-up yard sale planes.
A #4 is a little wide for a scrub plane. Consider putting a serious camber on a #3 instead - you won’t have to work as hard.
The #6 doesn’t get a lot of love from finish carpenters or cabinetmakers who find it too small for a jointer and too big for a smoother but I think it’s a great size for jointing the smaller pieces of lumber we luthier types use. A #8 might be great for somebody building door frames or dining room tables but we just don’t need that. The #6 is a lot more wieldy. @Bruce Johnson and I had this same discussion recently. He likes the #6 too, as I recall.
Yes, I have a decent collection of planes in my shop. Not collector's showpieces; I bought them all at flea markets and on Ebay. I cleaned them up and tuned them up. All older Stanley Baileys, except for my #7, which is a Sargent. I use the #6 most often for straightening the edges of MDF boards, like the parallel rails on Router Planing Fixtures. It's perfect for that. I use the #5C sometimes for straightening edges on smaller odd shaped parts, where it would be too much trouble to run through a jointer or set up with a router. I hardly ever use the #3, #4 and #7 sizes. I use several of the small Stanley Block Planes more often than any of the bigger planes.
- Jun 30, 2010
- 49,588
- 221,963
- Disclosures
- musician/artist/owner - Gildaxe
Re-definition/sorting of an existing new 5 string bass...
Last edited:
After a week of curing I wet sanded the finish with Micro-Mesh, working from 1,800 (approximately 600 grit ASA) through 12,000. Then I applied a couple of coats of guitar polish:
And with a period-appropriate pick guard a friend gave me for the project:
Is it perfect? Hell, no! It’s not even close to perfect. For a first attempt at a hard gloss finish I would have been crazy to expect it to come out perfect.
I think it came out respectable. Maybe even pretty nice. When I’ve done ten of these I’ll see if I can hit pretty good. For now - for a first try - I’ll take respectable as a win.
And with a period-appropriate pick guard a friend gave me for the project:
Is it perfect? Hell, no! It’s not even close to perfect. For a first attempt at a hard gloss finish I would have been crazy to expect it to come out perfect.
I think it came out respectable. Maybe even pretty nice. When I’ve done ten of these I’ll see if I can hit pretty good. For now - for a first try - I’ll take respectable as a win.
On the other side of the workbench, more progress on the neck. I chiseled out the maple filler to match the underside profile of the fingerboard piece:
So that the piece sits flush:
Then I rummaged around for a clamping caul I made out of epoxy putty around 17 years ago for exactly this purpose and found it in less than 5 minutes (!!!):
And proceeded to dry-clamp the fingerboard piece and then glue it for real:
I feel like this was a productive day.
So that the piece sits flush:
Then I rummaged around for a clamping caul I made out of epoxy putty around 17 years ago for exactly this purpose and found it in less than 5 minutes (!!!):
And proceeded to dry-clamp the fingerboard piece and then glue it for real:
I feel like this was a productive day.
Good work on the neck. The body looks good also. It’s a 70s bass? It definitely looks period for when people were stripping their instrument finishes and clearing them. I mean that as a compliment.
I didn’t have the energy to keep working on my dust collection system and other things in the shop, so I just did a little project… I made this flame maple joiners mallet today…. kind of a test run, thinking about making one for my father as a Christmas present.
Budweiser bass completed this week, sounds as mighty as it looks :
It’s a ‘75. I don’t know what color it was originally but it was probably either sunburst or that ugly mocha brown. There were a lot of clear finish P-basses in ‘75 so I think this will fly but it doesn’t look like a factory finish. …much.
The repair isn’t completely invisible but it’s pretty well hidden:
Once I refinish the neck it’ll all but disappear.
The truss rod isn't working as well as I had hoped, even after all that work, but it works better than it did before the surgery so I'm still cautiously optimistic that after I straighten the neck with both heat and sanding and then load it with frets the rod will be functional enough to do the rest.
Once I refinish the neck it’ll all but disappear.
The truss rod isn't working as well as I had hoped, even after all that work, but it works better than it did before the surgery so I'm still cautiously optimistic that after I straighten the neck with both heat and sanding and then load it with frets the rod will be functional enough to do the rest.
Can you please Pm me, I wantt o ask you a wiring question.
Dark Horse, can you please PM me, I'd like to ask you a few wiring questions.
My sister gave me this rather large chunk of amur honeysuckle:
It’s extremely hard and dense. She had planned to use it for some carving or other but it split while drying and she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble:
It’s several years old so I suspect it’s done doing whatever splitting it was going to do. I’m going to try to true it up and see if I can get one or two fingerboard blanks out of it.
It might twist or crack more once I cut it but I have nothing to lose by trying. It’s both denser and harder than maple so I think it’ll make a good fingerboard if it’s stable enough.
It’s extremely hard and dense. She had planned to use it for some carving or other but it split while drying and she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble:
It’s several years old so I suspect it’s done doing whatever splitting it was going to do. I’m going to try to true it up and see if I can get one or two fingerboard blanks out of it.
It might twist or crack more once I cut it but I have nothing to lose by trying. It’s both denser and harder than maple so I think it’ll make a good fingerboard if it’s stable enough.
