Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

So much involved in pickups, Here's me making a pickup, hope its informative. http://www.mirwa.com.au/HTS_Manufacture_Pickup.html Steve Had a read at your page, very cool, nice old electro magnet yoke. I've got a feeling someone used to be an NDT technician :lol: I can attest that making pickups fr...

Definitely a job for a machine shop. The blade is fully case hardened. I got a shop to do mine years ago and they even broke a bit on it because of how hard that bore was

I'm not so sure that Jaco put a layer of epoxy on the fingerboard itself. In his Modern Electric Bass video he mentions never practicing on his fretless because the roundwounds eat his fingerboard up, that certainly leads me to believe he had only filled the slots.

I built a couple of fretless basses, one of them had an oiled fretboard and the other a layer of CA, using CA will be pretty close in sound and feel as the epoxy finish, I personally wouldn't do epoxy as its a bitch to use and sand down flat, the CA will have a similar finish but be a lot easier to ...

I use my 3M 6000 series half face respirator with the dust filters on it. Its heavier and more tiring to wear over long sessions than a paper mask but i've never been able to wear those cheap things without fogging my glasses either. I don't get the point of the carbatec powered mask, why would anyo...

I usually just buildup with clear coating, never used sanding sealers or other fillers. At this point I'm starting to consider using something else and just a few coats of clear over it. How's the West System? Epoxy is usually a bitch to sand down, not sure I want to go down this way, until what gra...

Right that makes sense thanks for that, I've always wondered if I was adding all the scratches myself by sanding from P600 and up, I once tried just spraying a thinner coat after my last top coat was dry and that gave a great shine to the body where I felt like I should just leave it as is. I might ...

I'm not sure I'm getting that Perry, do you mean you dry sand only? up to 2000 then move to the Makita polisher?

Perry, not really wanting to get rid of it at this point since I might be the one not using it properly, never had proper tutorial for using this, its all learning on your own as you go as you know. I haven't seen a decent video tutorial on buffing so far. Here's the breakdown, in order of the steps...

I bought the Stewmac buffer a few years back, cost an arm and a leg of shipping to get here, I thought I'd get the best finishes in the world with this thing. I don't know if the problem is the user or not but I don't like my finishes, way too many swirls marks once I'm done, I'm using the coarse an...

A couple years ago on a multi laminate neck I used tassy Blackwood, ebony, Indian rosewood and qld maple all together. It looked great and I grain filled and sealed it with 2k clear as I was doing at the time. Over time the clear has sunk into the grain and when playing the neck you can now feel jo...

Very cool, would have been a cool course to attend I'm sure, can we edit the first post to show the forum names of the members on the photo?

I'm not really seeing a need for a jig on that one, the two options i see are: 1. Cut the rout on the square neck blank with a fence on the router before you taper the neck and 2. Make a template of the tapered neck with the rout line/pattern routed in the middle of it at the width of the follower c...

Thanks guys, an archtop is definitely on the plans but god knows when that'll be, seems I'm always too busy with other projects and never have time to build something for myself, I've had the Benedetto book and dvd for years and do have the back and side blank in stock so who knows... I certainly fe...

thanks Bill

After 10 years of building electrics I went and built my first acoustic, its actually a gift for an old friend, he wanted a J-45 clone with a sunburst so I obliged. The back, sides and neck are Blackwood and the top Sitka Spruce. It was a fun project, I spent a whole lot of time going through about ...

Well the easy solution is to clamp and superglue the culprit frets if its only a couple of them. If you insist on removing the frets, you don’t need to heat the fingerboard (never heard of that for fret removal), you just use a soldering iron to heat up the fret by stroking it with the iron then use...

funkytwang wrote: Here's some I found :

EUB - Bill Paulin
http://www.ozbassforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1484

That seems awefully familiar

Right, so for my 40th instead of pressies, I asked for guitar building $$$. I have lots of awesome friends and after counting I have about $2.5k to spend. What do I need? Well the following I think... Decent band saw (to resaw tops as well as other basic stuff) Jointer Saw table (for ripping and sc...

The short answer is it took a long time, it took me more than a year of tweaking my Fender style headstock before I got something I was happy with and willing to send out there in the world. My modern style headstock and body (DCS model) evolved over the builds, my first bass was a Warrior copy, the...

Definitely shellac the top; a few coats. I use glass reinforced packaging tape (use a good dispenser). Almost impossible to snap unless you're binding edges are really hard/sharp (e.g. bloodwood), very sticky, slightly stretchy, so it has good "pull in". It peels off fine if your shellac is hard en...

Thanks guys, looks like a shellac coat will be the go next time, I ended up sanding the gaps away, I'm hoping it won't compromise the structural integrity of the top.

Nice bass! I'd love to find out more about the custom case, what does it look like and what sort of prices was the maker charging, I can certainly use custom cases once in a while, they're a royal pita to build

I used the stewmac binding tape for the binding/purfling on the top, no matter how careful I was removing it there's a few areas where its pulled the fibres off the top and I don't like the look at all, I'm not sure I want to scrape or try to sand down it looks fairly deep and the top is only about ...

I'll +1 the Kent Everett DVD too, its been invaluable for making the top on my first acoustic, most of the AA Sitka Spruce (from Stewmac) is around the 2.5mm mark with nearer to 2mm around the edges, I'll let you know how it went when I string it up first :D but so far with the bracing this thing fe...