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Finished Shots - Trini Lopez 335 ish Tribute

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  • I, too, am excited. More pics please! 
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    I, too, am excited. More pics please! 
    Well, if you insist!  ;)

    The mould is ready.  I don't know about the other builders, but most of the time my 'bits of wood left over that might come in useful some time' just get in the way and clog up my pretty tight storage space.  Like this piece of mahogany offcut from a previous neck build:


    But I have a use for it at last!  One florentine-ready mould :)




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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16543
    Looking good!
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    WezV said:
    Looking good!
    Thanks :)     Plenty of time for me to c**k it up ;)

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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    My acoustic back radius dish has seen better days...but it still does the job.  It has a 15 foot radius and I will be using is to shape the back walnut sheet:


    So the idea is that each wing will have a mahogany middle piece that will act as the gluing surface to the through-neck and also to widen, albeit internally, the through neck for the bridge fixings and humbucker chambers.  So imagine there is a through neck in the middle of these two sides:


    So imagine that the walnut backs are glued to these bearers, that there is a slim pair of walnut sides bent round the periphery and that the ebony top will be glued to the top of these two bearers and the tops of the bent sides.

    But to get the back to dish, the bottoms of those two bearers will need shaping.  Below is a variation of a very simple technique that I picked up on this very forum to shape bearers.  The pro's use a washer and a pencil, but I didn't have a washer the right size so have used a small piece of wood, drilled to let my felt tip poke out the other side:


    The drilled hole gets the felt-tip just reaching the bottom of the wood at the lowest point of the radius dish.  So if I move the spacer and pen either way, it will scribe the shape of the dish on the wood:


    I then bandsaw and plane up to this line and I have a pair of shaped formers that will form and hold the curve of the back walnut sheet.  The through neck will be carved the same shape at the back:





     

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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    edited August 2021
    By and large the deepest component (crazy-deep 5-way levers excepted) that is going to fit in the chamber is a push-pull  (where spec'd) body and for the sides it's the surprisingly large hole you have to drill for the jack springs and contacts:


    So, using the mould as the datum, I can measure how far off the bottom of what will be the walnut back the ebony top needs to be:


    And, because the ebony sheet is flat bottomed, I can measure how far down from the bottom of my beam here the mating surfaces of the mahogany side pieces and walnut sides need to be.

    I first marked where the tops of the mahogany side pieces need to be and cut them:


    And then also marked some blue dots on the inside face of the mould to mark where the top of the sides will come...I will use this to make a paper template to be able to pre-cut the shape in the walnut sheet for the side pieces before I bend them (ask me how I've found out that's an important step!):


    So now you should be able to see the idea.  The back walnut will be pressed into the mould and held in that shape by the mahogany side pieces and some additional spruce braces, the guitar sides will be bent and go from the back  walnut up to the blue dotted line, and the flat-bottomed walnut will lay on top of the side pieces and walnut sides.

    I'm sure I'm being over-optimistic, but I still think this might work!   

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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    I'm 5/6ths done carving the back braces.  Like the mahogany sides of the wings, the bottom faces of these will be curved to fit the radius of the dish in their respective positions.



    Using a jig called a go-bar deck, I will use these, glued on their bottom faces, to force the walnut into the curve of the radius dish


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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    I'm hoping to get one of the wings 'proof of concept verified' over the next few days.

    So it's time to start thickening the walnut.

    Ideally this would be done on a sander thicknesser, but I don't have one, and so it's a bit more manual.  The walnut sheet is supplied at around 3.6mm thick, and needs to be reduced to just a touch under 2mm.

    On my acoustics, I've tried all sorts of ways, but this is the quickest-and-just-about-OK method I've settled on.

    I start with a plane.  Curiously (because I would have thought a Stanley finishing plane would be better) I find the little block plane the most successful:
     

    Then once I'm there or thereabouts I even it up with the second most expensive tool I've ever bought (but not regretted it) the Mirka Orbital Sander:


    Still got a bit of evening out to do, but it's getting there:


    Already, it's flexible enough to be moulded into the radius dish.

    This is it flat and straight:


    And this is what the side and cross braces will do (hopefully!) pushing it into shape:



    By the way, this also illustrates how different the timber colour is once it has the finish applied.  Above is the walnut freshly sanded.  And this is what it will look like once it has its final finish applied (these are the actual pieces I'm using above):



    Next is to cut and bend some sides...



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  • TTonyTTony Frets: 27343
    I have to read these threads from the start again, once the final build is complete.

    Then I understand better why some of the techniques and jigs (etc) were necessary for the build and why some things are done in the order that they're done in.

    Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
    Having trouble posting images here?  This might help.
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  • meltedbuzzboxmeltedbuzzbox Frets: 10337
    It's looking great Andy. 

    I think the back might look as good as the front, especially with the ideas around the neck woods
    The Bigsby was the first successful design of what is now called a whammy bar or tremolo arm, although vibrato is the technically correct term for the musical effect it produces. In standard usage, tremolo is a rapid fluctuation of the volume of a note, while vibrato is a fluctuation in pitch. The origin of this nonstandard usage of the term by electric guitarists is attributed to Leo Fender, who also used the term “vibrato” to refer to what is really a tremolo effect.
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  • normula1normula1 Frets: 639
    I love these threads
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    It's looking great Andy. 

    I think the back might look as good as the front, especially with the ideas around the neck woods
    Phew!  ;)

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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    TTony said:


    Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
    Very flattering of you, Tony.  That said, I'm feeling my way along this one as I go so it's probably not quite as planned as you might think :)

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  • JayGeeJayGee Frets: 1254
    TTony said:


    Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
    Very flattering of you, Tony.  That said, I'm feeling my way along this one as I go so it's probably not quite as planned as you might think :)

    That’s what you always say. Much as I love these threads and am in awe of the end results the “I’m just a regular guy fumbling my way through this…” act was blown long ago… :-)


    Don't ask me, I just play the damned thing...
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    JayGee said:
    TTony said:


    Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
    Very flattering of you, Tony.  That said, I'm feeling my way along this one as I go so it's probably not quite as planned as you might think :)

    That’s what you always say. Much as I love these threads and am in awe of the end results the “I’m just a regular guy fumbling my way through this…” act was blown long ago… :-)


    Trust me, this is making it up as I go along...
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  • meltedbuzzboxmeltedbuzzbox Frets: 10337
    JayGee said:
    TTony said:


    Andy has to work it all out beforehand though, which makes him a lot cleverer-er than me!
    Very flattering of you, Tony.  That said, I'm feeling my way along this one as I go so it's probably not quite as planned as you might think :)

    That’s what you always say. Much as I love these threads and am in awe of the end results the “I’m just a regular guy fumbling my way through this…” act was blown long ago… :-)


    Trust me, this is making it up as I go along...
    In your defence you do have a tricky customer that has too many daft ideas as well
    The Bigsby was the first successful design of what is now called a whammy bar or tremolo arm, although vibrato is the technically correct term for the musical effect it produces. In standard usage, tremolo is a rapid fluctuation of the volume of a note, while vibrato is a fluctuation in pitch. The origin of this nonstandard usage of the term by electric guitarists is attributed to Leo Fender, who also used the term “vibrato” to refer to what is really a tremolo effect.
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127

    In your defence you do have a tricky customer that has too many daft ideas as well
    Not at all.





    Well...maybe a teeny, weeny bit. 
    Ebony?  Ebony??? Ebony??????

    :)


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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    As the try-it-and-see process continues, I'm getting more confident it is going to work.  You never know...

    Next step is to prepare the back and sides of one of the wings.

    One of the things I've been meaning to do for ages is to modify the measuring pads of my long-reach micrometer.  Because the present pads are quite large flat disks, and it is almost impossible to keep everything exactly parallel, the slightest angle and the micrometer over-measures:


    Rummaging around in one of my bits boxes, I found these chromed covers from some old wall-mirror fixing screws.  Ideal!


    I ground down the brass screw thread and epoxied them on.  Perfect :)


    So time to thin down the sides walnut:


    I'm aiming for around 1.9mm.  This will do nicely :)


    Next was to work out the shape.  I have found from my acoustic builds that pre-cutting the shape and then fine tuning with sanding once they are bent is by far the easiest way of going about it.  So I got some fairly stiff cartridge paper and fiddled about for a while until I had a template that was flat at the top and the correct curves to seat at the bottom of the radiused back, clamped into the radius dish here:


    Then cut the thinned walnut to the resulting shape:


    So next job is to bend it and see if it fits!

    And, all being well, that will be this afternoon.

    As always, thanks for looking and for the kind comments along the way :)




     
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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    Out came the electric bending iron and a decent soaking of water before and during the bend:


    Walnut is one of the more forgiving timbers to bend as long as it's thin enough so it wasn't too long before it was done:


    I'll leave it clamped overnight to fully dry in shape - usually helps to avoid the bend relaxing.


    In the meantime, I'll order the neck wood and the kerfed strip.  For the neck, we're going for this kind of look - with walnut in the middle, a couple of thin maple strips and then mahogany for the outers:



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  • Andyjr1515Andyjr1515 Frets: 3127
    With the bend set in now the timber has dried overnight, it's safe to take the side out.

    Still looks like this might work ;)



    I have to bend the end curved piece , carve a reinforcement block for the horn, get hold of or make some kerfed strip for the edges and I will be ready to start gluing stuff.
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