In time for the Q4 Challenge?

paulnb57

Bloody Hell! Thats epic!
I bet you are more chuffed than a chuffed thing?…

TTony

Cheers @paulnb57 ;

Yup, I'm happy with how it's turned out, and with what I've learned along the way.  Plenty still to learn and tweak, but so far so good.

Roland

It’s certainly a good result given how much time and effort goes into shaping a body by hand, and the risk of going wrong. However I’d bet that you aren’t going to make many guitars of that same shape, and you’ll be tweaking the CAD instructions for your next build.

TTony

Roland said:

However I’d bet that you aren’t going to make many guitars of that same shape, 

Excuse me - have you not noticed the Social Media campaign?

This is the model TT1 !!


Your comment is completely fair.  I'm probably not going to make many of this shape, but then I'm not going to make many of any shape. I possibly don't need any more guitars at all (or most of the ones that I have already).  But this exercise hasn't been about making this guitar, it's been about learning the process and tools to make a guitar.  Having managed to drag myself part-way up that learning curve, I can now tweak the design or build parts reasonably easily, and make whatever other design I choose to.

Which will be the TT2

TTony

Quick whizz round with the router to trim off the excess that the CNC didn't reach, and then 20mins with the Abranet and this is how it's looking.


That's a piece of Ash that it's sitting on, which I'll use for the back.


And, just to check, the neck sits nicely in the pocket and lines up properly with the bridge.

TTony

Sneaked out to the workshop for another hour's work at the end of the working day ...

Control cavity deepened slightly - can now see the holes for the knobs!


The rear cover is cut out, 5mm oversize at the moment.


And the cavity covers are done too




It's the simple things that make me smile

TTony

Been hectic here for the past couple of weeks, trying to get work finished in time for a 3 week break over Christmas.

Work is done, and today is day#1 of holiday.

That (^^^^) build was looking good, until I realised that either the back piece was warped / uneven, or the body back was;


Or maybe I just didn't use enough clamps.

Pondered trying to reglue the sections where it hadn't joined, but decided to just take it off and start again.

This jig has got me out of trouble so many times ...




The back is now re-skimmed, and sanded with my levelling beam to make sure it's flat.


Meantime, this, after a few trips through the thicknesser, is ready for attaching.





This time, I'm going to dry clamp it and make sure there are no gaps anywhere before gluing it.

Before I do that, I need to recut the cavity covers on the CNC.

TTony

That new back-cap works quite well.

CNC'd the cavity covers out of the back cover, glued the rest onto the body and clamped with a lot of clamps, and left overnight. 

A couple of workshop-hours this afternoon to fix the cavity covers in place, so that I could trim the back-cap to the body shape and roundover the edge.




The pencil lines around the heel give a clue to what comes next ...



A bit of hand-tooling!


Quick bit of sanding and re-drill the holes for the neck bolt ferrules and check everything fits properly



I'll reshape the left corner of the heel to smooth out the corner a bit.


Then get out of the workshop quick.  Everything went well this afternoon, which must mean I was due a feck-up, so I packed up before it happened.
 


I want to get the sanding done tomorrow.  Then I can clean up the workshop and focus on putting together the original Q4 challenge build in a clean workshop ... 

TTony

A quick partial-put-together to check everything fits properly *before* I start the finishing phase ...




The only real change is that I'll take another ~3mm off the base of the neck pocket.

The bit that most impressed me (I'm easily impressed) is that I put the bridge pickup through the slot, dropped the screws into the holes, and they aligned perfectly with the screw holes in the pickup baseplate.

I had checked the CNC plan against these pickups (a set of Oil City's finest), but still impressed me!  No wiggling, no nudging, just lined up perfectly.

Andyjr1515

That's coming along nicely @Ttony ;  I like that heel-relief feature very much

Rocker

I am in awe of your skills @TTony, congratulations on getting to grips with the CNC machine so quickly. 

TTony

Not that I'm leaving this to the last minute (day) but now we're past the Christmas jollities, I can get back into the workshop.

Had to take another 3mm off the neck pocket, and 3mm off the underside of the pickup routs.

The sanded, grain-filled (gold), sanded again, and a coat of Osmo Raw on top & sides.

In my experience, Osmo Raw - although it looks white in the tin - stops the colour of the wood changing when other coats of finish are applied.  I'm planning on the easy-French-polish finish on this one.

Andyjr1515

It's coming on well, @TTony ;

Yes - Osmo RAW is a pretty unique finish product. 

For those who don't know what we are talking about - pretty much all woods change the colour depth - and sometimes actual colour - from the freshly sanded state when any clear finish is applied.  Much of the time that is fine or great - but sometimes you want something that does look like the colour of freshly sanded wood - especially the light ones like maple, etc. - and this is what the Osmo RAW 3044 finish is designed to do.

This was a piece of sycamore with bands of: freshly sanded; Osmo RAW; standard clear finish:



I used it when I was asked to make a 'naturally white' sycamore/maple bass.  This is what a standard clear matt finish did to it:


...not at all what we were looking for.  

This is what it looked like with Osmo RAW:


And - just to clarify, while it has a whitener in it, it is not a whitewash product.  As long as the application is wipe-on thin, it will hold the unfinished hue of the light woods and darker woods without whitening the latter.  The above had ebony in the back - the ebony remained black:


And no - I don't work for Osmo...I just think it is a cool product.
 

WezV

Andyjr1515 said:

For those who don't know what we are talking about - pretty much all woods change the colour depth - and sometimes actual colour - from the freshly sanded state when any clear finish is applied.  
 

i've always thought of it as the finish showing the real colour of the wood.   Although obviously some "clear" finishes add more of a tint to that than others.

Andyjr1515

WezV said:

Andyjr1515 said:

For those who don't know what we are talking about - pretty much all woods change the colour depth - and sometimes actual colour - from the freshly sanded state when any clear finish is applied.  
 

i've always thought of it as the finish showing the real colour of the wood.   Although obviously some "clear" finishes add more of a tint to that than others.

Yes, in many ways that's correct - a clear finish turns it generally the same colour as just dampening it and so yes, for a proper clear finish, that is the real damp colour.

 I think the Osmo RAW is more for the scenario of carpenters making a set of built in shelves that the clients think is great once it's in an all sanded down...and then he/she puts the finish coat on and they go, 'Oh...' 

TTony

I guess the question is how do you define the "natural" colour of the wood.

A freshly sanded piece of some timbers will gradually change colour through time if left completely alone. 

Would it be fair to say that Osmo Raw retains the colour of the piece in the state when its applied, without changing it in any way.

Roland

It’s more that Osmo Raw compensates for the inevitable colour change which occurs when a finish is applied. Time will tell whether it slows down the yellowing which occurs with age and light exposure.

Andyjr1515

Anyway, all that aside - it's looking really good @TTony ;

TTony

I've been slowly adding coats of the Liberon Easy French Polish over the past few days.

Rubbed back with some 0000 wire wool this morning, and then added the - hopefully - final coat of polish.

I really like this product.  It's easy to apply, and quickly builds a smooth, shiny, finish.  Photos below are with the finish dry.

paulnb57

That really does look good