It is currently Mon Mar 16, 2020 7:02 pm

All times are UTC - 7 hours



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1508 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 ... 101  Next
Go to page Previous  1 ... 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 ... 101  Next
Author Message
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:30 am
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:38 am
Posts: 3959
Location: Rochdale UK
Great job Ceri, nearly there now eh? can't wait to see this beauty fully assembled. 8)

_________________
Image


Top
Profile
Fender Play Winter Sale 2020
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 10:19 am
Offline
Rock Icon
Rock Icon
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 4:57 am
Posts: 13164
Location: Peckham: where the snow leopards roam
russianracehorse wrote:
But will it also say "ORIGINAL Eanlaun Badu"? The true connoisseur accepts nothing less. 8)

HA! Well remembered! 8)

Pringle420 wrote:
So... now that there are really not too many secrets left...

Well, will you permit me maybe just one more little detail to discuss...? :D We have ONE LAST INSTALMENT before the Pyrocaster is finished.

Now that we have well and truly touched up Nikininja's body, should we turn our attention to his nuts? :?:

Regulars will remember that Nick got very interested in the issue of low position intonation. He did a heap of research, tried out the Earvana compensated nut - and then, being the man he is, felt that wasn't good enough and started making his own compensated nuts. Here's one he made for me, specially designed to work in conjunction with a set of compensated bridge saddles I have on a particular Telecaster:
Image

http://www.fender.com/community/forums/ ... hp?t=23794

Take my word: that is a nicely made nut. If anyone has questions regarding what compensated nuts are all about - I leave it to Nikininja to handle them. He's the expert.

However, we can't go running to Nick every time we want a compensated nut: we have to learn how to look after ourselves. Nick's never actually shown us his working method, so we'll have to make it up on our own...

In passing, here's a strange thing. Back in the days before The Guitar Player Repair Guide came my way I had a slim volume called Guitar And Amp Maintenance by Ritchie Fliegler. Ritchie was a well known player, tech, builder and general guitar guru in New York, and these days he is Fender's VP in charge of marketing. So he knows a thing or two about guitars. (I wonder if Forum user Martian has run into him?)

One thing that always surprised me in his book was on page 30 where he says: "I know more than one guitar repairman who will cut holes, install Floyds, and refret a guitar without blinking an eye, but dreads making a nut."

Really? REALLY? Well let's see what we can do about that...

Here's where bone nuts come from:
Image

Ah - so trusting...:
Image

I spend half my time in a rural location in the South West of England, and those beasts live in fields just above our house there. They are organically reared and grass fed, and when done to perfection they travel about two miles to a small abattoir, before returning another two miles to the farm shop, from where we buy them... in pieces.

That nut Nick made for me was from one of those creatures' leg bones cleaned and boiled. There is a debate in guitar nut circles about whether fresh bone or aged makes the best nuts. Today we'll try the aged route. Here is a bone that my neighbor's dog has chewed, buried, dug up again and left in the rain and sun for many months. This is the sort of neighborly gift I sometimes find waiting on my doormat when I get home:
Image

Note the teeth marks.

Nikininja is the pro at cutting blanks from bones. We need a piece just the right size and shape for a compensated nut, which is a bit more challenging than an ordinary one:
Image

You've never seen inside my garage workshop, the reason being its terrible clutter and mess. Here's the only glimpse you will get of it, because I need that heavy vice (do you spell that vise in North America? Just so's the police don't get confused and arrest a lot of innocent carpenters, is that it? But are there any innocent carpenters? :lol: ):
Image

From which we get this. Sawn bone smells really bad...:
Image

Same piece from another angle, just so's you see the shape we're going to work with:
Image

There will be a piece that descends into the fingerboard's nut slot like any other nut, and a "shelf" that comes out over the top of the 'board. To shape that L-profile and form the radius on the shelf's underside I'm just working it on a little grinding wheel fitted to a drill in this small bench top press:
Image

Which produces this:
Image

Then we can sketch in the form of the compensated positions in pencil, crudely for now:
Image

First a bit of rough shaping with diamond files:
Image

To help establish the positions it is useful to drop in some temporary string slots, just to give the eye something to work from:
Image

From another angle - it's beginning to look like a nut:
Image

I was doing all of that holding it in the fingers, but now we need to get a bit more precise. My nut making kit makes Stew-Mac's nut vice/vise look like kids' stuff :lol: :
Image

Before anyone else says so, that lot is seriously over the top. We absolutely do not need all of that just to make a simple guitar nut. I'm just being silly. :D

Holding the nut firmly in the vice we can work quite swiftly, filing and sanding away to locate the finished nut hiding within the blank. Soon we need to establish a good right-angle between the bottom and back of the nut, and a neat way to do that is to lay a file flat and then sand the blank back and forth, held firmly against a piece of wood (or cork sanding block, here) that establishes the 90 degree shape:
Image

Sand paper also works:
Image

Now we're really getting somewhere:
Image

I'm shaping the nut to fit the slot, so it can go in absolutely perfectly and firmly. No need for glue. At this point we can try that fit out:
Image

I've deliberately left it too long till now. No matter how careful you are you tend to put slight curves into the ends, so by leaving them overhanging we can now just trim off those inaccuracies at this stage:
Image

Looking all right. Now we need to get some slots going. Here's my 0.010" jeweller's saw and some nut files. Also, a diamond file and my feeler gauges, marked in metric and imperial:
Image

With the neck installed and strung up we can establish some positions for the slots. There is a tool for doing this, but I find it perfectly easy to do by eye. Here I'm using a steel engraver's scribe to mark the positions:
Image

The top of the nut is very high at present so I can make the slots too wide at first, to allow for wiggle room in finding the most pleasing spacing for the strings. As you see here it is not quite perfect yet:
Image

Now. How deep to cut the slots? We first need to know how high our frets are. I have digital callipers, as you saw above. But at this stage I find old fashioned mechanical methods preferable. We run a steel rule along the frets edge on and use the feeler gauges to discover the height of the gap between the fingerboard and the underside of the ruler:
Image

A couple of the gauge blades stack up to make that height. My frets are big: 1.15 mm / 0.046" high. Then we simply add 0.5 mm / 0.020" on top of that, and that will give us the height for the bottom of our nut slots. 0.020 thou is a pretty standard measurement for how much higher the slots need to be than the fret tops:
Image

We can loosen the strings and just hook them out of the way:
Image

And then start filing our slots, using the correct sized slot file for each one. We do that till the file reaches the stack of feeler blades and - presto - our slots should be the right depth. (My strings are deliberately not clipped short yet in case I have to remove them.):
Image

Obviously, we run the file at an angle to the fingerboard so that the slots tilt gently backwards, for a nice efficient breaking point at the leading edge.

We need to do the fine tuning by measuring the gap beneath the strings themselves:
Image

Then we can shape the top of the nut, bringing it lower to our personal satisfaction. In fact, as soon as I'd taken this photo I removed the nut and did this job in the vice. Much easier and safer for the neck lacquer:
Image

And there ya go - a finished, compensated bone nut. Nuttin' to it:
Image

How difficult was that? Not at all. Give it a try - what's the worst that can happen? :D

I'll leave you for today with a photo that amuses me. Here in one picture is the making of a Ceri neck in three quick, easy stages (ho-ho, ha-ha - sardonic laughter... :lol: ):
Image

Piece of cake, huh? Why isn't everyone doing it...?

Tomorrow - we finish. Y-E-E-E-E-A-H!!!!!

Cheers - C


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 10:58 am
Offline
Roadie
Roadie
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:21 pm
Posts: 277
Why isn't everyone doing it? Because some of us have two left hands covered with thumbs! We live vicariously by watching the masters work.
Wonderful job, Ceri. I can only imagine what this is going to sound like...


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:13 am
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:13 am
Posts: 3317
Location: The Alpha Quadrant.
I can't wait to see it all together!!!

Gonna be so sad when it's over though.

You must feel some amazing sense of achievement in doing this Ceri. I would love to be able to do anything like that, especially when it comes to guitars knowing the thousands of songs that are going to be played on it and the amazing feeling playing those songs.

Truly astounding my friend!

CC

_________________
Fender Stratocaster (parts build)
Fender Telecaster 72 Custom RI
Fender Telecoustic Deluxe
Gretsch Electromatic Pro-Jet
Gibson Les Paul Standard Plus
Gibson ES-135
Zenith Type-17
Marshall 70's JMP Superbass 100w
Blackstar HT-5


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:57 am
Offline
Hobbyist
Hobbyist
User avatar

Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:56 pm
Posts: 43
Man I finally got through reading this topic and I must say it was amazing to see this thing come along as it did. Kudos Ceri! 8)


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:23 pm
Offline
Hobbyist
Hobbyist
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:16 pm
Posts: 99
Location: Victoria, BC
Of course you have more Tricks/Secrets. What was I thinking ? :roll:

Great Nut Job.

You're playing it right now aren't you? Maybe you should just take a couple days and play it, make sure the setup is perfect before taking any of the final pictures. What do you think everyone? Can you wait any longer to see the final product?

I assume that the guitar will be pictured with a fine French Merlot of special meaning in an antique wine glass that was once owned by somebody famous? Am I close? Or perhaps Champagne to celebrate the end of a long journey? There HAS to be a drink in there somewhere.

Fantastic Work Ceri. Congratulations on a job well done.

_________________
"Who says I can't get stoned..." - John Mayer

- "Honey" 09 HWY 1 Tele (Honey Blonde w/Maple)
- 08 MIM Standard Strat (Burst w/Rosewood,SCN,DeltaTone)
- Super Champ XD
- Marshall Class 5 Head
- Norman Acoustic (MICan)


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:46 pm
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:01 pm
Posts: 3261
Location: Halls of ikea
I got a look at the latest pics Ceri, top notch stuff as ever, and as others have said, can't wait to hear it twang, and for the entertainment and education you have provided through this great build I hope the twang exeeds even your expectations. thoroughly deserved best thread.

ps is it my PC or have pics disappeared on everyones " upgrade to pro photobucket" bandwidth exeeded ?


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:49 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:10 pm
Posts: 2132
Location: Deep in the Heart of Texas (San Antonio, y'all)
ripitup555 wrote:
ps is it my PC or have pics disappeared on everyones " upgrade to pro photobucket" bandwidth exeeded ?

Nope, it's not just you. All the pictures now look like this:

Image

Ceri, you've busted your bandwidth! Let us know how much it costs to upgrade to professional, and we'll take up a collection! :shock:

_________________
I really like all them "Aster" guitars. You know, like the Stratoc, Telec and Jazzm. :wink:


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:00 pm
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:01 pm
Posts: 3261
Location: Halls of ikea
russianracehorse wrote:
ripitup555 wrote:
ps is it my PC or have pics disappeared on everyones " upgrade to pro photobucket" bandwidth exeeded ?

Nope, it's not just you. All the pictures now look like this:

Image

Ceri, you've busted your bandwidth! Let us know how much it costs to upgrade to professional, and we'll take up a collection! :shock:


publishing ruse :lol: we've been toyed with :lol: :lol:


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:58 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 3:52 pm
Posts: 2005
russianracehorse wrote:
ripitup555 wrote:
ps is it my PC or have pics disappeared on everyones " upgrade to pro photobucket" bandwidth exeeded ?

Nope, it's not just you. All the pictures now look like this:

Image

Ceri, you've busted your bandwidth! Let us know how much it costs to upgrade to professional, and we'll take up a collection! :shock:


No! No! NO!!!!! I've come all this way and I can't see any of the pictures!!!
All I see is the "exceeded bandwidth" pic in place of the bone-nut pics!!!

I can't believe I won't get to see this!!

So close to the end too...

What a bummer! :cry: :cry: :cry:
-T


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:34 pm
Offline
Roadie
Roadie
User avatar

Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 2:51 pm
Posts: 240
Location: Durham, NC
Image

This makes me want to set my guitar on fire! :evil:

No, wait....

_________________
Custom Shop '59 Stratocaster
AV Hot Rod '52 Telecaster
AV '56 Stratocaster
'65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:52 pm
Offline
Rock Icon
Rock Icon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:47 am
Posts: 15336
Location: In a galaxy far far away
tyronne wrote:
russianracehorse wrote:
ripitup555 wrote:
ps is it my PC or have pics disappeared on everyones " upgrade to pro photobucket" bandwidth exeeded ?

Nope, it's not just you. All the pictures now look like this:

Image

Ceri, you've busted your bandwidth! Let us know how much it costs to upgrade to professional, and we'll take up a collection! :shock:


No! No! NO!!!!! I've come all this way and I can't see any of the pictures!!!
All I see is the "exceeded bandwidth" pic in place of the bone-nut pics!!!

I can't believe I won't get to see this!!

So close to the end too...

What a bummer! :cry: :cry: :cry:
-T


Mate you feel bad about it, I've been at rehearsall all night. I just raced down the A153 at 110mph to get back and see this thread. I asked Ceri yesterday what he'd done about the nut. As I've never given him any details about it. He told me "You'll just have to wait and see".

I feel like kicking the neighbours in.

_________________
No no and no


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:55 pm
Offline
Rock Icon
Rock Icon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:47 am
Posts: 15336
Location: In a galaxy far far away
Damn you Photobucket you foul, heinous, cad. :evil:

_________________
No no and no


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:02 pm
Offline
Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:55 pm
Posts: 723
This is why I would have used Picasa, because I'm pretty sure theres no bandwidth issues when it comes to google. DAMN IT I CAN'T SEE THE NEARLY FINISHED PRODUCT! It's killing me Ceri. If anyone took a copy of the photos can they upload them somewhere so we can see?

Dan

_________________
My Rig: Guitar into Pedals then into Amps and out into Speakers.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:04 am
Offline
Rock Icon
Rock Icon
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 4:57 am
Posts: 13164
Location: Peckham: where the snow leopards roam
[Friday morning]

HEY, WHAT? Bandwidth exceeded? What the ____ does that mean?

I've been to Photobucket and my storage used is 56%. So what's this "bandwidth"? Is that the quantity of photos I've uploaded, or the amount of views they receive by people clicking on these pages?

Seems the little ____ers want $25 p.a. just for hosting my photos! Get outta here!

Anyone else know about this? I have a feeling this might be a monthly limit issue, is that right? Within which case the pictures come back tomorrow (first of May)?

The alternative is to transfer all my pix to another host - there's over 700 photos on this thread alone!!! My life is too short to do all that uploading and then edit the link in every post on this thread... :cry:

I've sometimes seen this "bandwidth exeeded" thing on other people's posts. Advice, please!

I have finished photos to show!!!

Cheers - C


Top
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1508 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 ... 101  Next
Go to page Previous  1 ... 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 ... 101  Next

All times are UTC - 7 hours

Fender Play Winter Sale 2020

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: