What are you building with your milled wood? merged

[AndyR]

Nothing fancy - and cheating a little

I picked up this wood lathe of questionable quality on craigslist a week or so ago and made the stand last weekend. The idea for the stand constuction came from the web somewhere, and I have to say for around $30.00 it's pretty sturdy. I say it's not that high of quality but for my uses it works fine.

I turned this handle for a bailey #4 that I'm refurbishing from a hunk of Osage Orange that I found along the side of the road (in a hedgerow). It was mostly dried out as it had pobably been there a year or so and has been drying inside for a while now. I really like this wood! When I get the milling stuff set up I think thats probably going to be one of my favorites.

I've been watching this thread for a while and all of the work here is impressive. I'm sort of a beginner.

Thanks for all the inspiration.
Now to find some old socket chisels in need of newly turned handles...

Andy

 

[stonykill]

very nice. I love using my lathe. Keep it up!

 

[dustytools]

I love to turn wood too. Nice job on the handle and keep posting pictures of your work.

 

[BobL]

I wish I had a lathe ! - OTOH maybe it's good that I don't, otherwise that is all I would do!

 

[woodshop]

I wish I had a lathe ! - OTOH maybe it's good that I don't, otherwise that is all I would do!

Sorta where I'm coming from Bob... the lathe is one of the least used tools in my shop at the moment because of the steep learning curve which would take LOTS of my time, which would take away from everything else. I've muddled through a few things, made some chair rungs etc, but I see the magic some can do on a lathe with the right techniques and I marvel. One day I will take the time to get better on it.

Nice little plane knob Andy... I love working with osage orange. It's hard as a rock yet is still relatively easy to work in the shop. As we speak I have over 1000 bd ft of osage logs still in my driveway waiting to be milled.

 

[Adkpk]

Ah, yes, the lathe. I picked one up this summer at a garage sale. I payed $140. I think for a table saw, jointer combo and this lathe.

The lathe came with all kinds of extras including a draw full of chisels. The table saw works great but the jointer needs a pulley. Does anyone know of a company who specializes in pulleys. It doesn't have a key, instead, how do you say, it's flat on 1/4 of the shaft.

 

[rayvil01]

Does anyone know of a company who specializes in pulleys?

Mc Master-Carr has a pretty good selection: http://www.mcmaster.com/

 

[woodshop]

Does anyone know of a company who specializes in pulleys?

Mc Master-Carr has a pretty good selection: http://www.mcmaster.com/

I've used Master-Carr, and also another good one for that kinda stuff is MSC
www.mscdirect.com

Both of these companies specialize in that kind of thing, as well as just about anything else industrial/mechanical. They are not the cheapest though.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

Through feats of pure skill, I chopped off a piece of cedar I milled and used it for a riser this past weekend. We had some hardwood put in and I discovered that I forgot that the top riser on this step had carpet on it so with the carpet removed it left a patch of OSB. Rather than make the 20 minute trip into town for a proper board, I just cut a piece and put it in. We'll paint it later. --Ian

 

[BobL]

Through feats of pure skill, I chopped off a piece of cedar I milled and used it for a riser this past weekend. We had some hardwood put in and I discovered that I forgot that the top riser on this step had carpet on it so with the carpet removed it left a patch of OSB. Rather than make the 20 minute trip into town for a proper board, I just cut a piece and put it in. We'll paint it later. --Ian

These are the kind of solutions I like - I hope you made it clear to your significant other that this was too!

 

[aquan8tor]

Ah, yes, the lathe. I picked one up this summer at a garage sale. I payed $140. I think for a table saw, jointer combo and this lathe.

The lathe came with all kinds of extras including a draw full of chisels. The table saw works great but the jointer needs a pulley. Does anyone know of a company who specializes in pulleys. It doesn't have a key, instead, how do you say, it's flat on 1/4 of the shaft.

I had a similar problem finding a pulley to match my old rockwell 4" jointer that I got from a guy locally. I found a seller on ebay that has lots of pulleys, good prices, etc. "electricmotorsite" is his user id. if you can't find anything through mcmastercarr or msc. Those megacatalogs can be daunting, but I've sure found a lot of things through McMaster-Carr over the years that I couldn't find anywhere else. Good stuff.

 

[BobL]

Not with my wood but I know you guys are wood freaks so I thought you might like see what I'm doing at a two week intensive luthiers in Melbourne. Building an Acoustic Guitar in 2 weeks using all Aussie timber.

Starting point - Tasmanian Blackwood


Joining the back.


Steam Bending the sides. The teacher (Chris Wynne) is the guy standing on the right.


Joining the top.


Bent sides ready to be joined.


More pics in the next post.

 

[BobL]

Acoustic Guitar WIP 2

Joining the sides:


Attaching the back bracing to the back. The bracing is made from Bunya Pine.


Added the edge liners.


Here is another students effort using Black Heart Sassafras.


Sides being attached to body.

 

[BobL]

Acoustic Guitar Building WIP Part 3

FInal Gluing of back braces.


Rosetta and soundhole in King Billy Pine soundboard.


Scalloped Bracing on back of sound board - the bracing is in Bunya Pine. This took one whole day - all hand done.


So here is where I'm up to at the end of 4 days. The neck is Queensland Maple.


And, just to round things out, at the end of the day 3 ex students and the guitars they made at a previous course turn up and jam for us.


This is nearly as good as milling. My aim some time in the future is no to turn what I mill into something like this.

Cheers

 

[woodshop]

Scalloped Bracing on back of sound board - the bracing is in Bunya Pine. This took one whole day - all hand done.

Very interesting post... this is an example of how satisfying making something from wood can be. Making a musical instrument adds yet another dimension to the project as every time you play it you're thinking of how you built it from scratch. I've built two hammer dulcimers to date, and the advice I can give to anybody making any kind of soundbox type instrument like these is... patience and SUPER strict attention to detail. If you ever build one, you can appreciate why custom handmade good ones cost so much.

 

[BobL]

Very interesting post... this is an example of how satisfying making something from wood can be. Making a musical instrument adds yet another dimension to the project as every time you play it you're thinking of how you built it from scratch. I've built two hammer dulcimers to date, and the advice I can give to anybody making any kind of soundbox type instrument like these is... patience and SUPER strict attention to detail. If you ever build one, you can appreciate why custom handmade good ones cost so much.

RE: patience and SUPER strict attention to detail.
The scalloped bracing widths are finished with a large belt/drum sander to within 0.1 mm of their final widths. Apparently this is the critical dimension. The height tolerances of the braces varies from several mm to less than 0.5 mm. The bracing has to be done in a specific sequence to ensure the 2 mm curvature of the front is developed progressively so that it is maintained.

 

[aquan8tor]

FInal Gluing of back braces.

Rosetta and soundhole in King Billy Pine soundboard.

Scalloped Bracing on back of sound board - the bracing is in Bunya Pine. This took one whole day - all hand done.

So here is where I'm up to at the end of 4 days. The neck is Queensland Maple.

And, just to round things out, at the end of the day 3 ex students and the guitars they made at a previous course turn up and jam for us.

This is nearly as good as milling. My aim some time in the future is no to turn what I mill into something like this.

Cheers

WOW! That's some beautiful and skillful work there, Bob. Luthiery is an incredible and beautiful craft! I'm a saxophonist, but I play with a lot of old time string musicians, one of which works as a luthier. I have the utmost respect for people that make instruments. Truly a dying craft. Nice post!!!!

 

[BobL]

WOW! That's some beautiful and skillful work there, Bob. Luthiery is an incredible and beautiful craft! I'm a saxophonist, but I play with a lot of old time string musicians, one of which works as a luthier. I have the utmost respect for people that make instruments. Truly a dying craft. Nice post!!!!

Thanks Aquanator,

Last couple of days (Days 5-6-7 of the course) I have more or less finished the body and have been working on the neck and fret board. The neck is rough bandsaw cut to shape and then hand carved (spokeshave, rasps, scrapers and sandpaper). In this Picture the fretboard (made of an incredibly hard timber called Gidgee) isis just held in place with masking tape.


This evening the neck was finally glued to the body.


Tomorrow (day 8) I will be gluing the fretboard on and doing the final carving of the headstock and neck. Then it's sand - sand sand for a whole day!!

Cheers

 

[Woodsurfer]

Looks great Bob, very interesting. I like the names of the Aussie wood... Tasmanian Blackwood, Bunya Pine, King Billy - great stuff.

Some questions! What is the fretboard made from? Is the neck a mix of heart wood and sapwood (looks partly white and partly gray)? Is that soundhole rosette an inlay? How are the fret cuts made? No room for error there. Won't it be great to get some strings on it and let it ring out?!

 

[BobL]

Looks great Bob, very interesting. I like the names of the Aussie wood... Tasmanian Blackwood, Bunya Pine, King Billy - great stuff.

Thanks

RE: What is the fretboard made from?
The Fretboard is from a timber called Gidgee. It's almost as hard as ebony but it has some wonderful variations and striations of grain ranging between deep chocolate brown, medium beige, cream and white and even hints of grey. It rarely comes in big trees. Here is a link to a closer up picture of it

RE: Is the neck a mix of heart wood and sapwood (looks partly white and partly gray)?
The dark stripe on the neck is the internal truss rod line routed out ready to go.

RE: Is that soundhole rosette an inlay?
No - its just a sort of plastic herringbone ring. As this is my first guitar I have concentrated on learning the basics well without worrying too much about the artistic side of things.

RE: How are the fret cuts made?
The Luthier has a custom made fine toothed circular saw (6") and we used a set of acrylic templates and a sliding table - it was too easy - it took about 3 minutes to cut them!

RE: Won't it be great to get some strings on it and let it ring out?!

Yeah - all being well that will be friday. The Sound box already has a wonderful hollow booming sound when you tap a drum beat on it!