Thank you so much! You’ve made this old man feel better about himself and the future by being the first wood nerd worsethan myself. Granted I don’t hang with luthiers but have done very high end cabinets and trim for 20 years. Great stuff!
Excellent Tom! Perfect with coffee. Really appreciate your content and personality. Maybe start a video series that documents your whole build process? From wood selection to finishing? It would provide you with a clear path for your videos and allow you to segue into operational hacks. : ) I am of course just babbling and any content you provide us with is just fine.
Here’s a question for ya. Can you do a blog on how to fill a ding on a satin wood acoustic guitar (…Taylor 322ce…). Some suggestions include, thin glue mixed with chalk, or thin glue then use wire wool 000 to get the satin finish. The only other issue, it’s close to the strap button / input cable and close to binding. Mainly a cosmetic finish issue, but would make the guitar perfect once again. 🙏🏻🇬🇧📺👏
All very interesting and even more useful. I have used a similar trick to your screw method when fitting patches into steel fabrications where I would use a grinder to nick the edges of a plate to the depth that I required removing. As with your screw method once the nicks disappear the plate ought to be to size and fit into place.
The plywood and screw trick is very clever - despite being of little use for electric builds. The sanding board and chalk line tricks are useful for all types of builds. The masking tape and superglue trick is so common it probably shouldn't even count. Tricks that are essentially using a fancy tool are not really tricks. Doing the same thing with a paperclip, a rubber band, and popsicle sticks (for example) - now THAT would be a trick!
Excellent assortment of tips! Thanks for window into the parts of the process that can be the most troubling, and rectifying them. The semi-permanent fixing is a really great idea in particular, and the thickness/removal jig.
I always wondered ,,, WHY , In a Violin or Fiddle in My Region of the world , there's a " Soundpost" , That's friction Fit Placed , directly under the Bridge and against the back of the Violin ,,, Inside most times somewhere about 3/8's in diameter ! This Soundpost , greatly amplifys the volume of the instrument and brings it alive ! So why doesn't a Mandolin or Guitar , Benefit from that same Thinking ? A viola, cello , Bass has them ,,, ? And if it's because we Play the Mandolin or Guitar against our Body and would Dampen the sonic resonance ,,, What would be the Answer to that problem ?
I get this question a lot and it boils down to the fundamental difference in the mechanics of the respective family of instruments, primarily how the strings are played, ie bowed vs plucked. There’s quite a lot written about this online so I won’t butcher the explanation here! 🙏
You mentioned in a previous video a while back about the neck-carving-sanding-board method. I think i've done 4 or 5 necks with that technique now, not sure how I ever managed without it! Also, if you need white pencils, and want a propelling pencil version, it took forever to find some but found that you can get those from dress makers. They use it for writing on material. Way better than endlessly sharpening a white pencil. I like the idea of the scalpel-chalk option for marking cut lines but it's probably not so ideal for quick marking, putting measurements on etc.
Nicely done. I also have a tip for you. When you’re measuring depth with a calliper like you did with the block and screw, you can use the opposite side of the calliper. The very head of the calibre is also a shelf that you can measure against but it is much larger so it will register against a flat surface giving a more stable reading.
Thanks so much for sharing, would be possible please to show a technique (we are sure you master? on how to build a fret board, how you transfer the positions of the frets in the wood and more important maybe, how to make a template from scratch, what tools to use materials etc, so we don't have to pay a certain company to make it for us. It would be greatly appreciated !!
Probably deciding to become a luthier in the first place 😉 - thankfully I’ve had nothing catastrophic, I’ve broken sets and dinged lacquer, maybe carved a neck too thin or maybe over worked a bridge but nothing that hasn’t just required time to fix.
Hello Tom, one little question: When calculating where the bridge needs to be glued you basically project the distance between fret 0 (nut) to the 12th fret from the 12th fret until the bridge position, correct? On that sense, the alignment needs to be where the saddle will be or where the bridge will begin?
That particular jig can be used either with the saddle slot or the front of the bridge as a reference point. If you intend to use a compensated saddle I suggest using the stewmac fret calculator on their website to get accurate measurements for where your saddle needs be based on you desired scale length.
@Tom Sands Slowly catching up with your content - very good! Not carving, but finishing especially tight into the 90° corner where fine sanding guitar can easily cause a sanding track on neck heel & visa versa. Quite a challenge!
@@TomSandsGuitars I've already used the tape+CA like 100 times in one guitar build since you posted the video. + the flat board and and the chalk in the line... This video is paying dividends.
