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S. Heslop:
I'd heard that carving the neck is probably the easiest part of making any stringed instrument, and i'm happy to say that it's indeed true.

Rasp worked well, but I probably would've done fine with just the coarse crosscut file.

There's alot of methods for carving necks it seems, but I liked the idea of this one; faceting the neck until it approximates the profile then smoothing it.

Although after the first facets I started to think 'who cares about getting it to the plan' and just carved away at it till it seemed about right. I'd say the faceting probably helped keep it even though.

This is also the first time i've gotten a scraper sharpened so well and it really pulled off a surprising amount of material. It's such a goofy tool in principle yet it works so well.

After less than an hour I had it shaped and sanded. I didn't time myself but i'd guess it took about 30-40 minutes. It's kinda funny considering how much effort I put into assembling the whole gamut of carving tools.

It's also hard to take a photo that shows the shape. I guess ideally i'd find somewhere with strong lighting from one direction, which I was trying to do in this photo with it down by the side of the router table.

Anyways, being an idiot I thought this would take up the whole day. So now i'm kinda sitting around trying to think of what to do next. Maybe figure out how to put the frets in. It's trickier now that i've got the edge binding in the way. I tried nipping the tangs off with some small side cutters but it bent the wire pretty bad and was tough getting it back. Everywhere I look online seems to recommend either fancy pants tooling or just carefully filing the tangs away, but I'm hoping to find something easier and cheaper.

They sell a fret tang nipper from stewmac that everyone seems to get real excited about, and it took a while to find a close-up video in action and it just seems to be a regular old hand nibbler. So i'm considering trying to make something like that.

AdeV:
Suddenly that's really starting to look like a lovely instrument... I'm sure it'll play as well as it looks.

Question - the frets, are they just a piece of relatively thick wire, or a specifically shaped extrusion? Like a thin flat bar? Either way, I'm assuming you cut them over-length, glue them in place, then file the hanging ends off? Or do you cut them, file them to length & glue them in that way? If the latter, then careful "filing" with a flap disk on an angle grinder would seem to be the obvious, and much faster, method of sizing them to length. I'd be tempted to make a jig - a simple block of wood with an accurately drilled hole, which traps the fret to the exact right depth; then simply angle grind flush to the block. A pair of small pliers might be needed to extract the finished fret, which is now the perfect length to glue in place.

If you glue them in then file them, I'd do it exactly the same way, except I'd probably put some masking tape on that plastic edging, to prevent scuffing.

Edit to add: A slightly modifed version of the above: Make the hole big enough to contain ALL of your frets (+ 2/3 spares); angle grind all to length, then either tap out or split the block to release them. Same result, but only one operation instead of a dozen or so...

S. Heslop:

--- Quote from: AdeV on July 26, 2015, 01:12:58 PM ---Suddenly that's really starting to look like a lovely instrument... I'm sure it'll play as well as it looks.

Question - the frets, are they just a piece of relatively thick wire, or a specifically shaped extrusion? Like a thin flat bar? Either way, I'm assuming you cut them over-length, glue them in place, then file the hanging ends off? Or do you cut them, file them to length & glue them in that way? If the latter, then careful "filing" with a flap disk on an angle grinder would seem to be the obvious, and much faster, method of sizing them to length. I'd be tempted to make a jig - a simple block of wood with an accurately drilled hole, which traps the fret to the exact right depth; then simply angle grind flush to the block. A pair of small pliers might be needed to extract the finished fret, which is now the perfect length to glue in place.

If you glue them in then file them, I'd do it exactly the same way, except I'd probably put some masking tape on that plastic edging, to prevent scuffing.

Edit to add: A slightly modifed version of the above: Make the hole big enough to contain ALL of your frets (+ 2/3 spares); angle grind all to length, then either tap out or split the block to release them. Same result, but only one operation instead of a dozen or so...

--- End quote ---

Thanks. The fret wire is like an extrusion, somewhat of a mushroom cross section. The 'stalk' aka tang also has little barbs all the way down that grip into the wood. They're also made from fairly soft metal, German silver I think. And they are filed to length after sticking them in.

Also the problem isn't cutting them to length, but cutting out the tang where the edge-banding is. Since there's not a slot there, but the fret still needs to hang over it.

Here's a picture to illustrate. It'll probably be easy enough to just file the tang away by hand in all honesty. But I've got an idea for a kind of block that could hold them, with tape over half of the file so it doesn't wear away the block where it contacts.

nrml:
The little gouge marks still left can be easily made invisible with those bits of coloured wax that are made for that purpose.

S. Heslop:
Got some brass today. Couldn't get the size I wanted at a reasonable price so I got another shape that still fit the parts. The original idea was that id be able to grind away part of the stuff with a burr in the router table but after what I learned today i'm not sure if that would've worked anyways.

Made a little test shoe with the hacksaw and files. It has that hand-made charm~

Took way too long that way and is fairly ugly despite all the effort, and I wasn't so hot on the idea of doing 28 like that, so i'm definitely going to try doing it in an overly complicated but more entertaining way.

I first tried cutting it on the tablesaw but the cut was getting narrower, and I was blaming blade deflection. So I tried bandsawing it and had similar problems against a fence. Worked out better free-hand, but you can see the offcut curling away.

The bar itself was also curling away. Internal stresses I suppose. This was pulling it away from the fence and making the cut get narrower. I'd heard that this could happen but I always imagined it being a matter of a few thousandths, and nothing quite as dramatic as this. It also stayed fairly cool during the bandsaw cut so I don't think it was bending from heat expansion on one side.

I straightened it by pulling on it in the vise a bunch and sent it through the drum sander, but it bowed again while doing that and I didn't notice until i'd overshot the 10mm mark I was aiming for. Straightened it again and kept an eye on it, and it's now at about 9mm but still useable.

Then I hacksawed it off. Was originally going to use the tablesaw but the metal cutting blade didn't raise high enough, and the bandsaw didn't produce anywhere near a straight cut. Then I ganged them up in 5s (got away with 10 for the last... 10) to file a flat side to them, mostly just for referencing and to make drilling a hole easier.

It was alot of work and there's more to go. I'm still going to try using the burrs, by clamping them into a stack like in the above picture. Chances are the stack will explode and fling them all everywhere, but it's something I really want to try out regardless.

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