The Hub

Hi everyone! I'm trying to wrap my head around this problem. I was doing some fret on a throwaway neck and found a couple of uneven frets in the middle of the neck. (I made sure to seat them down before levelling too!) While levelling, I came across an issue where the first few frets and the last few frets were being sanded down before the middle frets. I did make sure the neck was straight with a notched straight edge and the StewMac n…

Hello All! My first post and I'm very happy to be here and share the highs and lows of this pony ride. After years of bending sides on a hot pipe or bending machines belonging to 'other people', I finally built myself a bending machine. Functionally it is great, but the result on some test material was far from great. See pictures attached. What you see here is a doug fir 'test side' that certainly came out guitar shaped, but oh my, what…

I'm looking for the mandolin/violin side bending extension that StewMac used to sell and recently discontinued. Does anyone have one that they don't need and would like to sell?

I'm building my first BRW guitar, started with the back, pictured below. What do you normally thickness BRW sides to? I guess they can probably be a bit under 2 mm, but I don't want to overdo it in case there is some slight deformation that needs to be sanded later. I bend manually on a heating iron if that makes any difference.

hello looths - i'm building my first guitar. generally following (and enjoying) the gore/gilet books. after 3 tries, i've yet to get a crack free bend around the nose of a venetian cutaway with a mahogany side. i made a version of the fox bender - using clamps on hand for the waist and cutaway, and a pid temp controller (verified accuracy), and am using a stew mac blanket and three straps. the recipe for my last attempt was: sapelle (fo…

Side bender machine in great condition. Includes spring steel, heating blankets, and thermocouple. No bending forms included, just the machine itself. Asking $600 for local pickup in Chicago area.

A client has asked me to build an acoustic guitar using crelicam ebony for the back and sides that he is getting form Stewmac. I have heard it's challenging to bend, and this will be an OM so the waist is pretty tight. Any thoughts or suggestions for bending these sides? I use a homemade bending machine modelled after LMI's latest design (may they rest in peace) and I have had good success bending rosewood, walnut, mahogany, and pau fer…

I drew up and printed these F hole plugs for a customer a little while back, felt like showing them off here. The bottom diamond shaped piece has a M4 nut in it, and is super glued to the body of the plug at its two tips. An M4 screw threads into the nut through the counter-sunk hole in the top of the plug. The entire plug drops into the F hole, and then you can tighten the screw slightly to expand the plug so it clamps itself into plac…

I have some acoustic building templates for anyone that's interested. I bought these from Allied Lutherie before I got into CNC work. Now that I'm drawing my own stuff I don't really use these at all. Maybe someone would find them useful? Includes: 1 - L-00 template for outside form (1/2" mdf) 1 - L-00 template for side bending form (1/2" mdf) 1- L-00 body profile template (1/8" polycarbonate) 1 - J-45 template for outside form 1 - J-45 temp…

I am having a little trouble bending my first acoustic sides. The wood is a interlocked mahogany. I am hand bending on a temp controlled 2" curling iron. I have thicknessed the sides down to 1.9mm but still got some wrinkling and cracking trying to bend around the cutaway. I am trying to figure out how to improve this for the next attempt. I have read some conflicting information on how to do this though. Thus far my plan for the next a…

So I've ended up with a 1961 Harmony H54 for free. The neck has about .022" of relief without strings on it. The fretboard was taken off long ago. I got it like that, it was just stuck on with double sided tape. I have no clue why it was taken off other than maybe someone wanted to fix the excessive relief and changed their mind. It looks like the original steel reinforcement rod was never actually glued in. It seems like it was bent a…