Telecaster Style Guitar Build - Part 1

So the next project, which is the first for 2014, is a Telecaster style guitar with very few frills. I mentioned this back in August 2013 (see here).
As per that post I had roughly decided what hardware it was to have so bought the hardware and pickups already, I have a hunk of swamp ash left from a previous project and a nice piece of birds-eye maple.
I found some plans for the body over at TerryDownsMusic.com here  http://terrydownsmusic.com/Archive/tele_body_drawing_revD.pdf and it looks relatively straight forward.

I have planed and jointed the swamp ash and glued the two halves together. I didn't take any pictures of the process but here is one taken from a random picture on the internet (you get the idea by now of how to glue slabs together)

Picture from TundraMans website
http://www.tundraman.com

I have also cut out my logo from some mother of pearl.

Jewellery Box - Part 5 completed so Santa can put it into his sleigh

The Jewellery Box is completed. I finished it today 24th Dec 2013 at 1600 local time here in the UK so now Santa can pick it up and put it into his sleigh for delivery to my wife.

Jewellery Box - Part 4 nearly at the finishing line

I'm almost at the finishing line and writing this on December 23rd - talk about close to the wire!! During final finishing Elly almost came in on the build and discovered what was happening behind closed doors. But I had thoughtfully locked the shop door from the inside. She had to knock and now knows something is being built in the shop and it might be a present.

Rear plywood panel and the lid with finish applied

Jewellery Box - Part 3

Do you know how difficult it is to make something surreptitiously and keep it hidden from the intended recipient? It's very hard.
I've had a few close calls this past week with Elly coming into the shop when you least expect it. I do have a warning buzzer on the door and I can lock it from the inside. She has been in on numerous occasions and has been stood very close to the casework. I have it hidden under a black plastic dustbin liner (a garbage bag for my North American viewers) with all manner of detritus scattered all around. She does suspect something is going on though occasionally asking "what you making?". I had to reply "I'm doing some practice dovetails to hone my skills" - big fib!
Anyway the carcase is complete, the drawers are complete, the lid is made, the coving is done on the decorative trim pieces covering the hidden drawer.
Jobs left to do are:

• attach the lower guide rails
• cut out the mortises for the hinges
• mitre the coving trim pieces
• cut the trim pieces with a fancy pattern
• make internal dividers
• apply finish to the whole
• fit the mirror
• fit the felt inlay

I've got less than a week now so I need to get my skates on.

The casework without its disguise. If you
leave the area suitably cluttered
it doesn't draw too much attention

Re-sawing with a Ryoba

I was running a 18" long x 6" deep x 1.1/4" oak board through my band-saw last night to re-saw it and it must have been case hardened. The wood bound onto the blade. I tried to pull it loose and ended up pulling the blade off the wheels and bent it. Anyway rather than spend 15 minutes trying to find another one and put it in (I was on a roll as usual) I decided to carry on the re-saw down the existing kerf with a Ryoba.
The double sided Japanese saw ripped through that oak like a hot knife through butter. I was really surprised how easy it was and such a smooth finish but won't be making a habit of re-sawing by hand (life is too short :-)  ). Yes I do know that these sort of saws are intended for use with softwoods but needs must.

Here are mine http://www.rutlands.co.uk/sp+set-of-3-compact-japanese-saws+JP1174?tyah=y

A Ryoba saw has a double sided blade, with cross cut teeth on one side and rip cut teeth on the other side, which makes this an excellent all purpose saw. The rip side teeth are smaller at the heel for an easy start and gets progressively larger towards the toe to allow for fast ripping. You can buy expensive hand made ones as above or much cheaper mass produced ones with induction hardened teeth (as I have). As with anything in life you only get what you pay for but the ones I have are OK. I've never used a handmade one so don;t really know what I'm missing. Probably the difference between a cheap clone wood-plane knocked out by the thousand and a high end Lie Nielson bronze.

Anyway I'm more than happy with the Japanese saws I have.

Jewellery Box - Part 2

After gluing the carcase I found that (despite the fact all four feet were on the assembly table and level, the front being all square and the drawer dividers level to each other) the top two sides were not co-planer to each other. I can only imagine some error has crept in during making the two side parts. Anyway the cure was to remove the thin veneer from the left hand end grain face and glue on a thick one (about 2 mm thick or just over 1/16")
When the glue setup I took the block plane and planed a slight taper from front to back. This resulted in a 0.5 mm veneer at the front gently tapering to about 1.5 mm at the rear on the left hand side as shown in the picture.

This will only be seen by fellow woodworkers (and of course you dear reader) but it does now mean the lid will fit without any obvious gaps that would have been seen by everybody!

I then glued in a milled piece of walnut at the back that will become the hinge board. This too was planed down flush with the sides. Everything on the top surface is now co-planer so the lid will sit flat.

Jewellery Box - Part 1

I am in full swing at TMCWoodworks Towers at the moment making Christmas gifts. One of the projects is a jewellery box as a surprise for my fantastic wife Elly. She never reads my blog so I'm safe to post it here (I hope).
Anyway the box is based upon a Norm Abrams New Yankee Workshop project. I bought the plans from the NewYankee Workshop website and adapted them to my needs. As ever I re-drew it using Trimble Sketchup.

This is what it will look like when it's finished.

Box closed - drawer pulls not shown

Box open

Materials

Some time ago I bought a whole raft of lumber and in the pile were some really nice pieces of American Black Walnut. I didn't have enough to do the entire project but sufficient for the exterior details.
The drawer interior components will be made from oak with 1/4" plywood bases. The design also has a hidden drawer which is a fun item.
The hardware will be all Brusso brass components.

Stock prep

I set to work milling all the stock for the carcase to size and glueing the walnut facing on the oak drawer dividers. The sides are made from solid walnut in two pieces. I used Titebond II dark wood for the glue so I didn't get a light glue line. Next the sides were cut to shape with their tapered legs.

Sketchup view of the side panel

The stopped dados (stopped housings) were cut at the router table and I milled some tenons on the drawer dividers. To finesse the tenons into the dados I used a combination of my Record 078 rabbet plane and my Stanley 93 shoulder plane. Both planes are tuned to perfection and produced perfect fits.

Sketchup view of the inside of the side
panel showing dados and rabbets.
BTW I forgot to take pictures while
I was doing the actual work!

The dividers were glued into the side panels and clamped overnight. I also took the opportunity to cut a thin veneer of walnut and applied it to the the top exposed end-grain of the sides.

Carcase clamped up

Carcase revealed.

A lot of work left to do and I have to do this surreptitiously so don't let the cat out of the bag wood fans.

Anna - one of my shop cats

Anna came to us as a young kitten along with Amber who is two months younger. Anna was 2 years old in September and Amber had her 2nd birthday November 1st 2013.
Anna loves my shop and finds all sorts of hidey holes. Her favourite position is on top, yes on top, of my dust/chip extractor. Needless to say it is not running at the time. The extractor has a metal insert to keep the filter bag in an upright position and is a perfect cat perch.

Anna up on her perch

"It's great up here!"

This table saw is a nice place to sit

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 10 - Finishing and installation

I sprayed the cabinet with water from a handheld bottle sprayer. After it dried it had raised the grain and I knocked it back with 320 grit.
The cabinet was then finished in General Finishes Outdoor 450 and I hand applied it. There were 3 coats inside and out to the cabinet and drawers. The top was finished with the same finish buy this was sprayed on with HVLP.
I lightly sanded back between coats and the initial raising of the grain treatment had worked really well. The cabinet ended up with a silky smooth finish.

Cabinet after appling the finish.

The cabinet was then installed in the wet-room. The cut outs I had designed in to clear the water inlet and waste outlet pipes worked like a dream. The top was slid into place after disconnecting the waste water outlet pipe and the cabinet slid underneath. There is about 1.6 mm (1/16") clearance from the top to the underside of the wall mounted basin. I simply sealed the gap with some clear bathroom sealant and the top was secured to the cabinet with some shop made clips.

View showing those awesome
spalted beech door panels

The cabinet is now in situ
and being used.

Thanks for looking at this very enjoyable project.

Terry
  

Record Power AC400 air filter review

I've had this unit for just over 12 months now and thought I would share my thoughts about it with the woodworking community.
The unit came is a large well protected box and was complete with all accessories.
The main unit
A remote control
Batteries
Rubber Feet
Hooks and chains

The specification of the unit is:

• Outer Filter: 5 Microns
• Inner Filter: 1 Micron
• Overall Dimensions: L514 x W431 x H258 mm
• Sound Rating @ 1 m: High Speed 69 dB
• Medium Speed 67 dB
• Low Speed 62 dB
• Air Flow: High Speed 409 CFM
• Medium Speed 362 CFM
• Low Speed 260 CFM
• Motor: 120W, 230V, 50Hz, 1 Ph
• Timer Settings: 1, 2 and 4 hours
• Weight: 14 kg

As I live in the UK it is set to run at 230 V ac. In practice the unit is suitable for shops of up to 113 m3 in size. My shop is around 90 m3 so one unit is more than adequate.

Essentially the AC400 comprises a steel box with pierced removable covers on either end. The motor is directly attached to the impeller to make up an efficient centrifugal fan. These type of fans are extremely quiet in operation.

Siting

Record Power state that the unit is to be mounted at least 2.13M above floor level. I have mine mounted in between the roof trusses in my shop about 2.3 metres above floor level. There is a lifting handle should you want to carry it up a ladder. Rubber feet are provided should you wish to situate it on a high shelf.

AC400 in position in my shop as
seen from below

Sketchup view of where the AC400
is located in my shop

The unit is located above the table saw and hand-tool area in my shop. I have it positioned with the outlet 2/5ths away from the wall on the shorter axis of the shop. My shop is around 5 m x 6.5m so it is essentially about 2m away from the wall. This asymmetric positioning apparently creates a natural air circulation.

Controls

The unit is plugged into a mains electricity socket which is switched permanently on. You can control the unit in two ways:

1. Climb up a ladder and operate the controls on the unit
2. Use the supplied remote control.

The remote control appears to be an infrared sender unit as you have to point it at the AC400 at the outlet side. There must be an optical receiver on the outlet side somewhere. I must confess I cannot see it but my eyes are not as good as they used to be - my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Operation

Controls on the remote are very concise, clear and easy to use.

Pressing the green button switches the AC400 motor on in low speed mode. Pressing the green button again changes to medium speed, once more into high speed. If you press again you go back to low speed and so on. The LEDs on the AC400 register the speed you are currently running at and are very useful.

The yellow button engages a timer function starting with 1 hour, press again for  2 hours and press again for 4 hours.

This is incredibly useful as it automatically switches off so you can leave the shop while it is still running knowing that it will eventually shut itself off.

Noise

What noise?? Seriously in operation the AC400 is really quiet. You barely know it is on. There is no hum just a gentle blowing. At high speed its noise rating at 1m away is 69db which is normal conversation level.

As the thing is up in the air you are not disturbed by it especially in a workshop which has much louder noises around.

Performance

Before I got the unit there always seemed to be a "fog" in the air which lasted quite sometime after the last machining operation. Now it is dispersed very quickly and the shop appears to stay clean after I have swept it. Sure there are still odd bits of dust on flat surfaces but it is much better now.

Filter cleaning/replacement

The filter cartridges are really easy to remove from the AC400 and it can be left in situ. There is a simply steel spring clip holding the outer filters in place. Once extracted these can be vacuumed with the shop vac or replaced. The inner 1 micron filter lasts a bit longer and also can be vacuumed.

The cost of replacement filters is not very high. I think dependant upon usage you may be able to clean them 2 or 3 times a year and then replace the 5 micron filters. The internal ones should last much longer before replacement. 

Five Year Warranty

Record Power stamp this on all their products to stand by the quality of their products. They will support any manufacturing faults that arise in that very long guarantee period. Not many companies offer this sort of warranty these days and Record Power need applauding.

Faults

I have had one fault with my AC400 and it happened 12 months into ownership. I don't use it 24/7 just when I'm in the shop doing machining operations. A couple of weeks back I had used it one night and then the next day it wouldn't start. I checked the batteries in the remote and also tried to operate it with the manual controls. This proved fruitless.

There is a 1 amp 1-3/8" long fuse on the control panel. I removed it and found that it hadn't blown but tested it just in case. All was OK. 

So I went onto Record Power's website and as I had previously registered all of my RP equipment serial numbers there I raised an incident.

Within 24 hours I had a response and they said they had identified a fault with the PCB controller due to faulty components on other similar units. A new PCB was despatched to me and I received it next day.

Disassembling the AC400 is relatively straight forward only requiring a #2 PZ screwdriver. I was easily able to replace the old circuit board with the new one and had it working within about 10 minutes of the postman handing it to me. All in all top marks of 5 stars to Record Power support department.

If you are not too certain of how to replace it yourself RP also offered to get one of their engineers to do it for you. All you had to do is take it to your nearest RP supplier.

Burnt out AC400 PCB
It looks nasty but was easy to replace

Conclusion

Record Power have made a superb, relatively affordable, air cleaner for use in a woodshop. I can heartily recommend this for weekend warrior usage or indeed semi-pros too. With the inclusion of an excellent 5 year warranty combined with superb customer service you can't go wrong with this unit.

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 9 - The top and drawer pulls

Top Panel

The top is made from a nice piece of sapele that was thicknessed to around 22mm (7/8") thick. The front of the panel was designed to protrude 40mm beyond the cabinet and tapered down to around 12mm with a 10x30mm bevel.
The panel is made from two boards jointed and glued up. The glue joint was cleaned up with a combination of cabinet scraper and random orbit sander.
The taper was done by hand with a combination of jointer plane and smoothing plane. I must say sapele cuts like a dream with no tearout if you have sharp blades and observe the grain direction. Long whispery shavings emerged from both planes when nearing the completion cuts.

A beautiful pristine sapele top

The only thing to spoil this was the fact I had to cut a rectangular hole into is and a cutout on the rear to clear the water pipes. It really is a difficult to get your head around but I got out a battery drill and bored 4 holes. Then the jigsaw made short work of cutting out the rectangle. The rear cutout was easier once I had "butchered" the top!
The edges were smoothed and I veneered a thin sliver of sapele on the end grain. Once cured and cut flush the right hand edge and the front edge had a 1/8" radius ovolo router cutter run over them to create a sharp edge and radius.
When sanded back to 220 grit the top was sprayed with some tap water. When this dried the grain was raised and I knocked it back with some 320 grit lightly done with the ROS.

Cut-outs added

Again this panel was pre-finished with several coats of General Finished Exterior 450

Drawer Pulls

The pulls were made from a wenge pen turning blank I had in stock. I simply run them through the planer and then tilted the table saw blade to 17.5 degrees to make the cut-outs for the fingers. The piece was then run through the router to radius the top edge. I cut each pull to length using the cross-cut sled on the table saw and then finished each piece by hand.

These too were pre-finished with Exterior 450 after drilling some pilot holes in the rear of each.

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 8 - The base and final assembly

The base is made from 11mm cabinet quality plywood with two glued on oak faced 6mm plywood panels on the upper surface. I separated the oak panels at the point where the internal divider is so I didn't need to route out a dado. This worked out really well but does need accurate marking out from the carcase to ensure you get it in the right position.
The base panel was cut to size and cut-outs made where the legs protrude into the cabinet.

The panel was then then laminated with the oak ply panels and left overnight to cure.
Next day I was able to cut off the excess and fit it into the cabinet. The base is secured in place with cleats screwed into place with stainless steel screws. I opted for this method just in case of water damage in the future. This is going into a wet-room after all and if the panel is removable it will make it easier to repair.

Base panel being "veneered"
Glad I had some large stage weights and
you can never have enough clamps!

Prefinishing

The base panel was pre-finished prior to assembly in a similar way to the door panels. I also pre-finished most of the carcase prior to inserting the base panel.

Cleats screwed into position

Close up of a cleat

Fully assembled carcase

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 7 - The Doors

I originally had designed the cabinet with a single door but found it may hit the adjacent central heating radiator when installed. So I changed to a two door arrangement.
The hinges were to be concealed so I chose brass Brusso L37 offset knife pivot hinges. These are expensive but really good quality.
I also had some nice spalted beech in stock. So this was used to produce some nice book-matched, raised panels for insetting into the oak frames.

Sketchup representation of the
raised panel doors.

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 6 - The Drawers

One of my favourite parts of wood working is cutting dovetails. I'm not going to do a tutorial on dovetailing as there are many on the internet. The cabinet has three drawers and I decided to cut blind dovetails on the front and through dovetails on the back of each drawer. This was 16 on each drawer. I broke out some cool jazz and set to making them.

Terry's dovetailing kit

I generally find a combination of the following tools make dovetailing a little easier.

• Wheel marker gauge - a traditional one is just as good.
• Engineers square
• 0.5 mm mechanical pencil
• Dovetail saw
• Rule - I love the Incra Precision T-rule as shown in the picture. If you want one have a look here
• LH and RH Skew chisels
• 1/4" to 3/4" bench chisels - if you have a fish tail chisel so much better
• Fret saw
• Mallet - a brass one is a luxury but not essential
• Good light source.
• A good bench with bench dogs, a vice and a bench-hook

I don't bother with the fret saw any more and use my bandsaw to cut out the waste.

Good light is essential.
Here are the two Ikea worklights I recently got
on a recommendation from
Chris Schwarz

I like cutting blind dovetails
using my deep bench-hook.

Cutting a knife wall by undercutting
with a chisel

Another knife wall

Finished front, rear and sides.
Only another 8 more to do!

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 5 - The Web Frames

Web Frames in a cabinet play an important function. They add rigidity to the entire structure and they most importantly support the drawers. They also allow the drawers to pull out without tipping.
I decided to glue up the entire frame first of all and insert the webframes afterwards. This prevents any panic when glueing up and also ensures that the frame remains square.

Sketchup representation of the webframes
used on this cabinet.

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 4 - The Cross Members

There are several cross members in this cabinet to make up the structural integrity of the project. As the water pipes are existing care had to be taken to design for them.

Sketchup representation of the
crossmembers

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 3 - The Side Frames

 There are two side frames to make. One goes against the wall so all its decorative panels had to face away from the wall. After all you will see them when you open the doors.

The other side frame (the right hand one) will face a person walking into the room so its decorative panels had to face outwards. The internal faces would not be seen as the drawers will be adjacent.

Sketchup representation of the
side frames

The first thing was to mill the legs to dimension and cut to length. Next the mortises were cut with the dedicated hollow chisel mortiser.

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 2 - The Space

The newly remodelled shower room had the wash basin fitted directly to the wall and was plumbed in. I knew it would be sometime before I got around to making the vanity unit and the builder did as we asked.

Because of this I had to design the vanity unit around the sink not the other way around.

View from under the sink
showing the plumbing

View showing how much space
there is when the door is open.

So I came up with the design in the previous post and to get around the problem with the plumbing designed it like this:

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 1 - The Design Brief

The blog has been quiet lately due to me working on a shower room under basin vanity unit.
Sometime ago we had both our shower room (or wet room) and bathroom re-modelled with floor to ceiling tiling and underfloor heated floor tiles. I designed and built the bathroom vanity unit and it was featured on the WoodWhisperer website here.

Design Brief

My brief from the customer was:

• Somewhere to put everyday toiletry items
• Storage for some cleaning items
• It must match what I had already built in the bathroom 
• A nice piece of hardwood furniture that wasn't like Ikea stuff.

The Design

So the time had come to complete the vanity unit for the wet room matching the one in the bathroom.
I designed it on Sketchup and here is a picture of it virtualized in 3D.

Bessey Uni-Clamp Review

Recently I saw the Bessey Uni-Clamps on sale for a reasonable price so bought a set of 4.

I have to say these are great for small glue ups as they follow the now standard parallel clamping format and are classed as light duty. The version I bought is the UK 300/80 which in USA/Canada are the 12" x 3 1/8".

Facebook tells employees, 'build something' -- with a table saw

Facebook has a woodshop for their employees. There is a video and a description of it at this link.
It seems that in order for the employees to be creative in their work they should also try to be creative making something with their hands.

I wish all employers were so forward thinking. Here is the video:

Ikea Worklights

I've needed some supplemental lighting in my shop for a while. The bandsaw and the drill press need some task lighting and the workbench would benefit from some task lighting. Recently Chris Schwarz wrote in his blog about buying some low energy LED lights from Ikea. Now if it is good enough for Chris then it is good enough for me so I've ordered some JANSJÖ clip on lights for the machines and a pair of JANSJÖ table top lights for the bench . I hope Chris is right!

 

A faux door for an antique door knocker

My friends live in an 18th century cottage in South Glouceshireshire, England and they are having a new garden room/kitchen built upon it. The cottage is considerably larger now than it was in the 18th century due to various additions over the years. When they removed the ivy covering most of the external wall nearest the lane it revealed a blocked up doorway. This must have been the doorway from the roadway into the 2 room cottage when it was originally built. My friends have lived in the cottage for the best part of 30+ years and did not know of its existence.
Whilst on holiday in Cairo, Egypt a few years back they bought an antique door knocker and had never fitted it. This last weekend we went over to Westonbirt Arboretum a few miles away to visit TreeFest. This is an annual event and attracts people from far and wide to everything to do with wood. Norm decided he wanted a nice piece of wood to mount the knocker on.
He turned up a piece of brown English oak for about £2. It had wormy edges and a few straight saw cuts. It was about 16mm (5/8") thick.

I took it, complete with the knocker, back to my shop and set to making the straight saw edges into a more pleasing irregular pattern with the scroll saw.

Scroll sawing the sawn edges to an irregular shape

WoodFest at Westonbirt Arboretum England

Last weekend was the annual Woodfest at Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire, England. I went along with a few friends and bought some English Elm in the wood sale. One thing I thought you may be interested in was a demonstration of a steam driven "tablesaw". This thing was huge and was probably used to threaten James Bond in a movie. "I expect you to die Mr Bond"

This thing was very impressive and had an enormous blade that cut through lumber like a hot knife through butter. In fact the tree trunk shown in the picture was completed end to end in about 10 seconds. It was about 12 feet long and the board was about 12" deep. The blade still had plenty of capacity and had a riving knife.
When on load the drive belt was jumping about considerably but was in no danger of falling off. One thing did worry me though was the blade was constantly turning when the men were turning the log and manipulating it for the next cut. The spectators were behind metal fencing about 20 feet away.

The full rig

Astronomy Observation Chair

As the nights get longer at my latitude (North West England) thoughts can now go back to observing the universe. Last year my wife bought me a brilliant present of a 8" reflecting telescope for a significant birthday.
I have been using it whenever there were clear skies last year and during the winter of this year.
One of the problems I found though was I just couldn't find a chair that was comfortable enough to cope with the varying angles possible with the telescope. When it was pointing upwards I had to stand, when it was pointing at around 45 degrees I had difficulty sitting or standing. When it was a low angles I just couldn't get a chair or stool down low enough.

I saw an article in last August's (2012) Sky At Night Magazine about building a suitable chair. Unfortunately the iPad version of the magazine didn't contain the plans. Undeterred I decided to google it. I mean everything is on the internet - right?

Baritone Guitar Build Part 9 - Completion

So the wiring was completed and the two active Seymour Duncan Blackouts are wired in conventional Neck-Neck/Bridge-Neck mode. I have only used single volume and tone controls too. The wiring diagram is here but as it is on the Seymour Duncan website the location may change in time. Look for 2 blackout, 1 vol, 1 tone, 3 way.

I fitted this wiring into the cavity

And ended up with this

All the remaining hardware was fitted including the nut and the guitar had the Elixir Baritone strings added.

The thickest string, a low B, was 0.068" or 1.73 in diameter and would not fit through the machine head hole. I had to carefully open it up with a 2 mm drill. Fortunately the metal was just brass so was easy to drill. Also the locking anvil mechanism had to be opened in the same process.

The strings were all tightened and then I had to carefully adjust the depth of each of the nut slots with nut files. I ended up with each string clearing the 1st fret by 0.5mm or 0.020". This is as a starting point because I will see how over the next few weeks it reacts. The intonation of the Schaller Hannes bridge was set and the truss rod tightened very slightly.

The clearance at at the 8th fret when fretted at the 1st and 17th frets is about .75mm on the bass side and .25 on the treble side. The string action at the 12th fret when the strings are unfretted is around 3mm on the bass side and about 1.75mm on the treble side. This seems to be ideal for a baritone guitar. I didn't have any frame of reference to refer to for this one so just using my experience building others.

Front view

So here it is in all its glory. The Dunluce IIIB Baritone.

Rear view
That red stain is glorious over
the mahogany.