Throughout my guitar playing life, I have commonly been told that a guitar must be “played in” or that it will sound better the more it is played. There is a really good article concerning this here.
Guitarist of Note – Muriel Anderson
She makes this look so easy…
Just wish that boom mic wasn’t in the way on the next one…
Filed under Guitarists of Note
Making an Electric Hot Pipe
Well, I’ve been thinking for a while about making a new hot-pipe for bending sides.. The one I currently have is fabricated from 2.5″ pipe, and uses a propane torch to provide the heat. There are a number of drawbacks to using the propane. First, you are dealing with an open flame. I built a cradle to hold the torch, but I wanted something a bit more stable. The second issue is controlling the flame height/temperature. The knob used to adjust the flame on thd torch isn’t very precise, and temperature control is fairly non-existent. Lastly, I could see myself in the middle to a side bending session and then running out of propane…
So I decided to build one that used an electric heating coil. I looked for a while until I finally found what I was looking for through ETS Equipment Company in Darien, Illinois. (etsequipment.com). I told them what I was trying to do and they suggested a cartidge type heating unit.
They also had an open coil heater. The cartidge type will require that I have a piece of steel milled by a machine shop. The open coil one works within a piece of pipe. I ended up getting both, but am saving the cartridge one for later.
At any rate, I spoke with Bill, and he was very informative on what I would need to do to make this work. The open coil unit I used is the 120V/600W unit that can go up to 1200 degrees F.. I’m only looking for something that will go up to ~450 degrees. So this should do the trick. Here are a number of photos…
Well, I fabricated a base to hold the pipe, and the heating element.
It ended up working pretty well..
Filed under Building Guitars
Making your own tools, continued…
Well, I was down with a very bad cold over the last week.. So I’m just now getting to posting that back and top plate joining jig..
Here is a photo of the jig during construction:
Here is what the completed thing looks like:
More on this later when I begin to build a guitar…
Filed under Building Guitars
Guitarist of Note
Göran Söllscher – Bourrée – Gigue (J.S.Bach BWV996)
Filed under Guitarists of Note
Making your own tools…
One of the things I find enjoyable about building guitars is that there are a number of tools you need to make yourself, or can make yourself, to assist in the building process. The first is a “Hot Pipe”.
This is basically a piece of 2 1/2″ steel pipe mounted on a board with head gasket material between the base and the board. I bolt this to my workbench, and use the propane torch to heat it up. I make a cradle for the torch as well. I’m looking into getting an electric heating element that I can wire up with a rheostat so I can control the temperature better.. But this current configuration has worked well on the pieces of Rosewood I have used so far.
Other tools I’m currently making include the solera (building board):
And a plate joining jig, that I finished a couple of days ago. I will post a photo of that over the weekend.
Filed under Building Guitars
