DIY Polishing Machine ~ Luthiery Laboratories

DIY Polishing Machine

Well, it's that time of year again, time to renew the web hosting. And for those of you that don't know, that has become a lot more expensive than it used to be. Fifty dollars a year is now several hundred. Not to mention the price of domain names has gone up ten-fold.

And I just found out that the nice folks at PayPal disabled all my Support buttons, and I never got a notice (although that may be my fault.) In any case, it is all working again now, so if you would like to make a small donation to help defray these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

This was my initial attempt at a polishing machine. Not pictured is the shroud I made for it to contain the spray.

This is for wet-polishing with sponges and automotive polishing compound. It is a very messy process - drops of "mud" fly everywhere. However, it does work. It takes great care to avoid going through the finish, which is a disaster. I have since moved to dry-buffing with cloth wheels.

The Harbor Freight polisher blew up a few days past the measly 90-day warranty. These Chinese tools often have almost no grease on the gears and bearings, and immediately start to tear themselves up inside. But I was expecting that, and had remedied it first thing, so I had to wait for some other part to fail. The trigger - easily replaceable, if you can get one, which you can't. That's today's lesson on cheap tools. I replaced it with a DeWalt that is still going like new.

Finishing

Black Polyurethane body. This is during the polishing process, you can see it is not even clean. The front came out like black glass. I smoothed the orange-peel with 1500 grit wet, then 2000 and 3000. Then I switched to the random orbital with a red sponge cutting pad and Turtle Wax rubbing compound that claims to remove 1200 scratches. Shouldn't be any 1200 scratches, since I started with 1500. That came out shiny, but with swirl marks in the light. Then I switched to another red cutting pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, and finally a softer yellow pad with the same Meguiar's. At that point, it was pretty much a factory finish. I didn't work as hard on the back, it is nice, but will soon enough encounter a zipper or belt buckle, so the effort would be wasted.

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August 23, 2020

Artec EXP Active Tone Control

August 23, 2020

My verdict on active tone controls for a guitar is that they are not worth it. There is already plenty of treble, and not enough bass that boosting it will make much difference. If you want to try an active control on a guitar, try an onboard distortion instead.

But the Artec EXP tone control is a funny thing. In the middle, it gives a flat clean boost. Turn it forward, and you get a high/low boost, or what amounts to a mid-scoop. Turn it back, and it gives a mid-boost. Sounds interesting, so I decided to try one.

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