I was playing around with my new welder, and eventually, I did this. That is a 3/16" round attached to a 1/4" flat - a very common joint for a truss rod. It's not beautiful, but it is strong, you can see how I tried to pull it apart. Then I sawed the end off, and you can see it is solid - no slag inclusions, just two pinpricks at the 'corners' of the round. Welding is not as scary as I thought, but it is going to take a lot of practice. My welds seem to be a matter of luck, but my luck is improving.
This is a spray booth I just made. This should work much better than the ad-hoc spraying setups I've used until now. I came up with the following criteria for the design:
This is the angled headstock jig I built from pine scrap, with an already-cut piece of 5" Home Depot maple headstock material attached with clamps. Basically, this jig is a 90-degree square brace, as precise as I could build it. It is square in all three dimensions, the most important being the vertical direction. The final stage of construction of the jig was to smooth all the surfaces on the sander, true up the saw, and then true-up the jig face by shaving it with the saw. You can see that the angle of the headstock is easily selected on the saw. The accuracy of this angle is not critical, as long as you are in the ballpark, anything will work.
Front view of main frame, showing friction arm & setup supports inside. The odd shape of the base was already that way, I just used it as-is.
The Radius Jig is capable of cutting constant radii from 6 to 16 inches, both concave and convex, as well as convex conical radii. That means it can cut sanding blocks, clamping cauls, and 'compound radius' fingerboards. Sanding blocks can be cut up to a finished length of 14", while fingerboards can be cut up to 28", enough for even an extra-long scale bass.
This is the biggest of the Audiovoxes, weighing in at a full 12 pounds, with a 36" scale. The neck is a Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) floorboard over maple, with a straight cutout headstock. There are over 100 marker dots. The body is veneered masonite over solid plywood, with Danelectro-style Tolex binding. There are also strap buttons, this instrument can be played vertically or horizontally.
These three pieces will go together as shown to make a very strong angled headstock. This construction, known as a 'scarf joint', sandwiches the headstock between the neck and the fretboard. Unless the glue fails ( which has been known to happen ) this joint will never break. It also has the advantage of being very economical, as the neck piece only needs to be as wide as the neck, not the headstock. You can use 2-1/2" (3") lumber for the neck and 5-1/2" (6") for the headstock.
Here at Luthiery Labs, we're only interested in woods that are reasonably priced and locally available.
Wood Notes:
Since the gubment made rosewood illegal, ** despite the fact that there is no real definition of what rosewood is, alternative fretboard woods are going to become more mainstream in loothery. Bubinga is also illegal now, but that's no great loss.
This one went through a long and torturous build process over almost two years. All I can say is don't believe the "advice" you find on talk_ass. However, in the end, it turned out to be a pretty nice instrument.
This one is kind of a joke and an experiment in just how cheap you can build a guitar. The body is dry-erase board over plywood - no finish - with Tolex side binding. Dry-erase board is Masonite covered with Melamine. The neck is 100% Radiata pine, even the fretboard. The "inlays" are glitter and CA glue. The pickguard is the other side of the dry-erase board - 'chalkboard'. The pickup mount is a 57 cent switch plate.
