Official Luthiers Forum!

The 'Fun Little Side Project' thread was a nice reminder of the range of things built by forum members, and reminded me of an older thread I happened on while doing research. That thread covered canoes, carpentry, and a half dozen other projects from outside the usual stuff.

Please take a few moments to post some of the other projects you are working on or have recently completed... go ahead and show off a bit!

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Does mowing the lawn count?

After losing three quarters of my television channels I called in a satellite TV expert. He advised that all of the connections were OK but my Leylandii hedge was too high. I spent Saturday afternoon trimming at least 12 feet of the top of 5 or 6 of the trees and, Hurrah, the television channels returned. I only have another 45 trees to go to at least try to make it look like a neat job.
Is that a project and what does a Leylandii guitar sound like?

After a couple price quotes from painters on how much it's gonna cost to paint our house I told my wife that we need a bigger ladder and a lot of beer. One more quote tomorrow. I'd rather be building guitars then risking my life on a steep pitched roof!

Interestingly though one of the painters has a Martin guitar that needs repair

Oh that and for the last 5 months I've been trying to get a '94 Mercedes e420 to start and not stall after 2 minutes running. I'm just about giving up on that one.

I completed this stand last year in laminated Maple and Padouk.

I've made a number of these footstools for myself and friends. This one is in oak.

Attempting a fully functional replication of nature's finest engineering masterpiece. Much work remains to be done, but many of the hard problems have been solved.

Buddhist Shrine (Butsudan) for a friend, just finished today.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

"Does mowing the lawn count?"

You guys are a BuzzKill! You had to remind me about the lawn. My wife said the grass was getting tall at the other house, so I better go mow it while the sun is shining. It has been raining quite a lot and is supposed to rain for the next four days.

One of my current side projects is to prep my Alfa for sale.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Dennis more info?

I find the lathe is a pretty fun tool.

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
Instagram | YouTube

"One of my current side projects is to prep my Alfa for sale. "

I had one of those, but a bit older - a '58 Giulietta spider. At the time it was old iron and somewhat of a fixer upper. It was a pretty little car, and one of the few I wish I had hung onto.

I got the grass mowed.

A box for a Waterford Crystal Burger King whopper given to a friend’s mom for many years of service.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

That there is a 3D printed plastic skeleton, with feathers made of carbon fiber, fiberglass and a bit of foamboard core material, strung together with elastic and thread. Modeled off of a Canada goose wing from the garbage can of a kind hunter

Honestly it baffles me that I seem to be the only person working on this. Humans have been fascinated by bird flight forever, and the necessary materials to directly copy their design have been available for a while now. It kind of feels like cheating, because mother nature has already done the really hard part of aerodynamic optimization/finding the optimal joint angles/feather shapes/etc. And even given us a zillion variations to show how different changes affect the performance.

I'll soon be building another wing with all the fixes to problems I encountered making that one. For one thing, the joint angles aren't quite right. For another, it takes some coaxing to get it folded now, since the small feathers keep cutting into the edges of the large ones and vice versa. Notice the two small ones in the middle with dark edges. That was my test to see if tracing around the edge with a strip of carbon fiber would eliminate the rough snaggy edges of plain woven fiberglass, and it appears to work.

The next wing will also feature a new shoulder mechanism, which enables humerus twist motion in addition to forward-back motion. Here's a short video of the experimental version, along with an experimental sensor glove to control it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIBsBOmWLc
Those servos sound pretty miserable though The final version will use leadscrews, which hold their position without power. Here's what the mechanism looks like inside:

And then that whole kaboodle will be rotated by the main flapping actuator.

Dennis—

Very cool project, but one word of caution, in case you decide to kick it up a notch: There’s this story about Daedalus and Icarus . . .

Wow...some very interesting projects here! I love the bench, and my nieces would just love the Spyder if I were of a mind to inflict Italian automotive engineering on them!

I had to wait to get some shots of the current non-guitar project here, but here is my contribution to the thread. These three amplifiers are all designs using classic Fender circuits from the 1950's era, but with just 1 to 4 watts of power, depending on which tubes are used, and make these tailor-made as bench or practice amps without chasing everyone else out of shop or home with ears bleeding. The Deluxe-based amp was completed first, and will be used on the #1 repair bench, while the two Bassman-based combo amps will be used on Bench #2 and the electronics workstation. I have not been as involved with these side projects as I'd like, as they tend to be the space-filler between real work, but have ordered most of the Bill of Materials for my own project when things slow down. Both the Deluxe Micro and Bassman Micro are covered in great detail on the designer's (Mr. Robinette) website.

https://robrobinette.com/Amp_Stuff.htm

The boss refers to the Micro Deluxe as a great 'grab and go' amp; seen here with the Hot Rod Deluxe (soon to be gutted and rebuilt...anyone need an often-repaired Mexico-produced board?). This amp will be wall-mounted, and has a headphone jack for 'quiet-time' use.





The Bassman cabinets almost ready for covering...these will also be covered with brown vinyl/cloth material and get the black grill cloth seen on the Deluxe, but are about an inch larger in every dimension to accommodate the larger chassis needed for the more complex circuit (12" x 7" x 2" versus the Deluxe's 10" x 6" x 2" chassis). While the rational part of my mind understands that finger joints have more gluing area, and that the corner joints will be buried under glue and vinyl Tolex material, I still love the look of hand-cut through dovetails - even if the gentlemen in the shop call them utility woodworking.





One chassis down and one to go...hope to be of some use on the wiring of the second chassis, but I still have a neck reset to finish and some setups to get through today before playtime.



And no - I did not pick the covering or grill cloth, but will when I find the time to build up my own version.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Can you deliver it............ oh, and move the steering wheel to the correct side?

Ah a sort of Bioengineering project. Seems ambitious to me. It tool 200+ million years for mother nature to program and design that model

Lost my shop dog last September, Jake is the new shop dog. At 11 weeks he's a handful and is definitely a major project! And yes, a banjo on the bench in for a full setup.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Do you have your vet's approval to expose Jake to that sort of thing at such a tender age? I seem to recall there were some studies on early childhood banjo exposure that suggested lifetime addiction was not usual, with the sort of social ostracism associated with that sort of behavior. I cannot imagine that Jake differs that much from the average rambunctious 2 year old, so perhaps a canine vaccination or some sort of operant avoidance conditioning?

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Living in the East Tennessee hills banjos are very common so it's important to get the young ones exposed at an early age.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Scored this really clean Powermatatic P-100 12" planer from my brother (he scored a super clean Powermatic 18") Major clean, tune and a Shelix cutterhead!

Dang that thing is a monster!

Total rebuild and mods to this 35 year old hand built beauty.
This Alan will be a flat bar gravel bike when complete.
A bit of a Frankenbike!

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.