Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm in the middle of adding tapes and braces on the sides and wanted to ask questions about how to clean up before joining in general.

For example, when you glue side braces or tape, do you just run the sides with dry paper towel before glueing the braces on? or use some sort of solvent like distlled water to get any wood dust off before applying the braces and glue?

Same question goes for when joining other parts such as joining top to the sides, do you just wipe with dry towel before joining with glue...or?

And if you use some kind of solvent, how long do you let it dry before joining?

thanks, David

Hum, by the time I start gluing anything on the rim I have cleaned up any heat marks with a cabinet scraper and wiped down with naphtha to remove any surface oils or anything that my hands may have left behind.

I just vacuum with my Festool and then pry the rim off the nozzle since the Festool is so powerful......

so you are saying that festools suck?

Yeah.... I married mine last fall......

I know I started it but... No coment

Ask a reasonable question and ya get tweedle dee and...

...wonder why 'the pros' don't stop by as often. Hmmm...

David, if you mean getting rid of the dust on the inside of your sides I think a dry paper towel or clean t-shirt would suffice. A good blast with a compressor would probably be even better. Especially after bowl sanding before gluing your top to the sides.

In this case I don't think you'd need any solvent.

Gawd, I don't know if they still make them any more, but I use my old drafting brush. I guess a soft bristled paint brush would work just as well.

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Aoibeann

First off; there are several quite renown pros here day in and day out. But apparently you don’t think them to be. This forum has always had a bit light heartedness comradeship to it that made it different than the other stuffy and click-ish forums we all familiar with.

Second; exactly what in my answer did I say that was twiddle de and twiddle dumb. If you refer to my quick joke with Hesh, then man you are stuffy

I freely share my experience here every day and do all I can to help my fellow builders and luthiers asking nothing in return and have done so for years at this forum.

Now you impugn me for a quick jab of humor and do so publicly instead of a pm to tell me you found my humor out of place. I have not and would not do such to you.

I am sorry you found our humor aggravating. But I am afraid I will always throw in an occasional quip of humor. I always have, and always will. At least till it is against the rules here and I am kicked off the forum. Till then I guess you just have to find my playfulness aggravating.

Chill

Yep they still make them

Come on, Michael, what's a little impugnity among friends?

I agree with you! Jab away.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Hesh, I believe you're a latent appliance fetishist. You need to pay a lot of money to L. Ron Hoover. He can help you.

As for the actual question, give it a good blow with the compressed air.

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

I use synthetic steel wool !(on the sides)
It leaves a nice sheen and no oils!
I polish my braces with it also!!!!
Then i still wipe with a cloth or blow out with compressed air!


Mike

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Mike Collins

I clean the insides spotless before I put the plates on. I steel wool the sides and carefully sand the back to make sure there are no marks on it before I install it. Naptha to remove any ghosts of pencil marks (you know ... the ones the eraser doesn't fully remove)

I blow it out with compressed air, then I run a magnet over it to pick up any misc filings from the steel wool.

I am a bit obsessive about it, but I really like the box to look as clean on the inside as it is on the outside. A guitar can live a long life and I think it deserves to go into the world with its best foot forward.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock,

Don't you worry about the oils in the steel wool getting on the bare wood? I hate to use steel wool due the steel shavings left everywhere.

I don't usually worry about the oils in Steel Wool. So far no problems (now watch lightening strike me. ) and on the insides I have stopped putting any finsish in there.

With respect to the shavings I just use a rare earth magnet with a paper towel over it (to make the shavings easy to remove) and within a pass or two it is spic and span clean.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

There are steel wools out there that are oil-less IIRC. Isn't Liberon one of them? I could be wrong...but I've used it enough to not be afraid of the results from using it.

Brock....I totally expected that from you...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

And you mean that in a GOOD way, right?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com