Official Luthiers Forum!

Does anyone make or use a hand operated vacuum clamp setup? is it even worth using? This will be used with soprano ukes so small stuff only
Thanks

_________________
Zac

Anchorage Alaska

Finshed my 1st! See #1 here

well thinking of a way to clamp a bridge if I do soundholes in the upper bout and clamping radiused braces with out using a gobar deck (no space)

_________________
Zac

Anchorage Alaska

Finshed my 1st! See #1 here

Dont know if its applicable but a skateboard company called Roarockit make a little hand pump operated vacuum clamping kit. Looks like one of those little wine bottle pumps. I have seen photos somewhere of someone using something similiar for a guitar.
Warren.

i don't think it is very practicable, unless you have a bionic arm.

Zac,

I’m not sure of how much vacuum is required to pull down a bag the size of a ukulele bridge. It needs to have enough pull to create good glue joint. Maybe others with experience will chime in. Harbor freight has some small vacuum pumps that could very well be adapted for use. I thought that they may be cheap enough to give it a try. My wife has several very large vacuum bags to hold materials and is sucked down with a vacuum cleaner. One of these bags has a leak so I will make mine using that material. My plans are for a wooden housing, inner tube for a seal, and the vinyl (?) from the bag. Harbor Freight has two vacuum pumps that pull down to 28.3 inches of mercury for $12.99 or $16.99. Well there products may not always of the highest quality but they are cheap enough that you can toss them if they don’t meet your needs.

In the past, I have built a couple of very large vacuum machines used for plastics. These machines normally used a 2’ X 4” sheet of plastic that was heated in the machine and then pulled down over in house molds. Some of these had a pretty deep draw which really took some vacuum. I believe we used an 80 gallon tank and twin cylinder pump with the connections reversed so that it created vacuum instead of air pressure. The gauge was changed out to read vacuum. I sure made a lot of motorcycle fenders and parts with those machines. My guess is that you should be able to reverse the pump on any air compressor that you can do it on.

Good Luck

Philip

_________________
aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

Thanks Philip I was thinking about going with out a gobar deck and the possibility in the future of upper bout sound holes. I think what I will do is go for the wedging gantry that I saw in my classical guitar building book no over head like a go bar deck and easy and cheap to build and shelve the upper bout puka idea for now.

_________________
Zac

Anchorage Alaska

Finshed my 1st! See #1 here