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Brad, that Millrite is insanely cool!!!

Chapeau Brad! That’s a great looking tailpiece.

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

Does it use R8 collets, or something else? I know they are pricy, but considering the low-buck price you paid for that at the very least invest in a Kurt vise. They are worth it - trust me.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I dream of a mill that size. It’s all I have room for but round these parts every aspiring hobby machinist wants one that size too and the prices they command are astronomical. Meanwhile big mills are practically given away as no one wants to deal with transport, storage etc

Exactly, Josh. We don't need any 5 axis Mori Seiki mills to make guitar parts, and besides - they are bigger than the house and weigh more than a small mountain. A Bridgeport or Bridgeport copy will work nicely.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I'm happy to have room for a router table...

OK, I do have a 24x48 CNC router and a SIEG mini mill CNC conversion, and yes I'm jealous of being able to house a nice big milling machine, manual or not. But I don't even know if the slab floor in my shop would take something a heavy machine like that even if I could spare the square footage!

Dave

I miss my milling machine but it just took up too much space.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Chris,

Yes, it uses R-8 collets. It came with a full set and a nice holder for them.

I know the Kurt vices are great, but the one that it came with seems to do everything I need it to. It weighs about 80 pounds and wasn't abused.

I drove 2 hours each way to get this mill and had to build a ramp to get it into a truck that I borrowed because the guy I bought it from assured me he had a "cherry picker" that would lift it.
When I got there he had a little harbor freight engine lift which was useless, so we had to go to home depot,get some 2 X 12's and build a ramp. luckily I brought a dolly I made for it.
When we got back to my shop I had a guy with a bucket truck lift it onto the dolly.
It was a stressful day...

Pore filling.

Looks like that will be a beauty!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
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Only took one photo so far but this entire guitar is a useful demonstration of why you shouldn’t sleep on the beach with your vintage Gibson.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JF I love the sap wood, very cool.

I doesn't it depend on with who?

Now this one looks like all it needs is a restring LOL

You should see the bracing on this one! Or rather, the smears of dried glue indicating where braces once were.

Strung up two 00's and waiting for them to settle in. They sound great so far. I'll get some final photos and (hopefully) some sound files and post them soon.

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

Nice! The finish on the bear claw top is very cool.

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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

Both look great, but I agree that the bear claw top with the sunburst is stunning--especially with the cool grain in the fingerboard.

The bear claw top looks like it was sand shaded. Is that what it is? Very cool look.

Yeah I'd love to hear more about that bear claw finish.

Brad, love seeing the Millrite! I have a Clausing 8520 in my shop and would be lost without it. Same for my lathe- a little Hardinge that gets used just about every day.

I've been experimenting with cycloid drives after being amazed by the new(ish) Rickard banjo tuners that many people are using-
https://rickardbanjos.com/products/rick ... tio-tuners

A friend wrote a grasshopper script in Rhino to define the relationships and I got the first parts milled and working the other day. These are just the guts, but it works smoothly and has potential. I love the Rickard tuners but want them lighter and (physically) smaller to embed in my headstocks. I also upped the ratio a bit from 10:1 to 13:1. Still a bunch more work to do to get a working prototype that looks right but that's the goal. I'm hoping for something that looks more like a tuning peg than a banjo tuner for the final product.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Clausing? You're talking my love language! And a Pratt & Whitney scale? I am green with envy.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

lol, Brad's vise weighs twice as much as my entire machine. I only have room for one little workbench, so it has to be easy to put it there for use and take it away for other tasks. I've been plotting on how to build a similar style lathe too.

Excellent work on the cycloidal, Burton. I've considered making some of those too. How are you getting around Rickard's patent?

But what I'd really like to do is a strain wave gear. True zero backlash. The problem I ran into is that I can only make the teeth so small with a 0.5mm end mill (which may already be too little face width so I can't go any smaller), but the larger the teeth are the more it needs to flex, and all the flexing gets concentrated on the thin areas between teeth so it will probably break. This is what it looks like with 26 ring teeth, 3/8" flexspline diameter, and 1/2" outside diameter:

I need to just try it and get a feel for what will actually work. Perhaps simply chopping the tips off the teeth so it doesn't have to flex as far to jump under the ring teeth. They're only about 0.6mm tall as it is, but sometimes 0.6mm looks a lot bigger in real life than it sounds like on paper.

Someone probably tried to reset the neck on this old Gibby, gave up and ended up just cutting the dovetail straight and filling in the mortise straight and tried to just glue it on like that. Obviously it didn't work and I turned it into a bolt on.

The guitar had major cosmetic problems (inc binding was 'pixelated' and tetris-like pieces falling out) but was otherwise solid. Plays and sounds great now!

I think I might offer this as an option on guitars that are not really worth resetting the dovetail.

Pat

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Pat

I love older P&W stuff, I have a bunch including some of their small lathe and mill accessories. I use a 7" P&W compound I scraped on my lathe.


also: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-TPK-ZneRU/



I'm not looking to make these for sale, they would be for my work only. If I get it all working as I'd like it too I'll reach out and see how they feel about it. I'm not familiar with patent law so I'll need to see if my "inspired by" tuner qualifies as a copy?

I hadn't heard of a strain wave gear, I'm going to look it up!

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.