Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: edwardofhuncote on June 22, 2016, 08:05:09 AM
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It’s been a while since I did a shop thread… really, I haven’t spent much time up there in the busy Spring gig season, but stuff has a way of piling up if allowed to.
The Project: 1946 American Standard ¾-size bass, with a catastrophically failed neck joint.
This particular project has turned out to be a much bigger job than I initially thought it would be, and honestly if it belonged to anyone other than my (late) best buddy’s daughter, I’d have declined altogether. At first look, I just thought the neck joint was loose and only needed a quick re-glue and overnight clamp, but upon further examination, the entire neck block still partially fastened to the neck was moving freely inside the body. That’s BAD, very bad. No other choice but to remove the top and disassemble from inside. So like it or not, we got ourselves a challenge.
Thank goodness this bass hadn’t been apart many times before, so the plywood wasn’t all chewed up… it was a relatively easy removal, coming off nice and clean, a good first step. <sigh of relief> (American Standard basses, like their Kay cousins, are laminated construction) The other good news, the neck and it’s dovetail are intact, with only a minor breakout to repair and some old glue to clean up. That’ll be a piece of cake…
Then I saw the neck block. Ewww. Make that a double ewww. Mysterious globs of orange glue drizzled everywhere. (not even sure it’s glue… maybe some kind of adhesive caulk?) The block itself apparently had been shattered into three main pieces, and several smaller shards. One corner, probably from the original event, had even been nailed back together once. Spent the next hour and a half painstakingly removing what was left of it with a heat lamp and chisels. Here’s what’s left of the old neck block… no fixing that – we’ll have to make a new one, from scratch. One other thing - the mysterious orange goo it turns out is combustible, or at least supports combustion. And smells like ping-pong balls when smoldering.
Yeah, lots more later... enjoy the carnage pics. ;)
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Oh, what the heck... here's a preview of the next short installment:
As you can see after the old neck block is removed, there are no parallel surfaces or really even any truly flat surfaces to work with... we will be 100% wingin' it getting a square block of wood of either mahogany or spanish cedar to fit in this pocket. The glueing surfaces between the top and back with the new neck block are two different obtuse angles, plus -and this is the really tough one- the two mirrored curved surfaces where the block is glued to the ribs (sides).
Then after all that, we have to cut a mortise to fit the existing necks' dovetail. I'll need to enlist some help with that part, so you folks will get to meet another very good friend of mine, world class luthier Ward Elliott - an Alembican at heart really, who builds and repairs everything from violins to countertops. It'll be a while before we get there.
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Hey, PIECE-OF-CAKE!! (Uh...NOT!!) Good luck, and looking forward to another unbelievable series of pics and solutions.
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Hey Ed of H, that does look tricky, I'm sure you'll get it sorted though ;)
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Nothing too exciting here, but an item that’ll be important later.
The plywood ribs had slightly de-laminated between the heat lamp and prying off the remnants of the old neck block. We need that to be as solid and flush as possible before glueing the new neck block to it. This was a pretty simple sloppy fix – just work some good ol’ Titebond wood glue between the layers and clamp. I love these little clothespin clamps… especially the miniature ones, but I have a whole box full of them in different sizes sashed under the workbench. The wooden cam clamps you see in the other picture are clamping the rib to the back of the body where about 4” of it had sprung loose either from the same impact that did the block in, or while I was disassembling it. I have a bunch of these clamps too, in a variety of sizes – you’ll see more of them as we progress. Cam clamps are great for applying positive pressure, plus with padded cork jaws they’re perfect for musical instrument repair. (won’t dent wood or mar finish) Again, just using Titebond glue here… I’m not even being careful about it, as this all gets cleaned up later. Main thing is, this area has to be as rigid as possible - can’t be trying to hit a moving target when we start cutting these curved faces.
Since after that step I was literally just watching glue dry, I took the first steps at shaping the new neck block to the body, beginning with the fit of the block to the back. It’s a weird steep angle, and also a slightly convex surface. Note the dangle-angle tool in the picture… using the old neck block as a template, I set it to that angle, then transferred it onto the new block with the red Sharpie pen. One pass through the bandsaw, then using a large (6 x 48) belt sander to shape the bottom of the block, and it now stands almost completely vertical inside the bass. There will be more final fitting as the sides are cut and it slides upward towards it’s final position. I’ve also cut the overall width down to 4-7/8” so that it almost fits between the kerfing, leaving a little bit to shave off later for an exact fit. This is a case of measure once VERY carefully, then cut several times. Again, not very exciting yet.
The block by-the-way, is mahogany, with a traditional Spanish cedar cap on the inside. Will explain more about that later, but the important thing here is the direction of the grain.
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Adding one more picture of the old label, and a link to the H.N. White Company who built this bass and many more like it.
http://www.hnwhite.com/string%20page.htm
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I like those little clamps, very handy. Your winging it seems to be going well so far ::) . So IIRC you can work tightbond in an hour ?? full strength 24 hours or so ?? (it's been a while)
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Titebond gets tacky in 5 minutes, and will set in about 30 minutes, and yes, I have always waited a full day before un-clamping. Will be using some hot hide glue and possibly some marine epoxy later. Stay tuned. ;)
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Nailed together??? I thought everyone knew you use drywall screws for that........
Peter (who will be watching with baited breath - that's what happens when you eat worms)
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This is WAY COOL. Thanks for posting. Love to see this instrument brought back to life.
I am lucky enough to have a Cleveland. If memory serves, it's number 121. It will be the last bass to leave my possession. Even the Alembics would go before the Big Boy. It's been with me for almost 40 years.
C-Ya.....wayne
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I love these threads of yours; I do guitar repairs sometimes but not to this level; I'm a goldsmith and former bicycle mechanic/designer so I'm more METAL than wood, heheh...Tony.
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During the intermission on this bass project, thought I'd share this one around with you guys... a tale of two banjos.
Lately there's been a handful of very early Alembics to pop up here on the forum, and a couple more of what Mica sometimes calls escapees... I guess a few guitars that were clearly built there but on the down-low. I love to see the old ones still getting played out… maybe that's what made me think of it.
Anyway, just by sheer coincidence two of our older banjos, both #91-16 and #91-17 recently showed up back in the shop for minor work and setup... Dad and I built these two practically side-by-side back in 1991, and as far as we know, they've been separate since. Back then we were working out of a little 8' x 12' metal garden shed in my parents backyard. It was an oven in summer and an icebox in winter. We tried an air conditioner once, but between the dust and the pitiful 15 amp circuit the whole shop was on, you could either be reasonably cool, or do work involving power tools, but not both. When there was snow on the roof, once you got some heat going in there, water would condense and rain down on you. Ahh, the good old days.
So way back then, this guy comes over to the shop for Dad to do some setup work on a 1970's GoldStar banjo, a Japanese copy of a Gibson RB-75. At the time it was a considerably better instrument than the genuine article. While there, he saw what would become #91-16 as a work-in-progress and commissioned a new build on the spot. They were finished just a couple weeks apart, literally using the same bottles of stain for the sunburst. I remember this was when I figured out we could build two or three banjos in about the same amount of time, something we have done a few times since.
#91-16 was a "Sweet Sixteen" birthday present for a girl who was a gifted player, but had a bad back injury and needed a lighter-weight instrument. It was pretty fancy too, all the wood was very high grade curly maple, all hardware was gold-plated, and the hand-cut pearl inlays were just something I dreamed up. To cut down on weight, Dad re-designed the shell (drum-like part) for a simple ¼” brass hoop instead of a heavy bell-bronze cast tone ring.
#91-17 was also to be all curly maple, but by contrast outfitted with nickel-plated hardware. The inlay design was by a local artist Esther Davis. She sketched out this wild looking vine inlay that sorta' grew both directions up and down the fingerboard and headstock. It was an absolute nightmare to execute, but somehow we did it. I remember us taking turns cutting all these individual pieces of pearl... it took a couple weeks or something, and inlaying it wasn't much easier. Looking back though, I’m glad we took the challenge. Sometimes you need to test your limits. Something I had totally forgotten about - the resonator on 17 is inlaid with a rosewood Dogwood blossom and our trademark Honeybee. It was the first time I'd ever tried that.
Another little factoid - these were the first two of our banjos to have the new original headstock. (although old #13 eventually was retrofit with one after being unfortunately decapitated) Up until that point, we had simply used modified patterns from other builders, but Dad had doodled this cool asymmetrical shape that reminded him of the early minstrel style banjos. I polished it up with some French curves, and the resulting template is still hanging over my workbench today.
Enjoy the pictures, and stay tuned when we resume our regularly scheduled program...
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And here's a couple pictures of the neck from slightly older sister #91-16. (Dad is working on the pot assembly while I'm doing some fretwork and touch-up on the finish)
Last of all, here's the new/old template, in it's place of honor... ;D
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Dang,
Cool axes ! (is that appropriate for banjo?)
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Works for me, child of the 80's that I am, but the younger hip crowd calls it "The Five" anymore. For example, during band intros you would hear- "...and Jethro Ripchord is playin' the five for ya' tonite..."
Like that^. ;D
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OK, thanks, Gregory - now I need a six-string version of 91-16...................
Peter (who never remembers to take his Beano before coming here)
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Okay, I spent some time this weekend ‘cipherin’ (hat-tip Jethro Bodine ;) ) on how to go about fitting this mostly square block precisely into a place with two compound radiused surfaces and two obtuse angles. How precise... probably dealing with less than 1/16" tolerance at any point. Came up with these two templates, one the shape of the top of the new block, and the other the shape of the bottom. Though it may look like they’re the same, they really aren’t… it’s just not easy to photograph it 3 dimensionally (without a distance perspective) and show that, but once they were drawn out 2 dimensionally it’s easy to tell. (I make up words only when I have to) ;D
So once I had the templates fit, I stuck them to the top and bottom of our new block using the marked centerline of where the new dovetail mortise will eventually be located. Then, using a good ol’ red Sharpie pen, plotted out the hard cut-line and hatched-in what wood will stay. This is like the parable where the violin-maker doesn’t really carve a violin, he just whittles away everything that isn’t a violin.
There’s still going to be a lot of hand-carving with scrapers and sandpaper to get the final fit perfect… even after we’re done with the bandsaw and belt-sander, but this oughta’ get me pretty close. The pictures explain it better... more exciting details coming later.
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Hey EoH, neat !!
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Another banjo/bass thread derail… I’m trying to get a few projects cleared out to make room for stuff coming in this Fall.
One of them is a 1926 Gibson Style 2 “ribbon-flange” banjo, (more on that later) the job; a tenor-to-short-scale-five-string conversion by using the original tenor neck. We did this by sawing the neck on a diagonal, from the center of the heel to the 4th fret, then grafting in a ¼” slice of maple and re-shaping, thus making the neck ¼” wider from the 4th fret down to allow for the fifth string. Before that, I had steamed off the original fingerboard, and carefully saved the old “Nick Lucas” pearl inlay to be re-used in the new fingerboard. This banjo being a Style 2 was a fairly simple model, but we decided to dress it up a little with this pearloid binding instead of bland white or cream colored binding. It’s just delightfully gaudy in an almost art-deco way. Remarkably easy to work with too… hard to tell how old this stuff is. You have to be a little careful, as it will catch fire if you get a little too over-zealous sanding or trimming it with the Dremel tool. (voice of experience) It’s best to hand-shape it with a file. I'll post a follow-up picture of this one, but it's going to be overwith pretty quick... it'll get refinished this weekend, back to the infamously bland original Sheraton Brown, probably rubbed out and re-assembled by mid-week, tweaked on for a couple days and delivered next weekend.
We’ll get back to the American Standard week after next, (it’s about to get exciting) but here’s a couple illustrations of the aforementioned gaudiness... do not try this with your Alembics. Please. ;D
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Gregory
Your repair notes are doing a great job keeping me entertained as I sit here in Minneapolis for a flight to Baltimore that's now been delayed for over three hours. And the detours are great.
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Pictures Monday Brian, but after working on it most of yesterday, it's now been fretted, finish sanded, and assembled for a trial run. (would have strung it up, but had to quit and go clean up for a gig.)
I'll do all the pre-setup today, work out all the kinks, then disassemble again for finish. If all goes well, this one will be done on or about Thursday. ;)
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Continued from last week… trying to keep the posts shorter and let the pictures speak for themselves.
Let me start by saying how much I despise fretwork. It might be the underlying reason I spend so much time on fretless instruments. That said, a banjo needs frets, (or at least this one did) and thankfully there were only 18 so it went mercifully quick. Since the neck was bound, each fret end had to be nipped and filed so that it would overlap the binding – that was really the only hard part here.
Here’s also a couple pictures showing how I spliced in a piece of maple to make this neck wider to allow for the fifth string to be added. The heelcap hides the joint from the rear view, but see how the old maple neck is stained from the purpleish-brown varnish makes a kinda’ stark contrast to the new piece? It won’t matter since I’m going back a shade darker, though I may have to fudge a little to make the splice less noticeable. Gibson called it “Sheraton Brown", and it’s a popular color they used on their lower-end models well into the late 1920’s.
I re-shaped a recycled bone nut… there’s this little box in my shop full of scrap pieces. I never throw stuff away… and sure enough, there was one in there just the right size. Only took a few minutes to fit it in place. Since this banjo is now a five-string, it needs a fifth string nut too… my Grandfather was a locksmith, and had drawers full of these little brass tumblers – perfect for this job.
There was an extra trick to mounting the tuning pegs. For some reason, and I really don’t know exactly why, Gibson headstocks are tapered so that they are thicker by about 1/8” where the 1st and 4th pegholes are drilled than at end of the 2nd and 3rd. Some of their guitars and mandolins are like that too. Anyway, I had to do about a 1/16”counterbore on the 1st and 4th pegholes from the reverse of the headstock so the pegs would come through the front far enough to thread the bushings on. One word about that job – SCARY, even with the right tools (brad-point bit and a drill press) one little slip, and *snap*. Start over. That fifth string peghole is a tapered bore too. That’s hand-fit with a tapered reamer.
Finally, here it is, all assembled on the bench. I strung it up yesterday to set the action and make all necessary adjustments. It only need some fine tweaks, so tonight we’ll take it all back apart and start the finishing process.
If all goes well, the next installment will be in Technicolor…
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One more... I texted this silly action picture to the soon-to-be-custodian of this little banjo with the caption:
IT WORKS... IT WORKS!!! ;D
(Steve Martin was right - you can't be sad when you're playing a banjo)
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That's a pretty cool trick, with the diagonal and all.
Very well done!!
Has Steve Martin ever been wrong? ::)
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Mad props! That is excellent!
Peter
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Way to go. Awesome!
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Took a few more pictures during disassembly yesterday evening…
This first set shows how a typical Gibson coordinator rod attaches the neck to the shell (round part, also called the pot assembly). The most critical part about this is the fit of the neck heel to the shell, but secondary to that it’s also important not to put the shell in a bind by using the coordinator rod as a turnbuckle to adjust the action. Long term, this warps the shell into an elliptical rather than round. Dad refers to this step as setting the shell up “neutral”, putting no stress in any direction, only counter-acting the stress of string tension. Also note the old The Gibson - Kalamazoo, Mich. label inside the shell… I could never understand why they drilled right through that nice gold leaf label for the bracket-shoe lugs. Anyway, yeah that’s how a banjo neck is installed if you ever need to know. ;)
Another illustration – remember how I told you the headstock was tapered? Here’s a picture showing that, and another showing that terrifying counter-bore on holes 1 & 4 to make the pegs work. I've had to do this routine before, and it just scares the crap out of me each time. You may wonder why not use the original pegs… I do have them -they were the old screw-mounted Grover “two-tab” tuners- those things are geared like 2:1, just one step better than friction pegs. Banjos are hard enough to tune (jokes aside!) without mechanics working against you, so I saved the originals back for a future vintage restoration project, and replaced them on this one with some much more practical vintage reproduction pegs. They have period-correct knobs, and came geared 4:1, and with a small diameter shaft, so the headstock needn’t be re-drilled. You can see where I've filled the old screw holes... they'll be hidden under the finish later.
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So after disassembly, I masked off that wonderful faux pearl binding with some regular old masking tape, loaded up my trusty old Badger airbrush and sprayed an alcohol-based dye to approximate the purpleish-brown color of that old finish on the shell. It took a while before the splice began to disappear, but eventually the saturation won. The alcohol carrier evaporates in minutes, leaving behind the distorted color. After buffing off the little bit of fuzz with some 0000 steel wool, I shot two coats of acrylic lacquer over the color to seal it in, then peeled the tape off. After cleaning up a couple tiny spots where the color bled through the tape (it always does) I shot two more wash coats over the whole of both pieces. That's when you see the true color pop back out, as if still wet. :o
Since the humidity here is about 200% right now, and lacquer loves to attract moisture, I brought them inside to cure overnight, and went to bed.
With apologies for the grainy pictures, (they were compressed for texting... kind of my own factory-to-customer thread ;D ) Here’s what they looked like on the kitchen table this morning. I'm pretty thrilled with the color match, and the overall texture. This one is going to finish out nice and vintage-y.
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I caught Cletus plonking on his banjo and staring at his orange juice, and he was squintin' so hard his forehead looked like the furrows when he got drunk and decided to make a corn maze right in the middle of the field. (It worked, too. He never did find that tractor again.)
I said; "Cletus, what the hell are you doin'?" He pointed at the orange juice container and said; "shhh! It says: "CONCENTRATE!"
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Nice work! I love these threads!
I remember reading years ago that George Gruhn claimed that the old tapered headstocks were less likely to break compared to the later ones; he claimed that the taper made the headstock slightly more flexible and less likely to break, if I recall correctly...Tony.
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Now ^that^ makes sense...
I brushed on two coats of Homer Formby's tung oil finish so far... I've got a fan and a lamp focused on the parts to aid in drying. It's looking great... probably worthy of updated pictures tomorrow.
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After two brushed coats per day, with 8-10 hours of curing time (between coats) under a lamp and fan, the TB-2 is just about ready to rub-out and re-assemble. We’re not going for a high gloss finish here… these banjos had a more satin luster with that rich color. Just a good buffing with some 0000 steel wool and a little polish is about as far as we’ll go. Tung oil is a very nice medium for getting that look, and it’s fairly durable too. With just a little care taken in these final steps, it’s almost a dead-ringer for what the original finish was on these.
A little self-critique - I should have added another drop or two of blue dye to the stain. If that sounds crazy, remember I was going for a brownish purple… this one accidentally turned more deep reddish-brown than I’d planned, a touch more blue would’ve done it. All things considered, in different lighting who would know?
So… final assembly tomorrow if all goes well with rub-out. Here’s a couple pictures that demonstrate just how drastically different the hues are under different light.
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:)
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Waiting patienty for the next installment
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I've been on vacation, (still am, but back home now) and hadn't had a chance to update the thread, but here's a couple shots of it on the sofa, and a quick picture of the finished project in the hands of it's new custodian. It's so small that it makes him look like a giant. :o
This one started out almost as a gag, but turned out to be a cool project... it sounds amazing, and works exactly as planned. Being four frets shorter than a standard plectrum-scale five-string, it's tuned up a major third using standard sets of strings. Best of all, now a 90 year-old instrument with very little practical use gets a new life.
Back to work on the American Standard neck block today. 8)
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Go EoH, nice job!!