GooCart's 1 Build

[Fletch]

unbelievable. I love it.

fletch

[tonsina]

I don't know how long this forum has been in existence but what little time I've been a member I've seen the most crafty, and creative les paul building anywhere that continously raised the bar, this one just kicked the bar into the stratosphere. Pleasure watching the great work man

[LG2]

Originally Posted by GooCart

You got me there Frank

I haven't raised a finger yet but this is how it looks after two days. Ridiculous.
It almost feels like a mockery towards all the real luthiers out here.

Anyway, here's another shot just because I can.

Don't wory you still have lots of opportunity's to screw up..

[GooCart]

Yeah, tell me about it!!
I'll try to take it really slow and not rush in to some stupid solutions.

[Sgt.Pepper]

Now why can't Gibson do that?

[GooCart]

They don't have the top carve file

opps!! that didn't sound as I nice,
anyway, I think the guitars would be VERY expensive if they were produced with this method.

[Fletch]

Originally Posted by GooCart

I think the guitars would be VERY expensive if they were produced with this method.

Actually I thought that that was how they did them, with a CNC

fletch

[GooCart]

I think they do, but I don't think they have as small tolerances. They still use the belt sander, don't they?

[LG2]

Mag don't get to cocky Just to be fair to the other guys using cad cam your 3D Cad is not any better than Gibson's or other builders using 3D as far as i know. and your not the first.

Nice job thats for sure but better than Gibson? to think old Gibson tecs can't use a probe to scan one of their own is wrong.
However I do not think you trying to say that your cad is better it just sounded that way..

anyway look froward to seeing the LP neck off the unit.

[GooCart]

It was a joke, and a bad one. Sorry.
What a meant with small tolerances is that I believe that Gibson use the CNC for the initial top carve but do the finishing with a belt sander. I did not mean that their or any other 3d data is inferior to mine, that would be very stupid. Using the CNC all the way, like we did here, is time consuming, therefor I think it would be to expensive for Gibson and in the end the comsumer.

We've cut some test necks and it works great so far. The neck was modeled by Scott Wilkinson, Ex-nihilo, and some remodeling by me. I think we're going to cut the quarter sawn slab I got from Tom tomorrow. It's going to be fun to test assemble the guitar.

[Ole'Lefty]

Still in a friendly tone- those of us who know Magnus, including you, Liquid, knew he was being humorous-but some newer members may have gotten the wrong impression. I was around for the development period(and boy did I take some grief for a few quite "direct" statements about pattern use of Magnus's and Tom's work-darn near re-started the War of 1812-all was explained and settled down to friendship, "Right, Red?"). Many contributed and the fellas always acknowleged the input and were appreciative. You see some of it in the 3D thread but the PM's were flying fast and furious, including me challenging for a duel-remember the "Natchez Nightmare", guys? I also threatened to send my pack of chihuahuas(had three at home and 7 in the family) to attack various people!!

How far can people come? Well, recently a new member revived Tom's introductory posts, and now he is an experienced LP man. I have one of the relatively few Corian Dummies/masters from the collaboration. It can produce a version of vintage carve that is generally accepted as correct-there is NO single correct pattern.Darn, someday I hope to use it!!!

Frank was introducing himself to the Carvewright and then Liquid joined in with his developmental work with the same unit. Fletch was/is in there doing his amazing small lot production. A couple of us have Marlin Duplicators(mine is still not set up-arrgh) some were building duplicators and some were in early build stages of their own CNC's.

I look back on that action packed period as a sort of Renaissance for this part of the forum. It surely cemented my feelings of having a home, when I needed it most as I was losing 36 years of professional life. It would be difficult to find a guitar forum with so many well documented builds as we share here. I was a member of a Strat/Tele forum but was kicked off for criticizing some aspects of relicing. Beating the guitars up was as close to luthierie as those people got. I still have three beautiful Strat Partscasters that were assembled with the very best of components and precision. Nobody wanted them-anyone can "slap together" a Fender(not true if it is to be done well).

With all of the bad news floating around, it is nice to have a comfortable place to talk with friends and share lessons learned.

Now, if you have stayed with me this long-does anyone know much about the CNC unit Rockler sells- if so, let's start a thread about them? OldLefty

[GooCart]

Unfortunately there was no time for any cutting this weekend so I've got no updates, but I do have a question.
As I've understood it the pot holes shall be drilled perpendicular to the top surface. How do you achieve that? Cordless drill? We cut my holes just a little small and my idea was to use a brotsch, I think it's "reamer" in English, for the final size and direction.

[ex-nihilo]

I use one of these step drill bits in a cordless drill:

[pinefd]

Originally Posted by GooCart

As I've understood it the pot holes shall be drilled perpendicular to the top surface. How do you achieve that? Cordless drill? We cut my holes just a little small and my idea was to use a brotsch, I think it's "reamer" in English, for the final size and direction.

Magnus, I posed this same question to Dave Johnson a couple of years ago, and was told that the holes should be drilled perpendicular to the back of the guitar...so you can do it with a drill press. There should be enough wiggle room in the holes such that when you have the inside of the cavity routed out to pretty much follow the outside body contour, the pots will sit at the desired angle following the body contour. In practice what I find is after I drill the holes (perpendicular to the back), I may have to ream the holes out at a slight angle (by hand) for the pots and pot shafts to sit at the desired angle...especially after the holes get filled in/narrowed a bit from the lacquer. Of course, others may have a different view on this.


Frank

[GooCart]

OK, thanks Frank. For a while I was afraid I had ruined it, drilling it perpendicular to the back, but then I tested with a pot and it looked OK, the holes a a little tight, but I'll fix it with the reamer.

[Erx15]

Nice work, btw can you share these cnc files?

[mattsblues]

Beautiful!

[Kølabrennern]

Originally Posted by ex-nihilo

I use one of these step drill bits in a cordless drill:

You know what's hopeless... here in Scandinavia this is the closest thing you'll come to a conventional reamer and the steps are far too short to do much guitar related work. This has annoyed me so many times! Availability of tools in general is especially bad here in Norway, it's like this kindergarten mentality; puny consumer, you are not allowed to try and make anything yourself, you must purchase, at highly unreasonable prices!
[/rant]

Otherwise I really like how your build is coming along Magnus, it really does look fantastic and the top carve is of course beyond excellent!

[LG2]

You would think the land that made Viking ships would have the best tools in every home.. what's happened to us!


I still have my old set of "20 years" Sandvik wood chisels i love them.. Stewmac.com has a good hand reamer in two sizes.

It's funny the more you get into the CNC, the more you need some "key" handtools to fine fit tenons and light finish work.

[GooCart]

I have the opportunity to use my luthiers workshop and he has all the tools needed, so I'm so blessed that I really don't have to worry about the tools. We still have some small things to figure out, one thing is that he use a 10mm bit for cutting the neck which leave us with a 5mm internal radius in the tenon. It's not a biggie to remove the radius, there are number of ways doing it, we just need to figure out the cleanest and most precise way. Or maybe I should say; I need my luthier to find out the cleanest and most precise way

[GooCart]

I just got back from the workshop with some photos.
We've cut two necks, one test and than the blank I got from Tom.

This is what we started with yesterday. Clean cut for the wings that will be hide glued.



Rough cutting the neck.



And finally fine cutting in two directions.



I didn't have time to stay through the whole process of cutting Toms blank but this is what the test neck looks like completed.





This was the back side cutting. What's left is the truss rod channel, truss rod nut cut-out and the headstock angle. For that we have cut a matrix, a reverse shape of the back of the neck, that we'll use to align and center the neck when we rotate it 180º. I hope I can get back about that tomorrow.

I thought I'd show some pics from the workshop. This is Jacobsson GuitarWorks in Umeå, Sweden, run by Leif Jacobsson, A super serious pro luthier who share my interest in CAD/CAM. He's also the nicest guy around who's whiling to test new ideas and spends a lot of time with my project.

Work In Progress....



Here are some LP's put together by a apprentice in some less expensive wood, nice pieces to practice on though. They are cut from the old 3d file I did prior to the Melkersson/Bartlett file. Nice looking, but not vintage spec.
By the way, the apprentice is about 5000% more experienced guitar builder than me.



Here's a single cut I've designed for Leif. A kind of mix between a LP and a Zemaitis with the narrow waist.



That's all for now.

[rockappalla]

That's f/&%&%$ng great!!

[Kølabrennern]

Oh my, that looks fantastic! I really like the Junior-ish guitar there, too.

I think I'll pack my bags and move to Umeå right away, looks like a good place to be for a guitar nut (no pun intended).

[GooCart]

Yeah, Umeå isn't that bad, we're European Capital of Culture 2014 and we've got these guys:



A small sample of the Åhden Brothers collection

[Erx15]

Thats awsome, what programs do you use?
We have a CNC bench at school, so I have been thinking about building a les paul(tried a sg last year, but I kinda failed, so I am willing to lose some mojo and use the CNC bench, if I will start my project).
What is your bugdet? (for the body and neck, not the hardware)?
And good luck with the rest of the work

[V!N]

Originally Posted by GooCart

Here's a single cut I've designed for Leif. A kind of mix between a LP and a Zemaitis with the narrow waist.

Hey, that one looks a lot like the MelkBart !

Cool shots Magnus, thank you for sharing.

[ex-nihilo]

Wow, that is really cool. I wondered how a CNC neck would turn out. Looks great.

[MRJ]

Wow! I'm not sure which to drool over more, the guitars or the 56' Fords!

[GooCart]

Hey W!N, yeah, they share the same vintage spirit. I'm stuck in the 50's.

I just came of the phone with Leif, he has cut the matrix so with a little bit of luck the neck are finished tomorrow.

Erx15, I've been using Rhino for free form modeling since around '94, before that I used Alias but there's many other 3d modelers out there who does a good job.

Last, but not least. Last Friday Tom sent some binding and some of he's mahogany filler and I just received it, that got to be some kind of record, two business days from Canada to Sweden!!! I can't thank Tom enough for the help.

[Ole'Lefty]

Magnus-you have surely earned the protection of the ancient Gods- I forget how they may have been divided up among Swedes, Danes, Finns, Norsemen, so I keep it generic. But, I know that nobody messes with Thor and the glorious Vasa Ship-ruler of the Northern seas-the Brits just never understood that you people actually controlled Scapa Flow. Very clever, you Scandinavians. Lowly, Lefty ------PS In the USA Northern Midwest, some dangerously jest and say with paltry grins, "Scandahoovians." No, it is embarrassing-there is no credible reason for such diety and territorial defying insolence.