XLG
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2009
- Messages
- 112
- Reaction score
- 194
Hi,
I am a long time lurker, first time poster here. I guess I want to start by a bit of introduction...
I am an aspiring luthier from Chongqing, China. Started as a metal worker and mechanic, I have been modding/tweaking/making guitars and amplifier since about 8 or 9 years ago. Eventually I sold my motorcycle repair shop and focused on luthiering a few years back. It's a much harder industry to survive, especially in China. But my passion for guitar and music, as well as support from my family and friends have kept me going.
First I want to give a shout-out to the awesome forum and awesome people here for the wealthy information and knowledge that was shared over the years. I have certainly learned a whole lot from many of you.
Also I want to thank my friend silverkw for hosting images and helping me posting stuff in English, as I am still learning this language.
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Ok so here's the stuff that I thought was pretty cool, and wanted to share here... I am sure that I not the first that did it, but it's an interesting process and has interesting results.
Traditionally, steel blades from Asia have been made of laminated steel, or piled steel. Basically there are a few high carbon steel sheets that laminated together, create very high strength yet not overly brittle steel sheets, because of different carbon contents in the sheets. Also, the steel sheet doesn't react uniformly to acid.
This picture kind of gave me the idea.
Ok... so off we go, cutting (to the size similar to a traditional Fender hard tail bridge) and polishing up some laminated steel sheets. You can kind of see some random pattern on them to begin with.
It's sanded, slotted and drilled for assembly.
Then I wipe them with some nasty acid, and let it stink for a while...
After washing it off, it looks like this. On two of these I added the brass part afterwards, one of them was all steel.
Some very interesting and unique patterns, I have no idea how to call it, so I just call it "water pattern":
And how it looks with some handmade wooden pickup rings, on the Tele style guitar I built...
I am a long time lurker, first time poster here. I guess I want to start by a bit of introduction...
I am an aspiring luthier from Chongqing, China. Started as a metal worker and mechanic, I have been modding/tweaking/making guitars and amplifier since about 8 or 9 years ago. Eventually I sold my motorcycle repair shop and focused on luthiering a few years back. It's a much harder industry to survive, especially in China. But my passion for guitar and music, as well as support from my family and friends have kept me going.
First I want to give a shout-out to the awesome forum and awesome people here for the wealthy information and knowledge that was shared over the years. I have certainly learned a whole lot from many of you.
Also I want to thank my friend silverkw for hosting images and helping me posting stuff in English, as I am still learning this language.
------------------------
Ok so here's the stuff that I thought was pretty cool, and wanted to share here... I am sure that I not the first that did it, but it's an interesting process and has interesting results.
Traditionally, steel blades from Asia have been made of laminated steel, or piled steel. Basically there are a few high carbon steel sheets that laminated together, create very high strength yet not overly brittle steel sheets, because of different carbon contents in the sheets. Also, the steel sheet doesn't react uniformly to acid.
This picture kind of gave me the idea.
Ok... so off we go, cutting (to the size similar to a traditional Fender hard tail bridge) and polishing up some laminated steel sheets. You can kind of see some random pattern on them to begin with.
It's sanded, slotted and drilled for assembly.
Then I wipe them with some nasty acid, and let it stink for a while...
After washing it off, it looks like this. On two of these I added the brass part afterwards, one of them was all steel.
Some very interesting and unique patterns, I have no idea how to call it, so I just call it "water pattern":
And how it looks with some handmade wooden pickup rings, on the Tele style guitar I built...
