Official Luthiers Forum!

    A little while ago there was some discussion about turning bridge pins
out of different woods, bone and ivory. After a few requests for a short
turorial, I grabbed a piece of bubinga and sat down at the lathe to turn a
few for photos.

    This is a pretty simple tutorial with the photos doing most of the
talking. It's possible to hold tolerances of +/- .001" if your stops are set
up well and your lathe is well tuned. It's important that gib wedges and
half nuts must be set up properly for the feeds to work and maintain
accuracy and consistency in all directions.

    Just like any machine in your shop, the late needs to be checked and
adjusted regularly.

   Here's a few photos with text that will run through a step by step
process of turning a pin.

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    Thanks for checking out how I turn my pins. I can set up to any taper
and have matched pins from many vintage Martins and Gibsons that are
very difficult to find replacement pins for. I match the taper, diaters and
length to be able to have them directly replace the original pins with no
fresh excessive reaming and cutting in those old bridges.

    I'll be cutting some fossilized Walrus ivory pins, nuts and saddles this
year as I'm back to work and my be offering them for sale.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

   Lance or Brock will have to enlighten me on what went wrong with the
posting of the photos in tyat initial post. I used the upload button and pulled
them in one at a time, making sure that they were saved within the size
requirement of 500k.

   If anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to chime in and I'll give them
another shot.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Kev, no pics buddy, where'd they go.

Since you did it, well, I'm sure it's cool.

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

    Here's another try with the photos. They all fall at about half of the
500k
limit in size.

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Continued....

I think the requirement is 200K. I use PowerToys for Windows right click and resize right in the Pics Folder of windows. Get it at microsoft.com for free under Power Toys. Fast and easy, and free.

There are two trees, you need to use the one with the arrow Kevin.



Hey, Kevin, the Pic size is bumped up to 500 K now. This lion is 105KB.

Good luck.

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Oh well. we gave it a try. I've posted photos here a hundred times before
with no trouble and don't understand this since I'm using the upload button.

Any help?

Thanks,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Bruce,
   All of these images are between 200k and 300k and are jpegs and even
shot with the same camera as that lion inlay photo was.
   
   I'm not getting it and I always use the upload button with the arrow. Hit
the button, choose the image and up it should go, but they're not showing
up. I've opened them all here to check their sizes and viewability.

Thanks,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Kevin, are you using a mac? I had some problems uploading photo's using
Safari (mac's web browser) but all my problems were solved when I used
Firefox.

Kevin my friend the pics have to be smaller then 150K to upload.  If you don't have resizing software email them to me and I would be happy to resize them and post them but it will be early tomorrow morning - it's late here.....

Whoops nix that 150K file size limit I just checked and it now says 500K so this is a recent change.  Any way I still would be happy to up load them and size as required.

The images are uploaded. You can tell by the date string added to the
file name. Adding the date string and a unique ID key to uploaded files is
a trick programmers put in upload forms in order not to overwrite
existing files. File names are just too look for the software because it
doesn't wrap lines when you post from Safari.

A black mist surrounded me today and I re-opened that horrible PHP
Solutions book back up to the page where I'd left off. Right in creating
user friendly upload forms. This is the only reason I know the above,
honest.

Kevin, I'm really looking forward to seeing it all once it gets going.

 
Bruce,  Did you do this inlay?

_________________
Say what you do, Do what you say.

Dave,
   That's the Lion of Judah inlay that I did on the guitar that I took to Africa.
We have a potential buyer for it now and the proceeds will go back to Africa
when it sells.

   It was built a little heavy with the trip in mind and suffered some finish
damage whil there in Kenya. It plays great and sounds good, but i'm going
to give it some attention before it leaves my shop to loosen it up a little.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher

What Kevin Said Dave....

Pretty nice eh?

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com