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If this topic has been done to death, forgive me. But I thought it would make a nice thread. I love homemade tools, jigs, and gizmos.

Do you have a particularly treasured tool, jig, or gizmo of some sort that you made yourself? If so, what have you got? Care to share a sketch or plans?

My latest brainstorm is awaiting the arrival of the stuff I need to try it. UPS will be around one of these days.

My wife bought a "memory foam" pad and put it on the mattress. I got to looking at the stuff and thinking about it. It's weird material. Feels funny.

What I'm going to try, and feel free to critique the idea, is taking a king size memory foam mattress pad, 2" thick, costs about $60, and cutting it up into reasonable sizes so I can use it on the bench for various clamping jobs and such. Maybe pad the jaws on my collection of vises with it.

I especially want to see if I can clamp radius-carved braces to tops/backs on it somehow, thus causing the plate to conform to the brace radius and eliminating the need for radius dishes. If it works, one size fits all. The only potential difficulty I can think of is applying hot hide glue and then clamping the stuff up fast enough while the glue is still open.

So that's my latest idea for a possible new and better way. Genius or insanity? Aside from that, I'm trying to cook up a scheme for creating a homemade drum-type thickness sander that will work just the way I want. But that one's going to be awhile I think.

So, what d'ya got for great ideas that you want to share?

Rick

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Rick

Put the hide glue in a plastic bottle and heat it in the bottle and you can apply it much faster than a brush.

Also use a 1:2 ratio of glue and water, I do this by volume because I do not have a gram scale. Too little water and the glue will gel before you even get it out of the pot.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I don't know about that memory foam idea, but would like to see it in use maybe. Being a rather poor fellow as of late, I've been building my own clamps out of scrap wood. My neighbor threw out a maple bed frame a while back and I took it apart to use for something. Finally I decided to make my own cam clamps with it, using recycled strips of aluminum too:

They came out quite nice. Japan wood working sells their cam clamps for $18.00:

It was a good project to do during down time between guitars. You can never have enough clamps.
I also made a few out of just wood, according to an instructional on youtube, but they don't tighten as well.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

Drop a couple of 1/2" x 1" stainless steel Hex bolts in the bottle first.... allows the HHG to retain its heat longer while not in the pot.
Careful of too much water

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Dave
Milton, ON

How does the bolt help the glue retain heat? I can see that when its almost empty but water has much better heat retention compared to steel...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Well, regardless of the thermal conductivity of either material, I suspect it has to do with heat transfer through radiation to air (think "tea cosy") and conduction (hand), both of which will rob heat from the fluid but neither of which will directly affect the bolts (although they will loose heat as the fluid cools). Without digging out Thermodynamics of Heat Tranfer & Fouriers equation etc., best I can do .
Anyway, lots of guys use this trick (...I think I heard it from Mario). Not convinced...don't! Just passing along a tip.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Here are two tools I've been working on getting ready to start my first build. First is a thickness caliper made with a deep throat c-clamp and the other is the beginnings of my bending pipe.

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Stephen

Great stuff! Keep going, I've got my notebook and pen and I'm taking notes!

Rick

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Rick

I need a thickness caliper but the problem is, dial indicators are expensive as hell already (no cheap Chinese ones, only that expensive Japanese brand), and also they're all in metrics.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

You can get a Mitutoyo dial indicator for less than $100 (0.001"-1.000") I know that's not very cheap, but not a bad price for what you get.

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Finally escaped The Peoples' Republik of Massachusetts; I can smell the freedom in the air!

Like I said, the other problem is ones you can get in Taiwan are all in metrics, unless its a digital one. A lot of MRO suppliers won't ship to Taiwan for some reason.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Why would you even want imperial measurements? Unless you've grown up with them and don't know anything better. Milimeters work perfectly fine, fractional and otherwise.

Hear, Hear! Metric is so much easier!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I've always used the stainless bolt to keep the plastic bottle sunk down in the water sufficiently, never thought about heat retention.

+1
(although I am bilingual, having grown up with imperial)

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

How does the bolt help the glue retain heat? I can see that when its almost empty but water has much better heat retention compared to steel

Thermal mass.

Also, as already stated, it keeps the bottle from floating in the water bath....

For clamp/vise padding, leather can be found all over the place, in the form of worn out gloves, old coats, boots, etc.... Excellent padding material.

Dunno about that memory foam stuff.....

Tai's right. The same volume of water would store more heat than the bolts do. But the difference is small enough not to matter (1cal/cc vs .96cal/cc). But that's not water in the bottle, it's hide glue, which probably has a slightly lower specific heat. Let's call it even. The bolts keep the bottle from floating.

I make a variety of hard sanding blocks out of Corian counter top scraps. These are easy to shape, but stay flat, even when wet sanding--particularly useful for final leveling of a run in the finish.

Hey! When it comes to wives tales, rules of thumb, and real physics, you need to leave it to the pros!

http://xkcd.com/849/

Mike

+1 for metric .When i moved to the usa,I had to reedumacate myself with the oldenglish system visualizing 3/32 or 1/64 IMHO is vy difficult, ditto for all the other stuff, metric is way easier .

Here is a modified version of another Fox jig. I made this one this morning. The keys hold the binding down, the dowels turn to hold it in place.

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http://shastaguitar.com/
http://www.kalimbakit.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/comfyfootgr ... ature=mhee
http://www.facebook.com/robert.renick.7

Apologies to those who have already seen this neck holder for carving.
I'm still using it, no changes.
http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=26349

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

really cool link from the ANZL forum

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMadeTools/index.html

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MK5acoustics.com

Whoa! Had to bookmark -that- link....!

Here are two that I use to both save time and make the work a bit easier:

The first is a neck slotting jig / table saw sled based on the John Bogdonavich plan. It now takes me about 4 minutes to cut the 4 1/2 degree slots in the neck to admit the sides where it used to take at least an hour or two of careful layout, measuring, cutting and fitting by hand.




The next is a neck shaping jig similar to the one that Colin has shown except that the piece holding the headstock is hinged allowing the fitting and clamping of various headstock angles.

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Peter

I really like your jigs Peter, especially the neck slotting one.
Just to mention, if you read the post, mine also is "hinged" for various headstock angles - 2 screws go through the side of the headstock support into the main body of the jig .

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.