Official Luthiers Forum!

No actually, Don I'll go as far as I please and I don't need you to over step and think you can moderate me or anyone else. You read far too much into my comment, chill out dude. Words such as "insufferable" are your's not mine. This is not the first time you've taken the liberty to be critical of others including me for how we post and what we say. Mind your own business!

I'm done with you and you were who I have in mind when I spoke of the know it alls........... yep you.

Back off it is NOT welcome and if my comments bother you don't read my comments bubba...... I'll remind you (and I) that Lance doesn't want conflict on the forum, you know how to PM me with your BS as you have done many times in the past. Please consider the others and take your beefs to me personally and off line and be prepared for a new experience too......

Regarding your comment, your ignorant comment.... about others liking something so maybe since they are knowledgable we can listen to them. What about me? By your own logic I should be heard too. The vice does not work for us in our busy shop and I said why. Sorry you can't take it man but keep your BS from me I won't take it and I will call you out if you do.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Your last sentence if so true and funny as hell too Clay. We built an Earlywine neck jig, Dan is a personal friend of ours. It was great for hanging our Stew Mac aprons from but beyond that for us, for us it was useless and never made us a cent.

It is a good learning tool when training someone about relief. But for someone like me who sets-ups 4 - 6 instruments most days I know what the symptoms of poor relief will do and there is no need to quantify how poor the relief is you just freakin fix it and then, next. Dan was never offended by our comments his jig is a great learning tool for schools. But for a repair shop I don't need or want one Dave Collins feels the same way.

We parted ours out to use the dial indicators for other things such as an instant triage bench tool to show clients why then need a neck reset.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I do actually work for a living and I'm not one of these people who hides behind a status where I claim pro and amateur when it suits me. Wow that must be fun to do, eh, Barry?

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Ann Arbor Guitars

A lot of underwear discussion this AM for some reason, cool [/quote]

Ha, dang spellcheck, that should have been underwater


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

WOW!!!


I think this forum needs a moderator.

This is out of hand.

No Cheers,
Bob

I have one that was gifted to me. I tried it went back to my yoga mat and lead shot bags they work for me . I don't like things that have sharp corners.
To be fair I do know I am pretty set in my ways. I have a bench holder that I use that is fine for set ups but I still find I am more comfortable with the soft pads and lead shot bags.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

The first 3 times I read this, I was thinking it was about shop tools, and I thought....WHAATTT? The 4th time through, I finally saw the word "undergarments", and the light came on

Wanna sell it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

gave it away

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I built an Erlewine style neck jig recently ... but I use it purely for leveling the fretboard before fretting and then, later on, for leveling (and adding slight relief into) the frets. I just like being able to have some way of keeping the neck and body fully supported and immobile when I'm doing those tasks. IMO, there are lots of ways to build guitars that are effective and much of that comes down to personal preferences and your individual skill set. That said, I will second what others have said about sharp/hard objects near the workbench

Good post Woodie.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Was asked to post leg vice pics and I'm happy to show you our commercial shop in Ann Arbor and our leg vices. These are the only vices that we use for all that we do. We have pattern makers vices and the Stew Mac vice and have not used them in well over a decade.

Also wanted to list some things that we do with our vices that I don't see alternatives doing at all or as well:

Neck resets. For those who have not done a neck reset the process may involve for some instruments filled with glue... wrestling with the thing at times exerting a couple hundreds pounds of force on the neck joint. The vice must be rock solid, bench too and not give an inch. Our leg vices are lag bolted to the heavy bench that is bolted to the floor and walls.

Fret work: When leveling a fret plane be it frets or the board we need a rock solid fulcrum that can easily be moved simply by where we set the instrument on the fulcrum. Leg vices do this for us.

General work: We don't have time to strap an instrument into a one size doesn't fit all and ferret out where we stashed the special attachments for this or that. We are a production to survive.... repair shop that understands that we must produce at a good clip. So Hesh here can open a case, take five steps (I take little steps...) and place the guitar in my vice and crank the handle. Done, it's locked in and I can start working on it.

And most of all all sharp corners have been removed from our vices and/or padded with leather and with over 10,000 guitars put though what you will see in our pics not a single case of vice related damage.

So I greatly prefer what we use and it's not $500 either. If you find a bench screw at a yard sale or have one you can build a leg vice for the price of a 2 X 4 and a door hinge maybe $10. I bought one bench screw and it was about $75 iirc so worst case you have an $85 vice in a leg vice.

I get a big kick out of telling folks that when I hung up my beloved, gifted Coach brief case and didn't have to take that west coast flight to Silicon Valley again I cut up my brief case and used it for jigs and my leg vice . My home shop has a leg vice (of course) with Coach leather and the Coach tag hanging from it Repurposing at it's best.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

One more pic this is my home shop leg vice and the one I purchased the bench screw for. The bench screw is too large or doesn't have to be this this large but it still works fine.

When I retired the first time from being the representative to Silicon Valley of the company I worked for I cut up my Coach brief case and made a leg vice and jigs out of it. You can see the Coach tag if you look hard enough hanging on my vice.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I like those leg vices Hesh. Simple, and easy to make. Holder for the snips or pliers is a great idea. I cringed seeing the workstation.vice. Really. But what do I know?
I've been cleaning up, and reorganizing lately, every few months, or even few days sometimes, stuff piles up. I don't like messes, so I have to make it habit to put thinks back where they belong. I used to clean up all the time at the end of the shift at work. Your benches aren't a mess.

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Why be normal?

I use a large wood screw clamp but I do like this I may have to make me one

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I just spent some time trying to find where Dan E. has endorsed this vice system or even made comments about that. Since someone here brought that up implying something resembling perhaps... and endorsement what's the source please I want to see it myself?

Dan is a very gracious guy and a personal friend who got his start in the same shop we now own. He's used leg vices for many decades in fact and it was Dan and Bryan Galloup who rolled out leg vices at their "Guitar Hospital" and the Galloup School of Luthierie.

Dan had a special designation as both uber experienced repair person AND promoter of Stew Mac products. I can see Dan and I have heard Dan have nice things to say about many things because he's a nice guy but that is not by definition an endorsement or to be construed as a comment on the suitability of an offering over all others. Implications of otherwise are not accurate in my view and maybe it didn't go that far but it's certainly flirting with it....

Going back to square one Brad has back issues, so do I. I can see this system elevating things for that and that being helpful. You still will have the issues of lots of exposed, hard, even sharp metal and a wooden musical instrument. In a busy shop like ours there would need to be some protocol for how all the bits and pieces are stored so that it does not take a week to put an instrument in the thing and do some actual work.

I spent some time and watched the entire video this morning and I see a number of other issues. For example it's promoted as great for fret work and Proper shows the use of a scissor jack and additional moving part a pedestal so that frets over the extension can be hammered in place.

The comment is specifically made that this eliminates the need for a fret buck. I beg to differ. Extension frets are also a function, in terms of how they go in of how we prepare fret slots but I am digressing.

A fret buck does not function because it only adds support to the extension area. The physics of the device require it to have great mass so that the amount of force required to overcome its inertia won't be greater than its mass and inertial. In short it's heavy and massive and that counters hammer blows.

What we see in the video is a different method AND physics to go about supporting this area and frankly I would be concerned to be hammering frets depending on a scissor jack resting off center of a pedestal support. The scissor jacks I've used I would not trust for hammer blows and my primary point is a jack provides support a buck provides mass to have to over come and support.

Further since fret work is our game and we do lots of it what we did not see is hammering frets in positions 1, 2 and 3. That's a couple feet away from where the vice is supported on the underside. If the guitar is not VERY well supported when hammering in frets and the holder will flex or give a little the fret may get messed up and the slot damaged. Not good.

Additionally my other comments about neck resets, the need to wrestle with them and the real world of what a vice has to do for one of those stand. The overall complexity of the thing and there is also a dependency on a single point of failure, the supplier of parts for this system that would be problematic for a shop that wants zero dependencies on product that may or may not be available in the future.

We use the Jaws II for fret work as the couple dozen of you who took our classes know. We have been concerned that if StewMac goes teats up we are out of new Jaws IIs. Single points of failures in your operations need to be considered and that's my point.

We've offered products too to this market and learned a few things. It's tough, demand is mouse nuts making economies of scale a pipe dream. Manufacturing things in very small quantities costs a fortune, etc. etc. etc.

Our saddle mill was not a failed product and the couple dozen we sold we hear good things about and we use ours ever few days. But 20 something is not a huge quantity of product to justify our sunk costs and R and D.

My hat's off to Mr. Proper and I do see this as a solution for someone with a bad back like Brad who understands that he may have to learn to work differently with this rig. He also might consider pipe insulation to cover up as much of the metal as possible.

But I do not see these as superior to what I use and countless other Luthiers have used through the years the leg vice. It's also much more expensive, is proprietary in the sense we have a dependency on this company for parts and support and there is the sharp metal thing too.

I'm weight restricted waiting for hernia surgery. 7lbs baby is all I can carry or I might pop open.... The idea of me carrying this rig with a Taylor enjoying some B&D strapped in it would put me in the hospital literally. Wonder what it weighs with an 11lb Les Paul.

Lastly no disrespect intended to Mr. Proper and my hats off to him for trying to come up with a better mouse trap. I'm far more adverse to the possibilities of instrument damage than perhaps, perhaps his thinking is but I only speak for my self. If nothing else I just cannot get by the complexity, the amount of metal and with this said the possibility of someone like me making a mistake that damages an instrument.

One last thing too. When we make a nut it's on the instrument and every nut is an individual. As such I'm at the nut area with a big file pressing down and filing the excess nut top to the strings sacrificing a set of strings, the existing strings to make that nut. That's a lot of down force on what is now the guitar neck extended out a few feet from the vice support. I can't imagine that there will not be flex. The same is true for cutting nut slots, more flex there than with what we use now the nut area is supposed directly under it. We can clamp the nut area directly in our vices and have great support directly under it with leg vices.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Yep for us tooling needs to be transparent to the work, be reliable, simple, predictable and not have dependencies on a supplier if possible but it's not always possible.

When I want to work on a guitar half a turn on one lever and I'm ready to go with it locked in place.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

They are great you would like being able to get busy with one crank of the handle.

You know you make a good point that you can make a bench screw too for the do it yourself community and only need a door hinge and a Coach brief case kidding on the Coach brief case.

I wanted to share I was asked if the jaws taper in a PM to match the taper of the neck. the jaws have slop intentionally in the door hedge and their own flex and distance from the hinge. The bench screw hole is intentionally over sized too because of the various angles that the bench screw may pass through them.

So when the vice is open you can feel the flex and as it clamps and tightens that flex and slop conforms to the neck taper automatically and nicely.

So no intentional taper to match a neck the vice jaws self adjust a bit by the nature of the design. It's a beautiful thing and you can see from some of ours that they get a LOT of use.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I said the following regarding Dan Erlewine and Robbie O'Brien:



I said those things because I have watched these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1QLft4iLqw&t=909s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qekm2KBqT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_noFejdxUc

I was clearly referencing the entire product line.

Hesh, there are professionals out there that can help you with that self esteem issue, eh.

You dropped their names and said that they are "saying good things about them" which to me is an implied if not specific endorsement. I did not get that from the videos that you just now provided that you say informed your quoted statement above.

I know Dan personally and he's excited about any tool and every tool and he's also a tool collector. I'll add Dan is a very good guy like Robbie and they both are encouraging and positive dudes. Dan also states clearly that he's been working with the vice company and has a relationship there. Not exactly an independent endorsement and none of that was mentioned by you just that Dan is "saying good things about them...."

That's what I got from the videos that you just now posted that they are excited about the possibilities of these products but I did not get anything they said as this vice system is superior to all others.

This is a very small industry and we all for the most part are complimentary on other people's products. You scratch my back, etc. I saw nothing more than that happening in the videos you posted.

Does it matter? Heck no, not anymore, time fills in the blanks.

Nice sunny day out there good for a walk before getting up at midnight and going into the shop to fix more guitars.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

You don't say, who would have thunk it.....

PS my father was a shrink and my mom was a social worker maybe that has something to do with it....

Anyway I'm standing down and hope others here will respect the REST of the forum and Lance enough to stop peeing in the OLF canteen. Folks don't come here for this nor do I.

I won't be the first to cast another stone and although you and Don certainly can do as you wish none of us have the right to negatively impact the value of the OLf to others.

Thanks

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Some vice history for you. In the late 60's early 70's Dan E. would visit the Gibson plant in Kalamazoo and that's where he first saw the leg vices we believe. Dave Collins told me about this just now. Gibson used leg vices.

He brought the idea for them to Herb David Guitar Studio and later the "Guitar Hospital" and the Galoup school of Lutherie. So he has used them we think for decades. Galloup has them too according to Dave and students learn on these vices. Bryan's shop also has CNC and a lot of bleeding edge tech so they do spend on what works when they wish.

Of course when you are working for a producer of products you use those products and promote them, understandable. Dan worked for Stew Mac for a long time and was the father of many products.

Now some more information. We have a transducer and preamp installed in Dave's leg vice and it's hard wired to a tuner in front of him. Or, in other words whenever a guitar is in his leg vice he can tune it with a tuner the vice is wired for sound. He's also got it wired in stereo, mono and a few other setting for very specific jobs and circumstances. Bright guy!!!

He just said to me that he has everything he needs to do his job other than big machines within 32" of his leg vice by design. He then said the vice is THAT important to how I work that it is the center piece of my shop.

His biggest objection to the Proper vice is we need to be able to deposit a guitar in a vice with zero adjustments being done and it has to be a one size can be made to fit all with no added suite of accessories. We take a guitar out of a client case with the client standing right next to us and put it in a vice. We can do this now with no issues but with the Proper vice you may, may have to trial fit the instrument, put it back in the case, get attachments, install them and trial fit again until you have it fitting the vice properly. This inability to have the vice configured for a wide range of instruments including mandos, banjos, and bases out of the box would change how we work and make an instrument less safe in that it has to spend more time out of the vice while the vice is configured.

So again professional respect for Mr. Proper we are simply very happy with our leg vices and they can do all that we need them to do.

By the way Dave retraced Dan's steps at the Gibson factory about ten years ago with John Thomas who wrote Kalamazoo Gals. John is a Facebook friend and personal friend of Dave's and an incredible person who is one of the brightest guys we know. Check out his book it's fantastic.

Thanks

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Ann Arbor Guitars

After watching the videos Don posted I do see how the tooling shown can offer some benefits for doing guitar repair work, and with the addition to some padding on the hard edges, as Hesh suggested, much of the risk to "doinking" a guitar finish can be reduced. Although I personally don't see the need for one I do see some utility to it.

Hesh,
I really like that end of bench vise setup --- brilliant, really !!! I have a tiny workshop and can't do that in my current space as I basically have one workbench to do everything and I need all the corners of my bench. But I saved that photo and may end up building a similar workstation when I move to a larger shop (hopefully, within a year). One question, do the jaws have enough play to swivel and accommodate the neck taper or do they just end up clamping at one end.