Sunday, March 27, 2016

More picking

OK so this is where things started ......

A sheet of optic acrylic with the outline for rev 1 for the pickguard.
And a vacuum (shopvac) driven dremel. Now  the dremel actually does the job quite a bit better than you would expect for a $10 bit of plastic ... I did open it up at one point (it's 2 halves screwed together with 4 Allen screws) and yes even the insides are all plastic but the shaft is, as expected, metal AND it turns, unexpectedly, on 2 sealed ball bearings ... so how did things go ... 

Well this is the result after 3-4 hours worth of work with 2 different bits. First tried the spiral cutting bit ... which is supposed to be for everything except metal ... well ... ... ... acrylic might be the other exception, cutting with it works but that's the long and short ... mostly short ... of it. Feed to fast and things clog up, apply too little pressure and nothing happens. And in between the bit gets hot enough that it partially melts the cuttings and makes a mess ...
The other bit I tried is actually a small conical router bit, thinking that the larger amount of metal and diameter, might keep things cooler and the more aggressive teeth make more of an impact ... wrong ... while slightly better than the spiral cutting bit the difference wasn't dramatic ... SO ... it works but not all that well. I have cut acrylic with a metal blade in a jigsaw before but that presents it's own set of problems . . . tight corners and all . . . 
The picture above actually looks better than the piece which has a pretty jagged edge which will require quite a bit of sanding ... and the edge at the bridge is of course not where it should be . . . 
So plan C ... 0.2xx birch ply ... at least I'm a moderately competent woodworker. I found a piece of birch faced ply at Lowes that looks likely and cut out a piece to work on ... I'll have some time next weekend but then we'll be on vacation for a while so don't expect to in the way of updates ...


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