Monday, October 17, 2016

Guarding my sanity

Sooooooooo ................... I started this in March and . . . . . well progress has been . . . . light . . . .

First off, while the vacuum driven dremel 'worked' going was rough and it did a less than stellar job leaving a LOT of hand sanding ... so not ideal. The problem was identified later this summer when I got a motor driven one . . . the RPMs on the vacuum one are just to low for cutting the hard OPTIX plastic, it probably works fine of drywall (for which it was intended which is much softer and 'crumbly') but that was not how I was using it ..... ... .. .

 So here we are once again . . . a sheet of plastic and ......... so holes. This time I decided to put in the pickguard screw holes FIRST so as to positively and reproducibly fix the plastic to the body between doing the cutting so I could see what progress I would be making . . . note that the crew holes are NOT is the traditional jazz master positions, currently using 7/16 (I think) holes for #6 black pan head screws . . . in the final version they will be replaced by antiqued oval head bronze #6 but this works for now.


And here we go . . . this is after drawing out the rough and cutting with both the regular spiral cutters and ... this https://www.dremel.com/productimages/125lg.jpg which lets you etch a fine line across the top or cut all the way through . . . they do seem to wear out after a (longish) while hough. Both produce melted plastic so possibly I have to back off the RPMs some . . . . OH . . . and if you're just making a template or otherwise don't care about having an absolutely perfect surface, ESPECIALLY if you're just making a template, get rid of the protective plastic on both sides, it just gums things up, melts and generally seems to make a mess.


Most of the shaping was done with sanding drums with low grit, you can regulate how much is taken off how fast by changing the RPMs . . . lower RPMs are much less aggressive down to somewhere around 10K ... lower and things don't work very well . . . OH and stay below 20K, you CAN crank it up to 35K but it goes REALLY wild. Also there is a difference working clock wise and counter clockwise that influences things . . . . 

And then . . . things go wrong . . . I drilled the holes for the pickup screws (remember: measure check, check against the actual pickup, measure again . . . . stupidity and all that). Well I got THAT right (the holes for the crews that is) and then went off the rails, I wanted predrilled holes in the corners thinking that they's make nice round corners, so . . . . I drilled some 5/16 (I think) holes ... never EVER drill large holes directly in hard materials that can shatter or crack ... you'll rip something out. And that was when the stupid set in, apart from predrilling smaller holes . . . you should ALWAYS fix your work piece in place so it doesn't flop around when you forget to hold it with sufficient force . . . . nope I thought to drill the larger holes totally free . . . The first one went kinda OK ... and so did the second . . . the third was iffy and that should have been my warning to stop and do things RIGHT but I was in a hurry and . . . . well as you can see with a little looking drilling the fourth corner (top left) . . . well no need to elaborate, there is now a crack running from the left edge of the neck, to the hole and from there into the hole for the pickup screw and then down south . . . not real obvious in the photo below but . . . . . well it's a show stopper on this piece obviously . . . . . 

So this is where I pretty much left it last weekend. This weekend I got a new piece of plastic, drilled the holes for the pick guard screws using the old one as a template and fixed them together using some #6 nuts & bolts and then cut the outside (this is what you see above, the 2 pieces held together by 2 of the bolts).

As we are now back where i was about 2 hrs of work ago . . . . next holes for the pickups. I already had the holes for the pickup screws so they transferred and the outline for the neck pickup so that's were things started this time . . . . . and even with a DIRECT transfer . . . measure . . . please measure, just to make sure . . . . .

So below are the tools, well the drill is missing . . . first I drilled plenty of 3/16 holes along the inner edge (see left) so I wouldn't rip or crack anything as before . . . punched out the rough hole and then proceeded to shape it with the dremel . . . turns out the distance between the edge of this https://www.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/accessories/565-multipurpose-cutting-kit attachment and a sanding drum is 7/8", measure, measure, measure and then start sanding . . . see below for my setup . . . Oh and BTW small carpentry squares are HANDY . . . just make sure you don't mistake the 1/12 scale (if present) for the 1/16 and then use another measure to transfer that measurement . . . NASA once confused US and metric and lost a Mars lander . . . the consequences of confusing 1/12 and 1/16 when making a pick guard may not be AS disastrous but . . . . . .  



And here is the intermediate result                                                                                                             The top is fine but the corners around the bottom have to large a radius and the bottom edge is JUST a tad to close ... so more sanding both by hand for the corners and taking just a 1/32 of that bottom edge with the dremel . . . .  And below is the final . . . not absolutely perfect by measurements but I can't really see the difference by eye . . . . . . . 


So one pickup hole done . . . one to go . . . . 

I was some what sick of sanding by this time . . . . and have more in my future . . . . darn . . . so I moved on to laying out the switches using the cracked guard . . . it's got to be good for something . . . .


So here are the switches in the top cavity for the pickup selecting of the individual humbuckers (rail single, 'P90' single, series & parallel - there are 2 DPDT witches for each pickup) . . . plus for now the phase switch BUT I'm almost positive that this will move to the vicinity of the pickup selector in the final version . . . volume will go into the pocket below the bridge pickup, tone below that and I WAS thinking about doing the unconventional thing and putting the pickup selector (rotary) in the final pocket where the plugin is in a traditional JM (I have a side plugin here) BUT ...... well I have maybe 1/8" clearance so placement MUST be exact AND then I'm stuck with 3 switches (phase, tone cap selector & treble bypass selector) that don't really have a 'home' . . . . . alternatively the pickup selector will go into it's more traditional place in the lower bout with the phase switch and the other 2 end up in that final cavity . . . .  decisions, decisions, decisions . . . . . 

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