Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Hi, Welcome Steve.
Taff

I had a request to repair this old Gibson from an elderly lady whose husband had passed away. It was his guitar, and he had done extensive repairs on it over the years. He also painted the guitar with brown paint, to hide the repairs. Luckily most of the damage was on the sides but filled with a put...

Hi, Here is a photo of the tool I made back in the early 1980s I cut the steel out of an old army vehicle and it works fine.
I have a list of 210 tools and jigs that I made in the shop and not bought. Cheers Taff

Hi Bob, I recall my first use of a bolt-on neck, maybe twenty years ago, and it was the start of my use of that method on my future builds. I had to do a reset on one of my earlier builds, the guitar was twelve years old, and the tenon used had dowels down the sides of the tenon glue line. Short of ...

Hi Bob, thanks for looking in, yes I filed a cutting edge on the back like that on the front. The shaft that goes through the hole replaces the locating point that is normally on the front and stops the bit from skating around. I am just wondering if a similar bit of a suitable size could be used to...

Hi, here is a very simple idea I came up with for drilling a countersink hole inside a guitar. At times when doing a repair regarding heal repairs or neck resets I have often converted the neck attachment to a bolt-on method. To make the repair look neater I always counter-sink the bolt head into th...

Bridge Slotting Overkill… Being a firm believer in the saying waste not want not is what brought this device into being many years ago. It started life as a vintage engraving machine, given to me thirty-five or so years ago, and it was operated on the lines of a pantograph. I have adapted it as a de...

Hi Trent, ok, if you don't mind wrecking the output jack then what about using an "Easyout", the tapered tool that looks like a thread-cutting bit that has a reverse spiral and is used for removing broken bolts or studs. Just a thought. I have a bunch of the m here and it looks like that would work....

Hi Trent, I was all ready to post photos of how I would tackle that problem but found that a recent computer service had removed my photo program, and I have not worked out how to get around the problem yet. So I will try to explain it. First, you need to grip the body of the jack. To do this: * I h...

Hi, yes I received that email as well. I thought it was a scam, too good to be true sort of thing.
taff

How long is your warranty period… I had a phone call the other day from a guy for whom I had done work over the years and his call started like this “…Hi Taff, I’m just wondering what your warranty policy is?”. I know I had not done any work for him in some years, so I asked him to tell me more. He...

Hi, I have done as described above a few times over the years and ended up with a hardly visible hairline. On the other hand, I have also straightened/flattened out a bent side and used the inside after repairing the damage. It is one reason I do not shape my sides before bending, it gives me a choi...

HI, I found putting the radius on a bridge base to suit the top radius more time-consuming than I liked, so I made this tool up. I used to use scrapers with bridges held in a special jig, then I used the sanding block you see here, but now it takes less than a minute to do the same job. I have a num...

Hi, the photos should tell the story. There are three laminations on the back of different thicknesses to the five laminations making the binding on the front. Then there was the fingerboard binding that was different again. I acquired some plastic binding from Maton twenty-odd years ago the remaind...

Hi, yes that's an issue I keep in mind when re-setting necks on many different brands of guitars.
Taff

Hi Mac007, I do not use a tenon, over the last 20 years or so I have bolted the neck heal flush with the sides. I have never had any issues with this method. I have a jig I use to determine the neck heal angle required, on the bench, then set up my sanding machine jig to recreate that on the neck bl...

Hi, the slightly oversized bolt holes in the neck block allow me to easily find the neck heal inserts.
Taff

Hi Bob, if you notice in the first photo there is zero clearance between the saw and the base that the fingerboard sits on, so breakout is minimal. Also, I treat the bottom of the fingerboard as the surface to be radiused, so any damage is removed then.
cheers Taff

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Hi Bob, this may not be what you are searching for, but it may give you some ideas. I use this jig for the opposite reason. I had a stash of fingerboards that had been roughly shaped before I received them. So that I could use them on my fret-slotting circular saw I needed a straight edge, this is h...

Hi, thanks for the comments, guys. Alan, I have just finished the guitar and strung it up last week. After 50 years of not being strung up or played I thought I would let it settle in before doing a final setup. But I must say after two weeks it has stayed how I first set it. Very playable, it makes...

Hi, here is another Arch Top job a long time coming, but there is a story. Are you sitting comfortably? This is a Maton EG90 archtop dated 1957; I received it for repair 30 years ago. The guitar was salvaged from the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy and had significant damage but was all complete and orig...

Hi, that's a very nice-looking instrument, Trent. I have a few boards of quandong stashed away, I might have to pull it out having seen yours.
Cheers Taff

Hi, yes that is a very well-presented demonstration.
Taff

Hi, here is an interesting job I did recently, replacing the top on a Taylor guitar. I would say that this guitar was exposed to the elements a bit too often as it was compromised in many different areas. The bridge was lifting due to the belling up of the top, due to internal top bracing failure. A...

Hi Trent, yes, I found that, and the fact that the plastic end of the file holder was too close to the peghead finish for my liking. While I like the idea of wooden handles I may go to plastic. As I would need 10 or so handles, I thought I would get my grandson in Adelaide to 3D print them for me. H...