Routing a tele ferrule block.

  I've been busy with all sorts of things lately, both in and out of the shop, so I haven't really had much time to blog.   I had a long weekend, so I was able to get some yardwork done, do a repair job for a co-worker of mine, and even start on a little of the actual construction of the Selmer copy.  As you can see, the shop is all sorts of messy and I wish I had more room, but I will some day when I'm actually able to do something about that.

  A co-worker of mine had heard that I went to school for guitar repair and asked me if I could route a ferrule block(click here if you're wondering what that is) for a tele copy he had.  Apparently whoever installed the previous ferrules didn't line them up or use proper drilling techniques to prevent chipping of the finish, so it was looking pretty ugly.

  I wasn't sure exactly how to remove the old ferrules, but did a little research and online forums suggested using a soldering iron to heat them up and then pull them out with a needle-nose plier.  This wasn't working for me and I wasn't too concerned with keeping the ferrules in tact, so I decided to try a screw extractor bit I had gotten from Sears a while back and it made extremely quick work of removing the ferrules.  I thought that was going to be the difficult part, but it turns out it was the easiest part of this job.

  Next, I mad a routing template for the ferrule block.  The manufacturer suggested using a half inch router bit, which I did, but I'm wishing I would have just used a quarter inch bit because the template was only a half inch wide itself, requiring me to do some fine tuning of the template to get the router bit to fit perfectly.  Then I taped the body up, marked a centerline as accurately as was possible, and positioned the template accordingly.  After I did the rout, it turned out I had positioned it slightly forward of the center of the existing string holes, so I did a little counter-sinking of the existing holes to help guide the stings from the ferrule block into the body holes that lead up to the bridge.

   I didn't take any pictures of of the routing because I was test fitting the ferrule block along the way and once it was in, it wasn't coming out easily again.  Here is the finished project and a much better looking backside of this tele copy:

 

    That's all I have for now, but I will be writing another post on the selmer progress soon.

A little side project for some friends, AKA cornhole!

   A while back, a couple friends of mine brought up the idea of making some beanbag toss games for a good time at parties and whatnot.  I assumed it would be a super easy project, so I offered to help them make the boards.  I soon found out that the name of the game is cornhole and I soon found some cornhole board plans up to official cornhole specs here: http://www.cornhole.com/freeguideredirect.htm

   I started with a 4'x4' piece of 3/4" plywood and ripped it in half to 2'x4' pieces.  The holes are specified to be centered 9" from the top edge and 6" in diameter.  I thought I could just chuck the fly cutter into the drill press and slowly but easily cut my holes.  It turns out the drill press only has about a 7 or 8 inch throat depth, so that idea is out and I decided that instead of investing at least about $50 on a decent hole saw, I would go the more hazardous route and chuck the fly cutter in a hand drill.  

   This was not the greatest idea, but after a couple drill battery chargings and completely dulling the cutter, I had some pretty decent 6" holes.  A little sandpaper smoothing and the holes were pretty much perfect.  It took a couple hours, but these were exactly the holes I was end up with:

   With the holes done, the next step was to run some 2x4s through the jointer for the edges of the boards.  I was going to pockethole the 2x4s, but couldn't find my jig, so I just cut the 2x4s to length and glued them to the boards.

   Next, I took a roundover bit to the assemblies to smooth out the edges as well as round over the edges of the holes.

    The last step was to cut out some legs.  I cut the angle and pivot point of one leg and used it as a template to route the other 3 legs exactly the same shape and size.  Then, the legs were attached with 3/8" carriage bolts and some wingnuts.  I had a little hardware fiasco when I decided to use the recommended locknuts instead of wingnuts.  The locknuts were impossible to remove from the carriage bolts once they were on, so I had to break out the dremel to cut one of the nuts off the bolt.

   I'm letting them handle the finishing, but here are a few photos of the completed regulation cornhole boards:

 

 

   My friend Nate even bought some bag-o-lanterns to light up the board holes for night playing, but we haven't installed those yet.