Telecaster Style Guitar Build - Part 3 - Electronics, final assembly and completion

Finished T-Style guitar

If you want to read the setup and the electronics read below. It is a little long but has a lot of information in it.

New Year New Calendar

Just when I needed a new shop calendar for 2014 one arrived in the post courtesy of Guitarist Magazine.
It'll look great on the shop door.

Telecaster Style Guitar Build - Part 2

The swamp ash body is now complete using the routing template I showed in the last post. I have painted it white with a Beckers Waterborne pigmented lacquer after first sealing and sanding smooth . The finish off the gun is very good but I'm going to leave it a few days to cure before I rub it out.

Front with some blue tape masking
the neck pocket. Did I ever say I love blue tape?

Rear. No belly comfort curves on this bad boy!

In between a repair job for a violin I've been busy making the neck. I have put a faux skunk stripe in the back and routed the double action truss-rod channel from the front.

Violin repair job - Part 1

One of my friends has asked me to have a look at his old violin with a view to repairing it. It was his mothers and the last time he remembers it being used was in the late 1950s. In all that time it has not had any strings on it and has lost various components.
It appears to be one made in Germany or Bohemia in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It has a head scroll in the shape of a lion or large cats head. I identified the violin type as being a European Tyrolean Lion Scroll violin.
See this forum entry http://www.fiddlehangout.com/archive/26910

Body

The body seems to be primarily made from maple and the top seems to be spruce.There is no great figure to the wood that was used in its construction. The purfling around the edge of the top plate is a single channel. The top plate has become detached from the upper rib in the area where it would be held under the chin. I wonder if sweat has taken its toll and caused the glue to fail. This needs re-gluing and I have some hide glue to do the repair.

Tyrolean Lion Scroll Violin

New year clean up

I spent the best part of today putting a replacement part into my table saw. The TS is a Record Power TS250C with all the side extensions.

I've had it for a few years now and the lower dust collection shroud had failed a few months back. I had a lot of dust underneath the saw instead of inside the dust collector due to the shroud breaking. However Record Power have an excellent after sales service and give a 5 year warranty on all parts that have failed due to a design fault.
The dust shroud had cracked at the mounting screws when the blade was tilted to 45 degrees. I had too much work on in the latter half of 2013 to fit the replacement part but finally got around to do it today January 3rd 2014.

Essentially I removed the top cast iron table with extension tables and the rip fence assembly. This gave me access to the internal workings of the table saw. I was then able to remove the old shroud and install the new one. I took the opportunity of renewing the extra cardboard shrouding I had installed some time ago to improve dust collection. I found that the cleaning the internal casting carrying the motor assembly with mineral spirits prior to applying Gorilla Tape to the cardboard to secure it in place was satisfactory. In the past I have used gaffer tape, duct tape, DUCK tape all to no avail. It appears that Gorilla Tape is the best so far. All gaps were sealed with the tape.

I then took the opportunity of reassembling all components of the table saw and setting everything with callipers, straight-edges and depth gauges to tune the saw. Next I used a random orbit sander to clean-up the cast iron to 320 grit then waxing the cast iron to a nice sheen. The sliding table was next to be set level and parallel to the main cast iron table. Then the dedicated dust extractor was emptied, cleaned and a new air filter put into place.

The first cut was a revelation. There was no dust on the floor! Result!

I shall take some time cleaning all the other large fixed tools in the shop in the next few days to get ready for projects for 2014.