Adding a top to Warmoth body blank

[SkuttleFunk]

nice, and great to see you know the Forstner bit trick to rough out your pickup cavities, FWIW - I usually hog mine about 1/8" shallow so I can remove the bit tip marks with the final pass of my router bit

all the best,

R

 

[guitlouie]

That looks seriously cool, man.  The forearm contour looks awesome!  Nice work!

 

[ognolman]

nice, and great to see you know the Forstner bit trick to rough out your pickup cavities, FWIW - I usually hog mine about 1/8" shallow so I can remove the bit tip marks with the final pass of my router bit

all the best,

R

Thanks, yep the evidence of the forstner bit...  I was thinking about cutting a little piece of my 10 mil laminate and gluing it over the forstner ugliness.  I've just been too scared of the router to try to get rid of the holes that way.

Put it this way-- this bass was originally going to have J pickups until my laminate trimmer jumped on me and chewed-up a chunk of the walnut and destroyed my router template.  I have another body with EMG routes, so I just created a template for them with some MDF and now this bass is going to have a set of EMGs I've had sitting around for a year or so.  But after that I just went nuts with the forstner bits out of fear.  From now on I plan to use the router as little as possible.

That looks seriously cool, man.  The forearm contour looks awesome!  Nice work!

Thanks!!  You should see the wood when I've wet it down!  It's going to look nice, I think.

Here's the back, BTW I forgot it:

JBD

 

[blue313]

This is interesting, I'm sorry I missed this thread.  Looking nice so far though!

I've only routed mahogany twice (and never walnut) but luckily didn't have any issues.  I was wondering what happened that made the router jump out and bite your template?  I'd like to try to minimize that sort of thing in my future endeavors.

 

[ognolman]

This is interesting, I'm sorry I missed this thread.  Looking nice so far though!

I've only routed mahogany twice (and never walnut) but luckily didn't have any issues.  I was wondering what happened that made the router jump out and bite your template?  I'd like to try to minimize that sort of thing in my future endeavors.

I have no idea what caused it to do that.  The best advice I can give is to use a drill press and forstner bits to remove all but the very edges, if you can.  Your goal should be to eliminate the need for using the router.  Since it is impossible to do everything from the drill press you just try to do as much as you can, leaving the router for just smoothing out the bumps.  I've had the router do too many crazy things, and it doesn't take much to ruin a nice instrument.

JBD

 

[SkuttleFunk]

O -

maybe it would be good to start a PM conversation on the topic of routers, as I have a couple suspicions that if true and can be corrected thru usage technique will turn you into a router enthusiast

when I'm installing a pickup/control cavity and/or neck pocket I use a Forstner bit in a drill press to remove the majority of material, leaving a full 1/8" on the bottom (to eliminate the Forstner point marks) and about 1/16" on the sides. I the work the pattern bit into the cavity/pocket in 1/4" depth increments until I am about 1/16" from the bottom. that last 1/16" gets its own pass to ensure that the cavity/pocket is uniformly smooth and to a precise depth - this final pass is measured with a caliper prior to setting the depth on the router via its fine tuning adjustment


I believe your jumping is caused by either

a) attempting to take too big of a bite at once. this is especially true if you have a dull bit or your router is under powered

b) you have attempted to cut in the opposite direction (i.e. a climb cut) for the bit rotation and grain


there are other things that can cause the jumping, but these two would be the most common outside of turning the route on when the bit is in contact with the wood. if you were local in the Seattle area I'd suggest we meet up sometime and spend an hour or so working on safe routing techniques so that this jumping problem goes away.

all the best,

R