TomPerverteau
Junior Member
- Messages
- 187
When I'm over at my dad's shop, it's his stuff. He knows what he has, and where everything is. I'm a decent machinist, but at his shop he also ends up doing most of the work. I don't mind because he's really good, and again, it's his stuff!
There is not a straight line anywhere on the neck to clamp to. He has these neat rubber jaw thingies that we made work.
Milling the "shelf" using a router bit and that cool vise that adjusts for angle or "roll" as we called it here.
Back at my shop. These "bow" things are cheap & great setup tools that everyone should make and have around. None of the wood I found was springy enough; it all kept breaking. I ended up using these cutoff scraps from the edges of some circuit boards, which are fiberglass. The high & low strings for this guitar are a .009 and a .054, respectively.
You can see how we milled in relation to the first fret, and not to the headstock. I kept checking it with the nut as we moved gradually. The angle of the shelf shows that the headstock was not a good reference point!
There is a bit of clearance between the low B and the first fret. The high E sits right on the fret. I will be able to shim the nut to the correct height, probably with just a flat piece of material. This also leaves some room for adjustment in the case of a fret dress.
Centering the nut in preparation for drilling the holes. This neck is a whopping 2.15" at the nut, not the 1.998" the pencil note on the butt claims! The nut is an R7S. I always use one nut width narrower than recommended because I like a lot of fretboard outside the strings so they don't fall off the edge when I play, but this is even more than I need. I don't know whether there is a wider OFR nut available, or even who I would get it from. Input is wlecome here!
Holes drilled for the nut. Floyd Rose himself once told me on the phone that top-mounting these nuts with wood screws is no stronger than drilling all the way through the neck & bolting it on from the back. Whether this is true or not, I prefer to remove the least amount of material. It also looks much nicer than having those ugly holes in the back of the neck! So top-mount it is.
Cleaning the "nurdlies" off of the holes so the nut has a nice, flat place to sit.
Screws in, but...
I like to put the nut a little toward the bass side so the high E doesn't fall off the edge of the neck when doing pull-offs. This is a bit further to the bass side than I planned, but that's where the holes landed! I won't re-drill now because it may not be necessary if I find a wider nut than the R7S.
At this point I can finally clean the neck up & start applying coats of tung oil varnish. The major dirty work on it is done.
There is not a straight line anywhere on the neck to clamp to. He has these neat rubber jaw thingies that we made work.
Milling the "shelf" using a router bit and that cool vise that adjusts for angle or "roll" as we called it here.
Back at my shop. These "bow" things are cheap & great setup tools that everyone should make and have around. None of the wood I found was springy enough; it all kept breaking. I ended up using these cutoff scraps from the edges of some circuit boards, which are fiberglass. The high & low strings for this guitar are a .009 and a .054, respectively.
You can see how we milled in relation to the first fret, and not to the headstock. I kept checking it with the nut as we moved gradually. The angle of the shelf shows that the headstock was not a good reference point!
There is a bit of clearance between the low B and the first fret. The high E sits right on the fret. I will be able to shim the nut to the correct height, probably with just a flat piece of material. This also leaves some room for adjustment in the case of a fret dress.
Centering the nut in preparation for drilling the holes. This neck is a whopping 2.15" at the nut, not the 1.998" the pencil note on the butt claims! The nut is an R7S. I always use one nut width narrower than recommended because I like a lot of fretboard outside the strings so they don't fall off the edge when I play, but this is even more than I need. I don't know whether there is a wider OFR nut available, or even who I would get it from. Input is wlecome here!
Holes drilled for the nut. Floyd Rose himself once told me on the phone that top-mounting these nuts with wood screws is no stronger than drilling all the way through the neck & bolting it on from the back. Whether this is true or not, I prefer to remove the least amount of material. It also looks much nicer than having those ugly holes in the back of the neck! So top-mount it is.
Cleaning the "nurdlies" off of the holes so the nut has a nice, flat place to sit.
Screws in, but...
I like to put the nut a little toward the bass side so the high E doesn't fall off the edge of the neck when doing pull-offs. This is a bit further to the bass side than I planned, but that's where the holes landed! I won't re-drill now because it may not be necessary if I find a wider nut than the R7S.
At this point I can finally clean the neck up & start applying coats of tung oil varnish. The major dirty work on it is done.
