rwillett

I have strict limits on the height of components. Total body height is 44mm, pickups are a certain height, other parts of the body have a certain size such as the mounting plate (10-11mm). Everything is a compromise, money, strength, stiffness, complexity, technical issues, weight. If I had unlimited money AND technical ability I'd go carbon fibre. Sadly I don't have either. I'll look at the calc and see if it helps though. Rob

If I look around me, I see a few farms, a normal garage specialising in Land Rovers and approx 10m sheep. I can't imagine the farmers having any high quality aluminium on hand, they normally reuse and reuse and reuse. Suspect the sheep aren't big users either. I might make a call and check. I might also check out carbon fibre.

The bar I have is apparently Grade 6082T6 (Formerly H30TF). I am taking this to mean its Grade 6000 from here https://www.1stchoicemetals.co.uk/aluminium/grades-guide/?doing_wp_cron=1710703985.3204550743103027343750 The higher grades, 7000, appear to be a whole world of cost higher. It apparently is used for defence and aerospace, guitar making doesn't appear to be an option I cannot find a supplier who puts a price up on line. It's all "ring for a price". This tends to mean, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. If somebody knows different please tell me. It might mean that I can't even drill the stuff with consumer drills. I used to work at BAE Subs in Barrow In Furness and I would bet a pound to a penny that they have this sort of aluminium all around the workshops. However BAE Subs has armed guards on-prem as it does have nuclear reactors there, so suspect I can't head back up, pop my head around the workshop door, and ask them for a bit. Also I caught e-coli there and almost died, so not particualarly keen to see the old Vickers place again. Rob

Nope. Not sure at all but so far this week have learnt : 1. Calculating stiffness is pointless unless you really know plywood and or aluminum. 2. Americans need to move to SI units. 3. Plywood is stronger than I knew 4. Aluminium isn't. 5. Pillar drills produce a low of swarf. 6. Pillar drills and cutting fluid produce a vile mixture

You sound like.my youngest daughter.

Got home after rugby and thought I have to try the 12mm aluminum backbone. I have cutting fluid and used the 6mm as a template. Didn't break the drill but the amount of swarf that comes off, use cutting fluid and it's wet swarf. Need to rethink the tool station. Anyway now have a 12mm backbone that fits, I love precision, and tuned up. There is still a little bow, in the 12mm aluminium. I reckon I must have the crappiest aluminium this side of a Soviet submarine. The bow is small, probably 1mm-2mm across 400mm if that. Massively better than before. I'm not going to 15mm aluminum at the moment. Now the neck is a little flatter, I'll follow the video links that @samiam posted to set it up. Still looks like a scrappy Steinberg, but getting there. Don't stress over some of the heights of things in the picture. Now I have a reasonable backbone I'll make the neck/bridge height the same as my Fender Jazz. This is progress though

You can see the bend in the 6mm aluminium plate. I'm very surprised as I thought it would be stiffer. The maths says 9x stiffer. That's proven to be a load of b0ll0cks What's interesting is that the printed stuff is holding out under the load. 40% infill seems to be ok.

Well I ran the maths and trusted my gut feeling and both were wrong. The 6mm aluminium bent at the same rate as the 15mm plywood. I worked out the aluminium as 9x stronger. Thankfully, I don't do any maths involving safety critical systems. I have an hour free so am drilling the 12mm aluminium and lets see how that works. Rob

You'd have to buy a lot to move the market this way. Whilst vintage fenders are scarce and there is demand, there are enough sellers to make cornering the market difficult. To move the market they need to be close to a monopoly and this isn't a monopoly at the moment. I'd like to be able to buy enough to move a market though. Sadly I'm no Rotheschild in the oil business

Well so much for maths. My calculations showed that 6mm aluminium should be significantly stronger than 15mm plywood. Rubbish. Just drilled a 6mm slab of alumimium using my nice shiny pillar drill. I made a drill guide to use as everything had to line up perfectly and surprisingly it did. Put everything back together on my test bass and it bends just the same as the 15mm plywood. Approx 2-3mm at each end. Very, very surprised so either I have poor quality aluminium or high quality plywood. Tomorrow is a girls rugby festival in Settle, I'm the organiser so I may not get time to drill the 12mm plate until later in the week. Very disappointed, but more bright paint on the learning curve. Rob

Even better then, 50p...

May I add my name to list for the next turn please? Is it like the pool table at the pub, do I need to put £1 down?

That looks a lot more substantial than mine but also bigger. Not sure the laser makes a massive difference to be honest. We seem to have survived for a few centuries drilling holes without one.

Pillar drill now here. Plugged in, turned on and tuned in. Might drop out later😊 The clamping mechanism and fence look OK but I'm not jumping up and down with joy and can see a heavy vice looming in my future. Also the laser alignment is out by about 0.3mm on one axis. This might be some sort of record of me dismantling something less than 24 hours after receiving it. No point in sending it back as the next one might be as bad. l

Wow, just wow Where exactly in Norfolk do you live again....? Asking for a friend.

Very tasty.... never seen that colour and pickguard combination. Looks great.

Hi, I'm getting a daily digest of emails and want to turn it off as I get the immediate emails. My settings don't seem to have one for daily digest or I can't find it. Can someone point me in the right direction please? thanks Rob

PM'ed you. No idea whats going on. Just checked my profile and there's nothing obvious there to stop you. Rob

Now you're just being silly, I'll double it to £20 and I'll pick it up to save you the effort of putting it in the letter box, can't say fairer than that... Far better offer

@sandy_r Of course you can. I didn't realise I was that frightening that people needed permission to talk to me I will try and be more friendly going forward and stop growling at people. Rob

Wow. What a dragonslayer hero 😊 Deeply impressed.

Send some simple measurements and I'll knock something up. It's not a big deal to print it up and if v1 is wrong, v2 will be better. I'm hoping just to drill and not ream.

Says the man with a 55+ year bass guitar project There's a lot of load through the bass strings. Enough to bend a quality piece of 15mm plywood by 2-3mm. Unless you can spread the load, I'd be surprised if any printed material can handle it short of proper carbon fibre layups. A pickup surround is pretty easy, If the pickup is rectalinear then I need the outside of the pickup measurements plus a small gap, I can round corners so perhaps a 0.5mm curve on the corner might help or might not. It's about 10 secs per corner to design it. I need the width of the pickup surround, too big and it looks silly, too small and it may not cover all of the gap. 10mm is not a problem if you want. For my six string printed guitar, the pickguard is the surrond and the P90's fit onto it. I need the height of the surround, 2-3mm should be the minimum otherwise it gets too flexible. I need to know how you want to fix it to the guitar. Thin double sided tape works well, but also I can put screw holes in and you can screw it in. Here's one I made earlier (in the best Blue Peter tradition). It has countersunk holes to fit the guitar, it has a slight flange around the top and enough of a gap for the pickup to fit snugly but not tightly. The person then sadned it down with very fine sandpaper and spray painted it. I thought it looked great. Pillar drill is on order, should be here Friday. I've been putting it off for years and thought I needed it now. Rob

The printers are silent at the moment as I'm waiting for a pillar drill. Until I've sorted out the backbone for the bass, and making sure the flex has gone, no more printing. This is actually a good time to do other jobs. Not sure about the replacement bridge though. There's a lot of load through the tension of the strings. Let me know what you are looking to do. Rob

I'd be honoured to be able to contribute