catsittingstill (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
catsittingstill) wrote2015-11-01 06:27 pm
catsittingstill) wrote2015-11-01 06:27 pm
Entry tags:
The guitar case
So I've been working on making a guitar case (it's a commission) using pretty much the same techniques I used to build my Octave Mandolin case last year.
Now part of my build process was building a lid that would fit exactly over the case by building the lid actually *on* the case--using the rest of the case as the form I glued the lid together over. Since I'm using the hot glue method of holding the planks together while the glue between the strips dries, this means that once the lid is fiberglassed it is still held to the body of the case by multiple dots of hot glue. Last time I did successfully whack the lid off but it took quite a while and tore the lid a bit in the process.
Okay so this time I made a couple of modifications. Modification one was that the columns that held the two layers of the jig apart actually touch the outside of the jig, which made it easy to drill small holes through the sides of the case and into the columns. I screwed long screws into these so that they poked out of the sides. By propping up the case (soup cans under each screw,) with the lid on the bottom side, suspended over the workbench, I now had a way to support and secure the case while whacking down on edge of the lid.
Modification two was that while gluing the strips together, both for the sides of the case and for the lip, I used dots of hot glue on every other strip, instead of on every strip. This meant half as many glue dots to break to get things lose.
Yesterday was the moment of truth. I set up the jig as I'd imagined. I have a picture of it at my flickr, but flickr no longer gives me code I can imbed in this page. If you'd like to see it, it's here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/catsittingstill/22068994693/in/dateposted-public/
And it worked fine! Balanced on three soup cans (with plastic underneath in case the cans didn't stand up to the pounding) it was stable enough and held the lid nicely suspended so that I could use a wood mallet and a short straight piece of 2x2 to whack the lid off. It took me less than five minutes all told. The cans were fine and I put them back in the kitchen cabinet. It was sooo much easier than the last time I took a lid off.
With a little luck it will be that much easier to get the jig out also; we'll see when the time comes.
On the down side I still tore the fiberglass in a couple of places. I wonder if it would be better to cut the lip strips 1 and 1/4 inch long instead of 1 inch. Maybe that would give a little more space to let the strength of the fiberglass distribute the force of the blow.
But I can fix those little tears so you won't be able to tell where they happened.
In the meantime using half as much hot glue has really sped up the cleanup on the inside also. I've put in about an hour on it and I think I'm about half done. It looks like I'm nearly done but I always end up cleaning up little fiddly details that take longer than you would think. I bought a dremel tool that has sped up that clean up a lot also--it doesn't mind sanding hardened dookie shmutz (expoxy mixed with sawdust, used to fill gaps between the top and the lip before fiberglassing.) It has the texture of peanut butter until it hardens so it can droop and run and need to be sanded smooth, and the inside of the lip is hard to get to so my other alternative is hand sanding which takes quite a bit of time.
So that's where I am on that. The next stage on the lid will be fixing the tears/finishing smoothing the inside, fiberglassing the inside, and the next stage on the body of the case will be removing the screws, and drilling out and plugging the holes they left.
In other news I have my good bodhran back and have been working on playing it a bit, trying to work out ways to make the techniques Brenda showed me work on my comparatively tiny little drum. I can't help but notice that Amazon has actual Irish bodhrans for sale, with the cutout so you can snug them. "The cutout" means part of the rim is cut away so that you can trap the drum between your forearm and your ribs (called snugging it) to hold it steady while you let go of the handle and damp the drumhead in various ways with your left hand from the back of the drum while holding the beater in your right hand to strike the front of the drum. This lets you get different tones out of it. I can't snug my drum very well--partly because it has no cutout and partly because its diameter is about 4" smaller than a regular bodhran and also I am tall with long forearms which doesn't help--and have been using different combinations of free fingers to touch the drumhead while holding the drum handle, but that changes the tone in a more limited way.
Maybe I'll ask for an Irish bodhran for Christmas.
Also I have poked google repeatedly looking for a bodhran beater with rubber balls on the ends like Brenda has because that one was very bouncy and fun, but I can't find one so far. They don't seem to be a regular thing. The shopsmith can be a lathe, though I haven't set that up yet, so maybe I could make my own beaters, but I'm not sure how I'd go about attaching rubber balls...
Now part of my build process was building a lid that would fit exactly over the case by building the lid actually *on* the case--using the rest of the case as the form I glued the lid together over. Since I'm using the hot glue method of holding the planks together while the glue between the strips dries, this means that once the lid is fiberglassed it is still held to the body of the case by multiple dots of hot glue. Last time I did successfully whack the lid off but it took quite a while and tore the lid a bit in the process.
Okay so this time I made a couple of modifications. Modification one was that the columns that held the two layers of the jig apart actually touch the outside of the jig, which made it easy to drill small holes through the sides of the case and into the columns. I screwed long screws into these so that they poked out of the sides. By propping up the case (soup cans under each screw,) with the lid on the bottom side, suspended over the workbench, I now had a way to support and secure the case while whacking down on edge of the lid.
Modification two was that while gluing the strips together, both for the sides of the case and for the lip, I used dots of hot glue on every other strip, instead of on every strip. This meant half as many glue dots to break to get things lose.
Yesterday was the moment of truth. I set up the jig as I'd imagined. I have a picture of it at my flickr, but flickr no longer gives me code I can imbed in this page. If you'd like to see it, it's here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/catsittingstill/22068994693/in/dateposted-public/
And it worked fine! Balanced on three soup cans (with plastic underneath in case the cans didn't stand up to the pounding) it was stable enough and held the lid nicely suspended so that I could use a wood mallet and a short straight piece of 2x2 to whack the lid off. It took me less than five minutes all told. The cans were fine and I put them back in the kitchen cabinet. It was sooo much easier than the last time I took a lid off.
With a little luck it will be that much easier to get the jig out also; we'll see when the time comes.
On the down side I still tore the fiberglass in a couple of places. I wonder if it would be better to cut the lip strips 1 and 1/4 inch long instead of 1 inch. Maybe that would give a little more space to let the strength of the fiberglass distribute the force of the blow.
But I can fix those little tears so you won't be able to tell where they happened.
In the meantime using half as much hot glue has really sped up the cleanup on the inside also. I've put in about an hour on it and I think I'm about half done. It looks like I'm nearly done but I always end up cleaning up little fiddly details that take longer than you would think. I bought a dremel tool that has sped up that clean up a lot also--it doesn't mind sanding hardened dookie shmutz (expoxy mixed with sawdust, used to fill gaps between the top and the lip before fiberglassing.) It has the texture of peanut butter until it hardens so it can droop and run and need to be sanded smooth, and the inside of the lip is hard to get to so my other alternative is hand sanding which takes quite a bit of time.
So that's where I am on that. The next stage on the lid will be fixing the tears/finishing smoothing the inside, fiberglassing the inside, and the next stage on the body of the case will be removing the screws, and drilling out and plugging the holes they left.
In other news I have my good bodhran back and have been working on playing it a bit, trying to work out ways to make the techniques Brenda showed me work on my comparatively tiny little drum. I can't help but notice that Amazon has actual Irish bodhrans for sale, with the cutout so you can snug them. "The cutout" means part of the rim is cut away so that you can trap the drum between your forearm and your ribs (called snugging it) to hold it steady while you let go of the handle and damp the drumhead in various ways with your left hand from the back of the drum while holding the beater in your right hand to strike the front of the drum. This lets you get different tones out of it. I can't snug my drum very well--partly because it has no cutout and partly because its diameter is about 4" smaller than a regular bodhran and also I am tall with long forearms which doesn't help--and have been using different combinations of free fingers to touch the drumhead while holding the drum handle, but that changes the tone in a more limited way.
Maybe I'll ask for an Irish bodhran for Christmas.
Also I have poked google repeatedly looking for a bodhran beater with rubber balls on the ends like Brenda has because that one was very bouncy and fun, but I can't find one so far. They don't seem to be a regular thing. The shopsmith can be a lathe, though I haven't set that up yet, so maybe I could make my own beaters, but I'm not sure how I'd go about attaching rubber balls...