Guitar Rebuild Teaser

Parts ordered for Strat Jr...until I come up with a better name:
Les Paul Jr. wiring kit
Strat aged bone nut
matte black pickguard
2 way selector switch
GFS P90

RF

7 Guitar Stand

There few things quite as visually and audibly pleasing as a nice guitar or instrument.  Musicians spend a lot of money on their instruments and go through great lengths to take care of them.

There is nothing quite as depressing or heartbreaking as injuring or watching one of our expensive instruments ding, scratch or break.  

As we've been collecting, building, and buying more guitars, my bands practice sessions have become an obstacle course of guitars and basses leaning up against couches, amps and walls.   After buying a new Paul Reed Smith (merry christmas to me), I decided we needed a compact stand for them all.  The cheapest one I could find manufactured was about 80 bucks and didn't look like it even protected the guitars that well.  

Fast forward to a slow Monday morning and I have this.

I figured for the cost of some soft material, brackets and screws, and some left over 2x3's, I could have a safer and better looking stand for next to nothing.  Challenge accepted.

First thing was to decide how many it should hold.  Our set up changes quite a bit, but at most we have 2 guitarist with 2 guitars a piece and a bass player.  We usually have an extra guitar or two laying around so 7 spots seemed right.  Plus at 40" wide, it's still pretty space conscience.

Average guitar height from base to nut is 30-38 inches.  26 inch height with the guitars at an angle puts the stand touching the guitar around the top third of the neck.  This provides a sturdy stance for the guitar without making the stand to top heavy.

Most electric guitars are less than 2 inches thin, but I wanted to be able to include acoustic guitars into the mix too.  I guessed that the average acoustic is about 4" think so I made the spacing 5 inches with 3 inches at each end.

Alright.  Got all then dimensions figured out and drawn up.  Now it's time to start cuttin.

Measure twice cut once, 

blah blah, 

and here we are.

I didn't want the butts of the guitars to be sitting on a square edge for fear it would dig into the finish over time, so I ripped the corner of the front board at about a 35 degree angle.   It's not the perfect angle for every guitar, but once the soft finish goes on it should be OK.

Did a little mock up so I could hold some guitars up to it and make sure it looked right.  Everything was a go at this point.

Next major step is to cut the neck slots into the top board.  I debated on what shape to use for this for quite a while.  The top board depth is 2.5" so I don't have enough room to set the neck all the way in.  Since I didn't have anything to go by, I just cut a shape similar to the shape of the neck that's about 1.5"x1.5"

The first slot was just free hand drawn and then I used some blue painters tape to make a quick template for the rest.  Little jig sawin' and sanding and it's all ready.  After I held it up to the rest of the stand I noticed that the lower corner could pinch the neck some if the guitar were angled to the side to much, so I did a quick mod on all the slots and cut an angle with a 22.5 deg setting on the jig saw.

Time to assemble.

The two bottom cross beams were screwed in with some quick elbow braces.  I went with a bit sturdier connection for the top beam.  On top of it being more weight bearing, I wanted to make sure it was at a perfect 90 deg angle to the bottom piece and the bracket here was perfect for that.

Now to test.  I have some soft material I bought to put on the wood, but i want to wait until after it's painted to put that on.

Main construction is done.  Just a few details to do at this point.
Need to:
Paint and Logo,
Fab velcro straps on each slot to keep guitars from getting bumped out,
Some sort of brace to keep them from sliding on the bottom boards,
some sweet golf ball casters I made.

Will post up new pics when finished.

Feel free to post comments and suggestions.



RF

Mirror Frame

So while prepping the downstairs bathroom for paint, I chipped part of the mirror taking it off the wall. Oops...  It was attached to the wall using those round glue patches and was not a job for one person, but I
was determined to do it myself and failed.
Anyways, to preserve the mirror we decided to make a frame for it that would cover up the broken corner. Here are the results.

We wanted a wide frame so I ended up using some 1x4 pieces of whitewood board from Lowes.  They were probably about 4 bucks a piece for the 2 8' sections so minimal damage there.  It was truly a bitch though to find 2 straight enough pieces to use.  I think I looked at 50 sections before finding two that would work.

Anyways, length was cut based on a 1/2"x1/4" route.  Mirror is 24x36 so the long sides of the board ended up being 42" and 30".  I figured the deeper the route, the more the chip is hidden.  Placed the boards out here so I could figure out how big of a corner piece I'd need to make.



Routing went well thanks to the table router that a friend let me borrow.  Had to make two passes to get the 1/2" depth.
Used a 1/2" straight bit instead of a rabbit.
Only rabbit in the set I had was 1/4".


Gluing this guy was pretty tricky thanks to the POS miter box I used to cut it.  The 45s weren't perfect which meant I had to sand which meant the corners weren't going to be perfect 90 degree angles.















This corner clamp was pretty awesome and made setting the corners much easier.  I had to mess around with the last few corners to get everything to fit right.  Some spacers or shims would have been a good idea.  It was almost not big enough for the 1x3 though.  I'll have to try and find a larger one somewhere.

Since the mirror is pretty heavy, I wanted to make sure the frame would be plenty strong at the corners to support the weight.  I wasn't liking the idea of nailing or screwing the corners because of the thickness of the wood and the length of screw that would be needed.
Ended up using a 1" drill bit to make a hole at each corner, then cutting a 1" dowel rod down to size and gluing it in there.  This should give the glue a lot more surface area to hold the corners together.








Now for the entire purpose of the build;  to cover the broken corner.  I was hoping the triangle left over at the end of each board would be enough to cover it up, but there was still some of the break exposed.  There were 4 ends due to using two boards, so I went with a sort of jagged design where I smashed them together.
Each corner piece was routed down a 1/4" so that it could sit flush with the front of the frame.

The corner pieces would not be weight bearing, so I wasn't to worried about clamping them in.  Just wanted to make sure it was as flush as possible on the top so that I'd have to do as little sanding as possible later.


Here is the 90% finished product.  Need to sand a little then send it to paint.

not sure I'm sold on the angle pieces yet, but we'll see how it looks after sanding and paint.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

RF

How To Make Your Wood Grow

Hello first post. I created this site to have a public place to display the projects I'm working on. At this point most of the projects are oriented around wood working, hence the name. Most will probably be centered around music and guitars, bikes, or honey-do's. Enjoi.