Welcome! sMg Guitars - Build and Repair

Hey, Stephen! It's good to hear from you. I just glanced at the recent photos on your site. Lot's of good stuff there. Obviously, you are having fun. I like the "greenbacks."

Having no reputation to sully, by the end of the summer, I decided to just get into repair. Really, Charles' course convinced me that I had not the passion for tooling up and general woodworking that others in our class have. Also, it's more financially feasible. So, I bought an old, falling-apart parlor guitar on eBay and am bringing it back to life. Photos on my site: www.RickHomanMusic.com, and, of course, here as I seek answers to various problems.

Thanks for keeping in touch!

I know what you mean about "project" guitars on eBay. I think it's probably very difficult to make money fixing them up and re-selling. My thought in buying the parlor was that I should experiment on my own guitar rather than someone else's. If I get back what I am out-of-pocket, I'l consider I got my tuition paid (and had some fun).

Hi, Stephen. Couldn't help checking out the site of a fellow Pugetonian. Looks like you're keeping yourself pretty busy. I'm really interested in how your Wagner planing table works out for you. I use the planer for planing extra thick back and side pieces to prep them for final scraping and/or sanding in my Performax. I do the Wagner by hand with no stabilization devices and by and large it has worked out pretty well. Kind of scary because it's a fairly aggressive approach but I've never had a reportable OSHA incident. Only messed up once by taking too aggressive a cut on a piece of cocobolo side and it popped the end right off of the side. Slow and steady does better, I've concluded.

The planer has also been useful in thicknessing the peghead, tapering the thickness of the neck body, cutting the angle at the heel for the heel cap and a number of other uses. Super tool.

Cheers,
Bob

Fix the depth, lock it down, and test it on a scrap. Adjust as required and then yank the lanyard. Oh, and have a shop vac at the ready. You've never seen such a mess in your life. Watch out for chips getting under the piece being cut as that can skew the final thickness, at least locally.

Cheers,
Bob

Isn't the lanyard the little length of cord affixed to the cannon that, when yanked, causes the cannon to fire? Believe me, you don't want to be yanking anything else while you're using the planer.

Cheers,
Bob

I just noticed yesterday that LMII now has a series of short videos on various aspects of guitar building by some guru (small g). One of them shows the Wagner safety planer in action. Might want to take a look at how he (with a helper at gunpoint) use the device. It'll give you some sense of the action.

Cheers,
Bob

P.S. I didn't see a lanyard. Would hate to speculate.

Regarding thte concrete, glad to hear it got you where you needed to go. Won't be too tough to get it to conform to an arch, will it.

Bob