Also Much More Likely to Work

I thought I would report on the woodworking efforts. Sadly I am too lazy to take photos.

I decided to make a Telecaster clone, using a router and some templates. A template is like a router stencil. You fasten it to the wood, and the router cuts away everything that doesn’t look like the template. Hopefully.

I put six pieces of walnut together to make a bookmatched slab, and then I succeeded in routing out the guitar body. But I still had to rout out the neck pocket and some other stuff.

A Telecaster has a bolt-on neck. “Bolt-in” is more like it. Okay, “screw-in.” It doesn’t actually have bolts. You make a rectangular pocket in the front of the guitar, and you put the end of the neck in there, and you use four big screws to hold it in place.

I received a neat Dewalt 611 router for Christmas, and I decided to give it a whirl. This is a very small hand-held router similar to a Bosch Colt, only better. It has a sweet plunge base.

I clamped the template to the front of the guitar body, using Irwin Quick-Grip 12″ clamps. These are newfangled one-hand clamps with silicone pads on the gripping surfaces. They’re great for quick clamping.

The router worked fine, and walnut seems to like being routed. But I had a major FAIL. As I was routing, I noticed that the template was a tiny bit off the centerline of the guitar. I assumed I had screwed up when I was attaching the clamps. I kept routing, figuring I would finish and see what the damage was. Then things went completely weird, and I ended up with a pocket that extended about 1/4″ to the left of its proper location. The clamps caused the problem. They’re so weak, you can’t use them for template routing. They let stuff move.

I had been using double-sided tape for routing, but I got this crazy idea that clamps would be less trouble. Wow, was I wrong. So if you decide to make yourself a guitar, take it from me: you don’t want Irwin Quick-Grip clamps. They’re too weak for gluing slabs together, and you can’t trust them when you’re using a template.

Now I have to figure out how to fill in the giant neck pocket and start over. I could just trash the body and make a new neck, but this body was intended to be a learning instrument, and now it’s giving me a chance to learn how to do inlays, so throwing it out would be stupid.

Yesterday I practiced using templates with the small router and my nifty new glue gun. I made a straightedge template from a piece of plexiglass, and I made two more from hardboard, and I used hot glue to fasten them to a scrap board in a way that formed a shape like a neck pocket. Then I went to town on it. I noticed a few things.

1. Pine is actually harder to rout than walnut, even though it’s soft. Sometimes it just refuses to let the bit go through.

2. If you use separate pieces to make a template, they have to be the exact same thickness in order to give you the best results. Otherwise, the router jerks when you move from a lower surface to a higher one, and I suppose it can tilt, too. You want the router base to be absolutely parallel to the workpiece.

3. Hot glue tears up hardboard templates and is not easy to remove from the workpiece. I had been cautioned that two-sided tape might tear up the wood, but the glue is worse. I suppose I have to learn how to heat it and soften it without messing up the work. But you can’t do that to glue that’s between a template and the work. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s easy to use heat to get the glue off the wood once the template is off, but by then, you’ve already torn up your hardboard template. Plexiglass, on the other hand, is stronger than glue and won’t be harmed. I have a heat gun, but it gets the work very hot very fast, so I was hoping I would not have to use it.

4. Small templates are just plain bad. You want the template to be as big as possible so it supports the router and prevents tipping.

5. When using a template, it’s probably best to use a bushing before you use your flush-cut bit. The bushing will give the template and workpiece complete protection while you use the router to remove over 90% of the material. Then you have a much easier job left for the flush-cut bit. It will also allow you to use the template when cutting at a very shallow depth. You can’t do that with a flush-cut bit, because you have to sink the bit all the way in to get the bearing in contact with the template, unless the template is very thick. I wonder if the rings on my router table will accept bearings. That would be cool.

I think I’m going to go back to the table router. It requires a lot less skill. I was concerned that the dubious flatness of my router table would cause problems, and maybe that’s true, but that will only matter at the bottom of the neck cavity. I should be able to get 90% of the way there using the table, and then move to a handheld router to finish it off.

Woodwork is great, but I hate the dust. Every time I use the router or sander for more than a minute, I have to take a shower. I’ve learned that router dust control is a fantasy. You can limit it sometimes, but even the professionals use the shop-vac for most of their sawdust.

Anything you do with tools has a price. With woodworking, it’s the danger of the machines and the unmanageable dust. With metalworking, the machines are much safer, and there is no dust, but you get splinters, and fluid goes all over the place.

I managed to machine a guitar bridge from 360 brass. I wanted a gold- or brass-colored half-ashtray bridge, and no such product exists. I had a round brass bar I bought to make bathroom drawer knobs, so I cut a length of it out and turned it into a rectangular chunk, and then I hollowed that out, giving me a box with one side missing. If you Google “ashtray bridge” and imagine what you see with the pickup part cut off, that’s what I have, except that I still have to put a few holes in it for screws.

I can’t believe how beautifully brass machines. The feeds and speeds are just like 6061 aluminum, and you can omit cutting fluid if you’re brave. It polishes up in a hurry, and when you work it, it almost seems to want to cooperate. It’s no wonder brass has been so popular throughout history.

I’ve decided I need an offset wrench for my router table, so I can remove the collet nut without scraping the table. But no one makes a 24mm wrench for a Bosch. They used to make them, but not any more. I think I’ll try to machine one out of steel. I have a bar that might work, but it may be too narrow to make the working end of the wrench. If that’s so, maybe the answer is to cut it out of a piece of scrap angle iron. With the bar, I could machine a couple of 90° angles into it for a very sharp offset. That would be nice.

I may also get a Jawhorse. I’ve been watching router videos, including one made by router expert Pat Warner, and I noticed he uses a special bench for a lot of his work. Most of it is what appears to be a two-by-eight, at waist height, parallel to the ground, with wide sides horizontal. He has a big C-clamp welded to it, to hold workpieces on it while he routs. If I had a Jawhorse, I could make a jig that would work about the same way and put it in the Jawhorse’s clamp. If you don’t know what a Jawhorse is, look it up. It appears to be an incredible tool. It’s a three-legged steel sawhorse type of thing with a giant clamp at one end. It does all sorts of stuff, and it has a workholding welding attachment that looks like a godsend.

Last night, I realized something about tools. I’ve always said tools end frustration and remedy helplessness. Last night I realized that working with tools is great for your character. Much better than sports, which teach you to crave attention and sex, and that women are disposable toys, and that you’re so wonderful, no one will ever make you pay for the bad things you do.

When you use tools and begin to see success, you will develop a sense that you are able to cope with problems. You will learn that creativity, perseverance, and prayer pay off. It will help you to realize that the failures you’ve experienced in the past are not predictive of your future, because you can defeat your challenges if you use your brain and refuse to give up.

It costs a lot of money, but then so do worthless pursuits like golf. And in the end, you (and your descendants) will have things you can touch and handle, to remind you how you overcame, and how to overcome in the future. To me, a nice handmade guitar would have a lot more gut impact than a trophy or a newspaper clipping or a diploma. It’s even better than cooking food that makes people’s eyes roll back in their heads. Food disappears in a matter of minutes.

Any effort you make to develop skills and accomplish things will help your character, but there is something special about tools. Perhaps it’s because the concept of tools is so fundamentally, inextricably intertwined with the concept of ability. A tool is an extension of your body and mind, intended to enhance you in the most direct way possible. It’s almost a prosthetic. When you have a tool you know how to use, you are augmented. You are more than you were without it. To acquire and learn to use tools is to redesign and improve yourself, and it will improve your confidence in other areas of life.