David's Guitar Building: A little tour and neck started.....

It occurred to me today while I was installing my dust collector, that I have never given you a tour of my shop. So after I installed the duct work for the dust collector (this thing really moves some air!) I did a little cleaning and snapped some photos. I didn't take pictures of everything as almost everything not shown is either storage form our personal stuff, or for my electrical contracting business. If you have looked in your basement or garage lately, you have seen what the rest of my barn looks like! I say I cleaned up, well that is a stretch. I did a little picking up and some sweeping but the barn is still a mess. But, at least I can walk through it now without tripping on stuff!

After that I decided I have waited long enough and started building the neck. First I joined the edges as best as I could with my table saw so I had straight edges, then I layed out the scarf joint. I got my scarf cutting jig, clamped it all up and made the cut. Darn, not perfect. Somehow the board didn't sit perfectly flat so the cut wasn't perfectly straight. No problem though. I clamped the individual pieces back to the jig and shaved the edges until I got them straight. I then sanded them until I had a very nice tight joint. I clamped the neck down to my work table, glued the pieces and put them together. It was at this point that I remembered how difficult it is to glue this joint up and clamp it up without anything moving. I finally got it but it really was a bit tricky. I have to find a better way to do this as I had the exact same problem on the last one. So the neck is all clamped up and drying. I will leave it until tomorrow before I remove it from the clamps. I will then start the rest of the neck work.

I had one piece of good news today. I made a call to one of the OLF sponsors to purchase something and on a lark, I asked if he happened to have any SJ plans for sale. Much to my surprise, he said he just happened to have a spare set and he would be willing to part with them and send them with my order. So, if everything goes right, I will have the plans early next week! I would say who it was, but I don't want to inundate him with calls asking for SJ plans as he doesn't sell plans. It was just pure luck that I thought to ask him, and he actually had one. Also, I got a call yesterday from the trucking company to schedule up the delivery of my drum sander. It will be here Monday afternoon. Yay!

On to the pictures:

This is my new dust collector. It is a 1 1/2 hp 1200cfm unit. I ran a 6" main duct up to the ceiling and then tapped up to my table saw. The trunk then runs across to where the drum sander will be sitting. I haven't poked it through the floor yet and won't until I get it set up exactly where it will be going. This is the space directly under my shop. It is my workshop area for my model airplanes. In this picture you can see about half of my planes. The other half are in the area I am standing in. I have around 15 flyable planes and a few more that are not in flying condition. The big one next to the collector is a 25% scale Patty Wagstaff Extra with a 3.2 CI Brison gasoline engine and a 20"x9 NX prop. All up weight is just over 16 pounds. This plane has unlimited vertical and is extremely aerobatic. Definitely not a beginners plane! It is a blast to fly.

This is the airplane workshop standing in front of the dust collector. This is the space I was standing in when I took the other picture. For those of you with sharp eyes, you might notice a couple of the same planes in both pictures. That is because I took this picture a couple of years ago. I have moved planes around since then.

Up to the shop. I took four pictures, one from each corner. This is by my work table looking to the benders and go bar deck in the opposite corner. You can see my table saw and chop saw station.

Moving counter clockwise, you can see the table saw, work table, a work bench, my spray booth, and my air compressor.

This is opposite the first picture. Again my table, workbench, and my router station. I have two tables for the side bender and wood storage where I am standing.

From the spray booth. The table saw, my router station, my band saw, and my drill press. I have a dehumidifier in the corner by the drill press. If you look under the table saw, you can see the duct for dust collection. You can see where it goes up through the floor/ceiling in the picture of the dust collector so you can get an idea of where my woodworking shop is in relation to the other areas. This shop is about 25% of the total floor space of my barn.
There you go, that's the nickle tour.

Okay, on to guitar building. Here is the neck blank with the scarf joint layed out.

The blank all clamped in the jig. Note how close the clamps are to the saw blade. The blade just misses the clamps by about 1/16". The clamps are right on the edge of the blank and if I moved them any further up the wood, they would be hit by the blade.

Here you can see how the blade lines up with the cut line. Since the wood is much longer than necessary, I moved the blade to the far side of the cut line.