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  1. P

    Hand held electric planer advice

    When I made my brother's guitar I planed top, back and sides entirely by hand. It was tedious taking them down from around 5mm to around 2.5mm (the last bit, 2.5mm down to around 1.8mm is where the music comes out, that's definitely hand planing). A back or front is around 450mm x 550mm, maybe...
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    Green or seasoned oak for shipbuilding?

    A recent conversation with my wife moved from the new book by Julian Barnes, through John Evelyn's lament about the destruction of woods, to oak framed building construction and thence to ship building. Don't ask, it's all rock and roll stuff like this in my house :) But we then wanted to know...
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    Humidity and wood movement - the basics

    I've seen quite a few posts recently where the answer was 'humidity has made it move'. Humidity can be a mystery, especially when you're starting out. Because I make guitars and ukuleles, which quickly fall apart if you don't understand humidity, I've had to read up on it lots. So I thought I'd...
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    Koa!

    I'm building another ukulele, and have just worked the top and back to near final thickness (these will be not much more than 1.5mm at the end). I thought you might like to see the koa, from Hawaii, as the grain patterns and colours can be quite dramatic. These are just planed surfaces with...
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    Trimming down cheap interior doors

    I'm selling my late parents' house, part of a retirement complex. One of the internal doors has a damaged panel, so I need to fix that. The door is 1972 X 632 mm, 6 panel, and made mainly of cardboard it seems. It's cheaper and easier to replace than mend, except this seems not to be a standard...
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    Could this be Spanish Cedar?

    This was the door frame from a mahogany wardrobe (all the rest of the wood is, I'm pretty sure, Honduras mahogany), date around 1870-1915 at a guess from the style. It's being made into a ukulele neck. But it's very obviously not the same wood as the rest of the carcass, even though it looks...
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    Stripes!

    Simo kindly sold me some offcuts of mahogany and maple, and I couldn't resist ... The back was easier than I expected, and the bent side far harder - I think I have 5 or 6 sides in the trash pile :D
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    I made a Tenortrope

    An obscure musical instrument, but I wanted one! It looks like this: And here it is in action: https://youtu.be/iX6GRmuvP0Q Making one of these is roughly 70% woodwork, 30% engineering and about 98% swearing. I posted build pictures on a luthier site, and so could reproduce them here if...
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    Rebate plane with a convex sole?

    Has such a thing ever existed? I've not seen one pictured ever, but that might be because we now have routers. I could definitely use one to cut the binding channels on a guitar or ukulele, and it would be fun to make one (a woodie would be fine). But the fact I've never heard of one suggests...
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    Wooden plough plane

    This just arrived today - a mere £12 delivered and the iron is 1/4 inch which exactly the size I need to plough the truss rod grooves in the guitar necks I'm making. Result! Looks like the maker was Wilcock of Manchester (any reputation as a maker?) with the last owner's stamp as F...
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    A slightly oddball guitar (completed)

    By popular request (OK, one person asked :D ) I'm documenting a guitar as I build it. This won't be a standard dreadnaught beast, but is vaguely inspired by the US parlor guitars of the 1930s. The methods I'm using don't require any specialist tools, and indeed you could build one of these...
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    Heavily cambered plane blades

    I'm recycling a Victorian wardrobe into a pair of parlour guitars. After resawing back and sides, they are about 8mm thick. I need to get down to 2mm or so. That's a lot of hand planing! But I've finally got my thicknessing toolkit together: The dark wood plane does all the rough work, the...
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    Eclipse 71 saw set markings

    Just picked up one of these, and the wheel which sets the amount of set has (illegible) numbers around its edge. Are these recommendations for different tpi, or simply I apply the amount of set I want and then remember the number for next time?
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    Saw sharpening/deep ripping technique

    I am ripping a 3/4 inch mahogany board, 14 inches wide, into two thinner 14 inch boards. A brace of one-piece guitar backs, in case you wonder why. The board is ex a Victorian wardrobe, so probably Central American. I'm using an old, no-name 26 inch handsaw which is 5tpi and I've sharpened rip...
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    [Corrected] 3/32 inch machine screws?

    [Correction - I originally wrote 3/16, when I should have written 3/32] I have bought a banjo (and yes, I know there are recovery programmes for people like me ...) It was made in Birmingham, probably in the 1920s, and has unusual friction tuners which suit it well, so I'd like to use those if...
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    Restoring light corrosion

    I've just "invested" in a century-old banjo, which of course is bristling with metal hardware. From the pics (it has yet to arrive) it looks as if humidity in the attic where it lived has very lightly corroded the hardware surfaces. I guess they are probably nickel plated. Any hints where to...
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    Ekki timber - advice on working this?

    I've been given a slab of Ekki, which my reading tells me is dense with interlocking grain, has mineral deposits which dull tools, and is mostly used for marine applications (the stash of which this is a part came from a canal). It's almost exactly on the quarter and is about the size of half a...
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    Finished! Making a ukulele

    A friend's daughter Jenna (aged 10) won a set of Tasmanian Blackwood in the raffle at a ukulele festival, and very generously offered it to me as a present! Heavy negotiation ensued, and eventually I beat her up to me building the set as a uke for her. I also promised progress reports, and as...
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    TAKEN. Free (mid-Suffolk) Crafter (or Craft?) table saw

    Now taken. Benchtop model, quite old, but the blade goes up and down and tilts and it rips wood. Rough cutting, not precision work. Note: the blade guard is missing though riving knife is still there, so you can't have it if you're a novice. I'd like to know that you plan to make it a...
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    TAKEN. Free (mid-Suffolk) Performance Power Planer/jointer

    Now taken. I think this is B&Q own brand. Purchased a few years ago before I learnt to use a hand plane and discovered that I can do all I want with that. So this just takes up space, can't be bothered with the effort to sell it via eBay if someone here could use it. It's marked as a...
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