Site Redesign

Readers,

I'm currently doing extensive re-design and content focus on my site.  While I will still maintain content relating to guitars and the like, the current state of political affairs is simply too painful and disturbing to which to add my commentary... it simply gets lost in the noise.  So, my intent is to focus on what I am good at... history.  I hope to continue to provide scholarly resources and articles to further historical knowledge... and hope that some of my selections may influence the course of present political affairs by highlighting dangerous similarities that Western Civilization has confronted in the past three hundred years.

To Impugn a People - A Historiography of the Crimes of the Nazi Regime

The following is one of my current assignments for World War II History in Context.  It's a short historiography of how historians have dealt with culpability for the Nazis since 1945.

To Impugn a People - A Historiography of the Crimes of the Nazi Regime

Foreword

After originally being tasked to construct a historiographical overview of the home-front in World War two, the author chose to concentrate this endeavor upon the German home-front in general and in particular the level of understanding or even culpability of the Deutsche Volk in the crimes of the Nazi regime. This specificity however, came at a price as the author found the depth of scholarly literature devoted to this particular subject to be rather shallow, recent, and monolithic in interpretation. The author therefore chose to broaden the topic to incorporate the historiography of the path to Naziism. The author believes the average German played an integral role in this rise and has incorporated the examined historians’ views of this subject to attempt to keep with the specific theme of the assignment.

Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 Build Part 10

Messing up and recovering.

So, last I posted, I had drilled the holes for the bridge post bushings and had grain-filled the mahogany.

Two weeks ago, I started the staining process for the top.  The green from Stewmac was great thinned in water and all by itself without any additions.

So, after letting it sit for a week, I pulled off the masking tape off the sides..... and inadvertently, pulled off a lot of the grain filler from the end-grain parts of the sides.  Will not make that mistake again.  Then, I scraped the binding with a razor (another, extremely delicate process that will take many more times to master).  Then, after I received the awesome Seymore Duncan hotrod set of PUPs, put it 'together' for a mock-up photo.

That's when I noticed my horrible mistake.

The holes for the bridge posts were drilled 1.5mm too narrow.  Devastated and instantly thinking I had ruined the whole thing, I left it for a week to ponder my options.  I settled on getting a hole-saw for my drill press with the pilot drill bit removed.  I purchased one that would leave a hole slightly larger than the original post-hole.  After measuring both holes from center, the one millimeter or so of difference that would be corrected if I redid both holes was negligible and not worth the effort, so I decided to redo the bass side of the bridge.

With the plug in hand, I filed off the sides until the plug fit snugly into the hole and then glued it in place.

Carefully, I stained the plug, and, after waiting a day, drilled another hole.

Not too bad.  I sized it up against the bridge and it looked good.  Crossing my fingers, I screwed in the posts and put the bridge in.

 

Perfect fit.  Success!!!  With confidence now high, I'm looking forward to warmer weather and a chance to start finishing.  Next, I'll post on the disastrous attempts to file string slots on the nut.  Looks like I'll be ordering one pre-filed.

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Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 Build Part 9

So, over Thanksgiving weekend, I looked to route the recesses for the pickups and the cavity cover, drill the recesses for the control knobs, drill holes for the tuners, mount the bridge posts, and start the finishing process.

I started with the cavity cover recess.  I tried to do it with the dremel but it just didn't work as my bit couldn't cover enough territory, so I used the router and template.  Because the depth of cut was so shallow, I had to raise the template with wood blocks to significant height to ensure the template made contact with the pattern bearing.  I think this threw off the cut just slightly as you can see there.  I also used forstner bits to route out wood to about an 1/8th inch from the top to ensure the control pots had enough threads through on the top to mount the knobs.

Next, I routed the pickup routes to a depth of 3/4 inch.  I plan on simply using a forstner bit to get the legs at a later time.  Because the neck was not yet glued in, I simply used a band saw to cut out the portion taken up by the neck.  Not perfectly pretty, but functional and will be hidden in the final product.  Oh, and that's my daughter's hand in the bottom, not mine. :)

Next, I carefully measured the center points for the bridge posts using StewMac's online fret calculator.  With this bridge, thankfully, even if I'm off slightly, the intonation should still be easy to correct.  Excited to fit it, I jumped the gun and gently hammered in the posts, forgetting about the ground wire.  After remembering this crucial detail the next day, I used a lengthy 1/8in drill bit to go in from the cavity to the center of the bridge post hole.  I then pushed a length of coated ground wire with the end exposed into the hole and hammered the post back in.  The wire is now held to the hole by friction and the important electrical consideration is now taken care of.



Had time to do a quick mockup.  Camera phones are so hard to get a good focus while holding them high overhead.

Finally, I glued in the neck and hoped the grain filler would even out my slight gaps in the neck joint.  Oh, forgot about this one:  When I did the round-over routing of the bottom of the body, I somehow managed to ride up the jack cavity with the bearing, causing a dip into the body.  It's not minor, but I'm hoping I can build up some grain filler on that mistake and keep a smooth contour around the body.  I'll try to remember to take a picture of that next time.  Something to keep in mind for the next one I'm sure.

Oh, and I started working on the nut.  Really nervous about filing the string slots.  Shaping the nut has been pretty easy so far.

Grain filler on and scraped.  Will sand next.  Geez, sorry for the bad focus.  Bad photographer!!  Very bad!!

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Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 Build Part 8

OK, it's been a little while since an update.  Sanded down the binding flush to the body and sanded down the body (width-wise) that extended beyond the binding.  Looks an awful lot better than when I first took the tape off.  Lots and lots of hand sanding.



 

Glued on the fretboard after filing and sanding down the binding to match the height of the board.  Dismayed I didn't get high enough binding for nibs... oh well.



 

Next, finish sanded the shape of the neck and sanded down the binding to match the thickness of the neck.  Also, used 1mm green celluloid pick for the side dots.  Used a leather-hole punch to make the dots, drill-pressed the holes, and super-glued them in.  Really easy to do and quickly done.  Then sanded down the dots flush with the neck.

Finally for this past weekend, glued on a head-stock veneer.  Nothing cool or classy, just simple craft-store plywood.  Next one, I'll use some decent wood.

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A Nation Slighted: How the 1908 Annexation of Bosnia Embarrassed Russia and Led to the Great War

The Annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 was a dress rehearsal for the events following the Sarajevo assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914.  The diplomatic exchange between Russia and the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire left Russia embarrassed and looking for opportunity to redeem its standing within the Great Powers of the day.

Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 Build Part 7

Over Veteran's Day weekend, I started working on the fret-board.  I used digital calipers to measure out the distances between frets using the online scale available on the stewmac website.  I marked them with a razor blade, then used a cheap miter-box and pull saw to make cuts for the frets.



 

Next, because this is still a practice guitar and the fretboard is an unappealing oak color, I used some leftover chestnut stain to darken the board.  Then, I used a forstner bit to drill the holes for the inlay dots and laid those in with superglue.  Finally, I used 400-grit sandpaper on a home-made radius block to sand down the inlays flush to the board.

 

 

 

Next, I finished my fretwire bender (no pictures of that unfortunately.  If I remember, I'll post some) and bent the fret wire.  After cutting them to length, I superglued them in and hammered the frets in using just a simple, flat steel hammer.

 

Next, I used my Dremel with a cutter attachment to grind off the ends of the frets, and used a metal file to file them flush to the sides of the fretboard.

 

 

Now, against the standard Custom 24, I decided to go with a bound fretboard, as I think it just looks better.  But, when measuring it out, I realized the height of the binding (I ordered the one that was just under the height of the Les Paul-sized binding, as I planned on using the binding for both the fretboard and the body), would not allow for nibs.  Adapt and overcome... it's a practice guitar.  So, I melted binding pieces with acetone in an old pickle jar and glued the binding to the fretboard.  This is a very sticky, slow-curing process that I thought was almost more difficult than using faster-drying glue.

 

 

The board is really messy from spillover superglue from the frets and binding mess.  Hopefully, it will clean up easily when I detail the board and dress the frets.

 

Now, back to the body.  One thing I realized is I REALLY need small finger planes.  The hard maple top takes FOREVER to sand down to smooth out even minor divots and scratches from chisels.  The scoop area around the bottom horn was a nightmare and took hours of hand sanding using only my fingers and sandpaper.  Finally satisfied with the initial sanding, I started to cut the binding channel.

 

I used a rabbeting bit with a bearing that gave a cut slightly deeper than the binding.  Clearly MacGyvered my 'overhead' jig.

 

Now, anote about the binding and the acetone-melted glue.  It's awfully difficult to do well.  The horns, with both the curve and change in elevation from the scoops up to the neck-joint is exceedingly difficult... not only to cut (which I had to do by hand and have several mistakes to fill) but also to glue.  The binding takes forever to cure and stretched my masking tape mess that I used to hold it in place.  I tried to use a hair dryer to get the binding flexible with little success.  Without quick-drying glue, it is simply a bear to try to bend the binding to a new shape while the opposite force pulls just-glued pieces away from the body.  I had to redo the horn area on Monday after doing the whole binding job Saturday.  The one good thing about the acetone-based glue is that it matches the binding perfectly, allowing for the use of the 'glue' to fill small gaps from mistakes.  It's too early to tell how well it will turn out, but this was the most challenging part of the build yet.

 

 

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