I hit them with the double iron gimmick

[D_W]

I've been making some cabinets lately, but filling in the time building guitars (which I'd rather do - back and forth between tools and guitars with nothing for the house would be nice).

I briefly read a guitar board, until learning that it was moderated a lot like SMC and the users were getting disgruntled.

While I was there, I asked if sitka spruce (solid) would make a worthwhile body wood instead of pine (fender used pine in the 1950s at least for a little while), as most of the pine around here looks cheap.

Guess what the response was - "yes, but plan on doing a lot of sanding and dealing with splintering, because you can't plane it when it's quartered".

So i hit the whole group of builders up with the double iron gimmick, and despite some armchair experts knowing that "everyone already knew about it 50 years go", nobody on the entire place was aware of it. Now, they're all planing quartered spruce instead of wasting time making wavy surfaces with their sanders or buying drum sanders to final thickness it (that was suggested as the only way to thickness it without damage).

https://i.imgur.com/3CC5DdK.jpg

(I did buy some router bits and a used low-price spindle sander (ridgid brand here in the states), though - the latter is a tool I never thought I'd have. But modern guitars don't look quite right if you do every single thing by hand). I still hate sanding, though, and am irked by the whole consumable thing with sandpaper - it gets consumed too quickly and everything local here is overpriced).

 

[Andy Kev.]

I don't understand your second sentence. Have you perhaps missed a word or two out? Edit that: I don't think I understand much of it at all.

The picture's pretty convincing!

 

[D_W]

Some details left out there - meaning I started making guitars, so (perhaps ultimately for no gain), I registered for a guitar forum. Once I got there, I found the members to be fairly disgruntled because the forum ownership was constantly taking parts out of their posts for "TOS" violations that didn't seem to actually generate any complaints. Some of the US forums have a lot of that (and not much discussion or building by experienced members) - posts edited all over the place, members popping off about wondering where their posts went, and then those posts are edited or removed, too.

What little time I was there, I was kind of shocked by how little the amateur builders there were willing to do by hand. And their work showed it. Want to work some difficult wood? You'll have to buy a drum sander. Want to plane quartersawn wood? Out of the question. Scrape it? Probably not. Sand the water out of it? Yes, of course. Maybe safer to just buy a body blank that was already done, and then that turned into a "you need the lie nielsen version" (except it's in buying materials instead of the tools - $400 guitar bodies made by CNC machines out of $35 worth of wood because "it's impossible to make a good guitar if the neck and body aren't made perfectly" - never mind that it's wood, and you can work it).

Just a really strange environment.

I sort of expected people making guitars to use more hand tools and be better at surface prep, but there wasn't a lot of that to be found. I made the comment about the spindle sander only because I try to avoid power tools as a matter of shop enjoyment, and I'm sure I've said several times on here that I'm permanently done buying power tools - i guess I lied!! Not a tool I'd want to use in general woodworking, but great for cleaning up the edges of an electric guitar. )

The whole post is also sort of a ruse because there are a couple of members here who get steamed when I push the double iron gimmick. The level of post editing on the consortium of those amateur builders forums (there is a common owner who purchased many of them) made it so that I couldn't stick around any longer, so I didn't have time to wear any of the folks out except for one guy who was trying to sell lumber to all of the members for double or triple market rate. There are several people planing the tops and backs of their guitars now, though, and planing a radius onto fingerboard blanks.

 

[Andy Kev.]

Thank you. Now it's all clear.

I sometimes wonder if there's a tendency to be censorious in the USA. I was once waiting for a flight with some mates at Dulles Airport in Washington and we decided to have a drink. US beer isn't particularly strong but after four pints (and no effect whatsoever) the lady behind the bar decreed that we had had enough and wouldn't serve us any more!

 

[user 4112]

Andy, I trust you were asked for proof of age? Buying a slab of beer in Denver I got age checked, I’m in my 60s! The checker was old enough to be my mother.

 

[D_W]

Thank you. Now it's all clear.

I sometimes wonder if there's a tendency to be censorious in the USA. I was once waiting for a flight with some mates at Dulles Airport in Washington and we decided to have a drink. US beer isn't particularly strong but after four pints (and no effect whatsoever) the lady behind the bar decreed that we had had enough and wouldn't serve us any more!

Two different issues, of course, but the second is a matter of litigation or fear of the government. Public intoxication isn't quite as widely accepted here as it is there - not that you were intoxicated, but you get hit with the consequences of it just in normal behavior. If they didn't paint your wrist, I'd have gone to a different bar then and started over.

The forums in the US started as either individually owned or sponsored by publications. They quickly learned that advertisers like a cohort of beginners, and they abhor conflict, because ultimately, there's always some wanker who sees something they don't like and then goes straight for the publications advertisers. What I learned in the guitar forum is that there were topical forums similar to each other - some for fender guitars, some for Gibson, some others more generic - but similar in format. Not by chance - they were all purchased by the same owner (not an individual enthusiast, but an investor from what I gather) and changed to the same format with the same TOS. In that case, the TOS appears to be *no disagreements whatsoever* on the forums. Experienced folks tend to either disappear from the forums or they go to the off topic section just to stay in contact with people they know about, but as is the case on the US woodworking forums, the endless stream of beginners will wear you out if you're building things. Even someone like me who tends to still talk about trivial nonsense, even when I'm building stuff and not engaging in the trivial nonsense in my own shop.

(if you were to ever come from urban UK and into rural US, you'd find plenty of repressed people, but we kind of like them when you get to know them on a personal level...well, some of us do. The TV here tends to far overstate the amount of disagreement that actually happens among individuals - they're just selling advertisements).

It may be the case here, too, that forums originally started to sell google ad space. I'd imagine they're now harvesting data (to sell) - everything is more mature and refined, and the initial interesting bits of capable individuality / new content have given way to parameterization.

 

[MikeG.]

Thank you. Now it's all clear.

I sometimes wonder if there's a tendency to be censorious in the USA. I was once waiting for a flight with some mates at Dulles Airport in Washington and we decided to have a drink. US beer isn't particularly strong but after four pints (and no effect whatsoever) the lady behind the bar decreed that we had had enough and wouldn't serve us any more!

I know you're a decent upright citizen, AK, but not everyone is. I was on a flight disrupted by an air-rage incident a few years ago, and ended up giving evidence in court as a witness. Drink was a big factor, and so I personally am quite pleased to hear that at least some airports are taking a more stringent line about pre-flight drinking. Sorry to be boring......