The Zero Budget build

[FrankenWashie]

Have you got a profile gauge? I've used mine to do this sort of thing for neck profiles and heel pockets before. It will at least give you a reasonably tight line to work to.

[G-Axe]

No neck profile gauge yet. It's on my list of stuff to get when I work my way up to building necks. Where'd you get that one?

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[FrankenWashie]

No neck profile gauge yet. It's on my list of stuff to get when I work my way up to building necks. Where'd you get that one?

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The Big Green Shed.

[G-Axe]

The neck is on. The neck is o-on. The joint is so tight it's squeaky. Next stop, bridge.



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[G-Axe]

So today has been interesting to say the least.

I managed to find a perfectly sized bit of scrap aluminium from my baritone build, and rough out the bridge with bandsaw and drill press.



Then I set up my router table and got cracking on the finer detail. It was all going swimmingly until the aluminium started to heat up with the friction. The glue on my double sided tape did what you expect glue to do, and the template shifted, digging out a bunch of metal and chewing up a bit of the template itself.

But not to worry. Nothing a bit of timbermate and some detail files won't fix.



So with that on the back burner, I filled the original screw holes in the neck - check out the alignment!



After leaving the bridge for a few hours in the sun, I filed back the timbermate and got stuck into round two, making sure I took regular breaks to let the heat out.

This time with a much better result - the internal rout will only need very minimal cleaning up. As for the external rout...

I pushed the work piece in, and the router immediately bit, spinning the bridge 90 degrees and pulling my hand with it, through the spindle. I'm not sure how bad the damage is, but it's a painful lesson that you can never be too safe with an exposed blade spinning at 2000rpm.



I'll be taking a good hard look at my personal safety standards, and working a lot harder to ensure I'm never holding my work piece in an unsafe way. D:

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[Bakersdozen]

Ouch dude! That looks scarily like the floor of an emergency department

[G-Axe]

Ouch dude! That looks scarily like the floor of an emergency department

Yep. :/

It's a pro bandaging job too. They suggested that terry towelling and gaffer tape might not be the best long term fix.

I've had a chance to look at it now. I'm considering myself very lucky to still have all my digits! I've done a pretty good job on my index and middle fingers - nothing permanent.

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[FrankenWashie]

Oh Sh!tballs! I hope there’s no lasting loss of function, and that your recovery is trouble free mate!

Evrerybody else, take care out there! We work with some dangerous bits of tooling and machinery at times, be safe!

[king casey]

Ouch!!
Did they 'bulk bill'?
'But Doc...I have a 'zero budget' to maintain....

cheers, Mark.

[G-Axe]

Ouch!!
Did they 'bulk bill'?
'But Doc...I have a 'zero budget' to maintain....

cheers, Mark.

Haha, universal health care is a wonderful thing.

So I've taken the time to put it all together, and I was not even remotely safe in what I was doing.



First of all, that red hinge at the back? A safety guard, blithely ignored.

Secondly, my hand was never far away from that spindle. I really should have been holding it by the pickup hole. Or even better, I should have engineered a way to hold it with some kind of lever. My workpiece will have screw holes, it would be really easy to mount to a long bit of scrap.

Instead:



The pad of my index finger copped 4 hits - I'm extremely lucky my finger only really brushed across the top of the spindle and so there was no "tear out".



My middle finger copped the worst of it. I'll spare you all the details.

And as you can see in this last shot:



It bit into that edge, and turned the corner. I'm not sure if the spindle transfers rotational force, or if it was angular momentum with my wrist as a fulcrum but I'm not sure it matters. I've learned my lesson.

Stay safe everyone!

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