MIMF

I agree with Randolph. I used to take mine to 2000 and then buff with Mez. (Have a separate buffing wheel for ebony.... even a 6 or 8" .... it'll get black)
Tough to beat that beautiful, silky patina ebony takes on after buffing.

.....KA handwound smoothtop??

Didn't use it a lot, but certainly one of the handiest tools when I was building was the Weller pistol-grip soldering iron fitted with a spatula tip. Just put a soaked folded swatch over any dent/blemish, pull the trigger & hold the tip on it a few seconds ('till it steams a while) and gone. Ins...

Better quality & sound. Adjustable . I won't get into the subjectivity of it but it's basically the go-to floating pickup for many (if not most) high end archtop builders. Google "Kent Armstrong's handwound floating 12-poles PAF" to find out all you need, incl KA's website for handwoun...

I've used a few of Kent Armstrong's handwound floating 12-poles PAFs .... good pickups (& different from the offshore ones). Usually mounted to the underside of the fingerrest (although on a 7-string i did stick an untabbed 14-pole to a brass plate inlet into the underside of a fingerboard exten...

My shop was a bedroom when I was building (....well, it still is) ... everything in there. Dust collector is in the closet space, along with wood storage and WIP on a shelf above. Looking the other way is a bandsaw and tablesaw/ drillpress along the window wall.

Lovely guitar Geoff.... great elements & tonewoods. Bridge a bit heavy imo but neck/action looks great & I like the mahogany neck with that finish.

??? Regardless, you need something very hard for the cable to "break" (in the "break angle" sense of the word) over .... otherwise it will dig it's own groove. By "raising" that something (ie making the saddle higher, like a violin), you lift the tailpiece high enough t...

As long as you seat it properly on the tailblock, nothing wrong with using a raised violin-style saddle as the fulcrum for the sacconi. I preferred it to the inelegant (& spruce-denting) pivot glued to the tailpiece underside. But that's just me.

Archtops tend toward the heavy side. When I was building, I used to track weights of everything (braced tops @ ass'y, backs, final box, final neck before finish, bridge etc.etc) to squeeze out the lowest weight I could. (Ken Parkers archtops are supposed to be on the 3 lb range, although I could nev...

http://www.tkl.com/site_item_details.ph ... uitar+Case
I used to get them from Geo Heinl in Toronto (ie local)

FWIW, I always used the TKL 9116 and 9120 (16" & 17") with no problems & no modifications. Both cases are arched front & back.

Plug it in & hold the pu near strings of ANY guitar....

Im not very good with software and Bobs arching templates were not helpful. I think my topo spacing was to far apart in the lower bout area from bridge to tail. giving a flatter profile.Ive completed the inside carve successfully without issue. If anyone has generated topo templates Id be grateful ...

FWIW, I never used a drillpress. My method was to start with the longitudinal template & reduce the centerline down to match the template with gouges / fingerplanes etc. (I flattened the template recurve so it would bottom at the correct arch height ... recurves come later). Then mark the statio...

Bob Benedetto's book (which you should have) has templates which you can use.
Alternately, you can generate cycloid templates in pdf using this program
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/ccycloid/

Greg, yes the pipe just goes through an elongated hole in the bench leg, with the "backer" half of the pipe clamp fixed to the backside of the leg and adjusts like a normal pipe clamp (sorry, no pics). The other requirement is the notched (1/4" alum.) foot operated "comb" at...

All good advice.
FWIW I made one, using an X-brace (which you have to open up quite a bit to clear the oval) and a transverse brace. Bit beefy in hindsight, but it worked out well.

"Honey amber" is different for different people..... lots of recipes.
For me, it needs red. My blend was 5 drops amber/2 drops cherry red per oz lacquer.
1-2# orange shellac as a sealcoat didn't hurt either.

I've used a simple leg vice on my bench for decades (basically just a pipe clamp through the bench leg), which allows me to use it as a troji (with 4" removable foam pads either side) or a mount for the Benedetto type holding jig.