Home made gadgets etc.

[Greg Steil]

Here are a few "necessity is the mother" things I have come up with. First is my Hot Hide Glue set up. Two of those things that keep your coffee or whatever warm on your desk, wired with a switch.. One to keep water warm for clean ups, and one to hold the glue in one of those gift/sample jelly jars suspended in the water. Water temps get to a bit over 140deg, and the glue is twixt 120 and 130...perfect. I don't use all that much at once, so this is perfect for my shop. Second is a small "V" block I made to screw onto the Stew Mac scissors jack. Drilled and counter sunk the hole, then cut the V. Keeps the jack vertical on a brace, and the magnets help as well. Third is a "long distance" operator for the jack. This came about while trying to re-glue all the back braces in a Tacoma Bass. Essentially zero sound hole access, so I took out the electronics panel and that was what was needed. Brass tubing with a socket head cap screw super glued into a hunk(whatever length you need) and an Allen wrench in the other end. The supplied knob works great, and it allows a steady arm to move the jack around in the instrument. Saved a lot of cuss words and head scratching. However plenty of that had already gone on.Hope it helps someone.

[Bob Hammond]

Greg, your description of the things is a bit dense, I like the gluepot idea, but it's not obvious to most readers about how you used them to solve a problem.

Maybe you should write a detailed description of the problem and the pics, and how your gizmos helped to solve the problems.

[Greg Steil]

well, I sorta thought I did. The glue set up alleviates the problem of having a large amount of glue sitting around, the V blocks take care of keeping the jack on the brace, and the long distance handle takes care of trying to get the flexible shaft onto the jack inside a guitar. Like that...