How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

It would be two resins, one opaque black, and one deep red with a
glitter finish inside. The body wouldn't be solid but would be made of
resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design. The design is not really
completed in my head yet but that sort of idea.

How DIYable is that stuff, and if not at all, anyone know where you can
get one off pieces done? Perhaps 2 off or 3 off if it needs prototyping
or multiple drafts doing?

Cheers!

Gary

In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.



--
Bernard Peek

Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very little
what it's made of.



Yep. I'd never consider an acoustic resin instrument. I think that'd
sound horrid. It'd be about say inch cross section resin, rounded edges
though. That sort of thickness. I don't think that with an under bridge
peizo pickup it'd make much difference what it was made of. Some, but
probably not a lot - at least not enough to make a difference for this
purpose.

Frog wrote:
Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very
little
what it's made of.



Yep. I'd never consider an acoustic resin instrument. I think that'd
sound horrid. It'd be about say inch cross section resin, rounded edges
though. That sort of thickness. I don't think that with an under bridge
peizo pickup it'd make much difference what it was made of. Some, but
probably not a lot - at least not enough to make a difference for this
purpose.

Probably easier if you have an old one to copy. You could set it in
plaster to make a mould.
Or maybe you could use a ply base and fibreglass a few layers on top. At
least that way you'd have some strength for the neck.
As you'll have realised, I know bugger all about it :-)

On 16 June, 14:28, Frog wrote:

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

You won't do a one-piece for your first, but casting a body and then
attaching a cheap ready-made recycled neck would be a much easier
route.

The resin is water-white embedding resin: polyester, but not just the
usual fibreglass layup resin. Hopefully you'll be near somewhere like
Glassplies in Southport who are good at this sort of thing and sell
the whole bundle. This resin is easy to work with and will go on
either clear or coloured, as needed.

You start with a mould. This is an MDF box, basically a thick slab
board with sidewalls on top of it. It can be as crude as you like
outside. It will save you some effort for multiple casts if you make
it so that a few sides can be unscrewed. Fill and radius the inner
corners with a smear of plasticine and a ball-bearing rubber to shape
the minimum radius. Shellac the inside (with shellac (Screwfix)) and
then wax it _very_ carefully with mould release wax (Glassplies)

Pour your resin in layers. No more than 1/4" in a pour, unless you're
feeling brave and practiced. Follow the resin maker's advice.

Don't use old resin or especially catalyst. Buy fresh.

If you're embedding, pour a layer, places your things, pour more
around them and cover them in one go. Vacuum degass. Don't pour only
halfway up a thing, it's a recipe for trapped air bubbles. If you do
have air bubbles, winkle them out with a wire (or vacuum). Things that
aren't flat are best supported on a snippet of resin rod, that you
cast earlier (it disappears).

Repeat the pours quickly (couple of hours, maker's advice), then leave
it for a few days to harden fully (maker's advice). It's usually best
to strip the mould relatively quickly. You need the resin "solid", but
don't need it hard yet.

While you're about it, cast yourself some control knobs to go with it.
Just dumping spare resin into plumbing wastepipe is OK if you have a
lathe (split it out and turn it up later), otherwise cast over some
ready-made knobs in a home-made mould. Use plasticine to stop the
resin going where you don't want and to leave the lock grubscrews
accessible.

I'd strongly suggest a vacuum pump, because vacuum degassing saves a
whole bunch of problems with trapped wind. If you don't have one
(eBay, fairly cheap) then at least use a Vac-U-vin coffee jar (car
boot sale, they go down to 1/4atmosphere) to degass each batch pour of
resin before pouring it.

Once you have a body blank, machine it into a guitar. Plenty of books
on this, but it's largely an exercise in jig routing. Cast resin will
machine OK, but watch for heat buildup (sharp cutters, adequate cut,
control the speed to suit) as hot resin goes soft and sticky.

Polish the surface with successive grades of wet & dry, down to a
couple of thousand (CSM Just Abrasives, believe me it's easier than
polishing compound). Then use either Micromesh abrasives (best, not
cheap) or polishing compounds and lots of elbow grease & water.


Remember that Lou Reed's celebrated album "Metal Machine Music" was
recorded on a plastic resin-cast guitar...

On 16 June, 14:56, Huge wrote:

I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very little
what it's made of.

It does, but it also depends on how you're playing it and someone who
_wants_ a guitar made of razor blades may be "accommodating" to that...

On 16 June, 14:28, Frog wrote:

The body wouldn't be solid but would be made of
resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design.

Idea #2.

Cheap solid wood body

Chainsaw carve / router slots.

Fill with resin / EL string etc.

Frog wrote:

I'd never consider an acoustic resin instrument. I think that'd
sound horrid.

Hmm, a friend has a couple of carbon fibre acoustic guitars. In his
hands they sound very good indeed.

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:28:46 +0100, Frog wrote:

How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

It would be two resins, one opaque black, and one deep red with a
glitter finish inside. The body wouldn't be solid but would be made of
resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design. The design is not really
completed in my head yet but that sort of idea.

How DIYable is that stuff, and if not at all, anyone know where you can
get one off pieces done? Perhaps 2 off or 3 off if it needs prototyping
or multiple drafts doing?

Cheers!

Gary

First thing that comes to mind is some resins always have a nasty
tacky feel to them. So picking the exact one might be difficult
without expert advice.

Second an un-reinforced casting would bow as you tensioned the strings
so you would end up with something you could use with arrows. So steel
or aluminium rods would be needed.

The actual casting seems a lengthy but solvable problem with a bit of
love and dedication.

It would certainly be worth some time *playing* with it.

On 16 June, 16:18, EricP wrote:

First thing that comes to mind is some resins always have a nasty
tacky feel to them. So picking the exact one might be difficult
without expert advice.

Nearly all do - it's caused by curing whilst exposed to the air. There
are two solutions:

* Sand the tacky surface down and re-polish it. This is the usual
solution, especially if you're machining it anyway and will need to do
some polishing,

* Cure it in a closed mould. The supplier will also sell Mylar
(polyester) sheet that you can lay across the exposed surface

A third solution is to use a resin (or additive) that stops the tacky
surface problem. Handy for the last layup coat when you can't do
otherwise, but I wouldn't use it here.


Second an un-reinforced casting would bow as you tensioned the strings

That's why bridges aren't screwed to the surface of the body, but are
attached through the back too. The idea is to have as much force as
possible as a purely compressive force, rather than an asymmetric
bending force. There will be _some_ bending, but that's how they work

On 16 June, 15:47, Andy Dingley wrote:

Pour your resin in layers.

Didn't make this clear enough: pour a layer, then wait until it's at
least partially cured (rubbery) before pouring the next.

Frog wrote:
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

It would be two resins, one opaque black, and one deep red with a
glitter finish inside. The body wouldn't be solid but would be made of
resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design. The design is not really
completed in my head yet but that sort of idea.

How DIYable is that stuff, and if not at all, anyone know where you can
get one off pieces done? Perhaps 2 off or 3 off if it needs prototyping
or multiple drafts doing?

Well I watched Jim Burns make a prototype guitar ENTIRELY by hand out of
wood..

So if hard work doesn't scare you, go for it.

The key thing you need in a neck is a truss rod though.

That and an accurate not quite flat fingerboard.



Cheers!

Gary

Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and
neck hopefully.

Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

#
The neck has very little to do with the sound: If its a leccy guitar
then neither does the body. ;-) The soundboard is that 4x12 Marshall
cabinet..

Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very little
what it's made of.


rigidity and mass are relevant..

In message , Bernard Peek
writes
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and
neck hopefully.

Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

OP - you have to be careful not to use a resin that doesn''t have an
exothermic reaction when setting

You need to build up layers

Making it is one thing, finishing and polishing is another It's not
quite as simple as you might think. You could easily create cracks
milling out the internals

Really, wood is a much better material

Bernard - what you need is a rigid dense material for a good sustain -
epoxy would more or less be up to the task, presuming that he's talking
about a solid body axe
--
geoff

In message , Huge
writes
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.

Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy. Making
something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very, very hard
and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very little
what it's made of.



Not really true, you need a nice dense, rigid material

--
geoff

In message , Frog
writes
Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.
I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very
little
what it's made of.


Yep. I'd never consider an acoustic resin instrument. I think that'd
sound horrid. It'd be about say inch cross section resin, rounded edges
though.
Not really deep enough

You need to be able to accommodate the neck, pickups and electronics. If
you don't have enough strength to accommodate the stress imposed by the
neck, it will just crack

Have you thought about how you are going to get rid of the bubbles
introduced by mixing the resin ?

I've just measured my Strat, its just under 2" deep, Les Paul is
slightly thicker

I get the impression that you are some way off having a clue what is
actually involved in making a guitar and you need to do a lot of
research first

--
geoff

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.
I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very
little
what it's made of.


rigidity and mass are relevant..

What ********

just think about it


--
geoff

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

#
The neck has very little to do with the sound: If its a leccy guitar
then neither does the body. ;-) The soundboard is that 4x12 Marshall
cabinet..

So by your reckoning, you could make a serviceable guitar from expanded
polystyrene

.... and I thought you had a clue

from what you claim


--
geoff

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Frog wrote:
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.
I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
It would be two resins, one opaque black, and one deep red with a
glitter finish inside. The body wouldn't be solid but would be made of
resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design. The design is not
really completed in my head yet but that sort of idea.
How DIYable is that stuff, and if not at all, anyone know where you
can get one off pieces done? Perhaps 2 off or 3 off if it needs
prototyping or multiple drafts doing?

Well I watched Jim Burns make a prototype guitar ENTIRELY by hand out
of wood..

So if hard work doesn't scare you, go for it.

The key thing you need in a neck is a truss rod though.

That and an accurate not quite flat fingerboard.

Oh - my webbed footed friend, you are so many pixels short of the full
picture, there are so many factors you have failed to take into account

stick to airfix planes, where you seem to have a glue ...

--
geoff

geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has
ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.
I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters very
little
what it's made of.


rigidity and mass are relevant..

What ********

just think about it


I don't need to. I've been involved in designing them.

geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.

#
The neck has very little to do with the sound: If its a leccy guitar
then neither does the body. ;-) The soundboard is that 4x12 Marshall
cabinet..

So by your reckoning, you could make a serviceable guitar from expanded
polystyrene

... and I thought you had a clue

from what you claim


I said rigidity and mass were important. You said ********. Polystyrene
foam has no rigidity or mass.


The ideal electric guitar would be made of cast iron.

But that's a bit hard to lift.

geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Frog wrote:
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.
I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy
bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body
and neck hopefully.
It would be two resins, one opaque black, and one deep red with a
glitter finish inside. The body wouldn't be solid but would be made
of resin channels. A kind of skeleton type design. The design is not
really completed in my head yet but that sort of idea.
How DIYable is that stuff, and if not at all, anyone know where you
can get one off pieces done? Perhaps 2 off or 3 off if it needs
prototyping or multiple drafts doing?

Well I watched Jim Burns make a prototype guitar ENTIRELY by hand out
of wood..

So if hard work doesn't scare you, go for it.

The key thing you need in a neck is a truss rod though.

That and an accurate not quite flat fingerboard.

Oh - my webbed footed friend, you are so many pixels short of the full
picture, there are so many factors you have failed to take into account


Oh dear. Gold plated hifi leads man are you?

You need a truss rod to adjust the neck to take the optimum shape under
string tension.

It needs an accurate fingerboard with a very slight bow under string
tension.

You need a good bridge rigidly coupled to a fairly dense body, some
decent pickups, and then you have an electric guitar.

In a typical Gibson solid body, there are almost no interactions between
the string tones and the rest of the guitar. That was les pauls intention.

In a fender there are some. The tremolo bridge on a start plus the
overall lighter bodies mean that there is a small amount of acoustic
resonance, which is why a strat feeds back better on some notes than
others., whereas a Les Paul is much more even in sustained feedback.

If you are using a loaded epoxy for the neck it will still need a truss
rod. There is no other way to set the neck precisely correct.

I see no real reason not to use a resin cast body either and even cast
it in one piece.

I wouldn't use a piezo pickup tho. Crap for a leccy. Use coils and magnets.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

I see no real reason not to use a resin cast body either and even cast it
in one piece.

Concrete should be cheaper and work just as well. ;-)

In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
geoff wrote:
In message , The Natural Philosopher
writes
Huge wrote:
On 2009-06-16, Bernard Peek wrote:
In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has
ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see
fancy bog seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One
piece body and neck hopefully.
Making something that looked like a guitar would be pretty easy.
Making something that sounded halfway decent is likely to be very,
very hard and you may have to work by trial and (repeated) error.
I suspect he means an electric guitar, in which case it matters
very little
what it's made of.


rigidity and mass are relevant..

What ********
just think about it

I don't need to. I've been involved in designing them.

I think I have to make a public apology there

I ABSOLUTELY read that as "irrelevant"

Sorry

--
geoff

geoff wrote:

rigidity and mass are relevant..

What ********

just think about it



ISTR Les Paul considered using a piece of rail. Then worked out that
it'd weigh 200lbs or so...

rigidity, mass, _and_ vibration modes are all relevant, even in a solid
bodied electric.

Andy

In message , Frog
writes
How feasible is this to DIY? I'm supposing not but if anyone has ideas.

I want to make a guitar out of resin - the same stuff you see fancy bog
seats with embedded razor blades being made of. One piece body and neck
hopefully.


As long as you're not looking for perfection, here's how you can cheat
with the rest of it

buy one of these

http://cpc.farnell.com/encore/e1btro...or-outfit/dp/D
P30169?MER=e-bb45-00001003

pull it and use the neck and other bits (depends on what bits you want
and what quality.

Cut / mould the body into the shape you want the finally want it to be

make a cast

layer by layer fill with epoxy having let it stand for long enough to
eliminate the bubbles

You then need to mill out the holes for pickups,, controls etc

Finish off the surface - probably harder than you think



--
geoff

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:40:40 +0100, Andy Champ
wrote:

ISTR Les Paul considered using a piece of rail. Then worked out that
it'd weigh 200lbs or so...

Brings a whole new meaning to "I heard a good track last night..."

Regards,


--
Steve ( out in the sticks )
Email: Take time to reply: timefrom_usenet{at}gmx.net