More on the Wood Block Project

First, the exciting resolution of the central mystery of the last post: the diameter of the steel ball was chosen so as to make the circle resulting from performing the Janka test have area 100 mm^2.  Fascinating.

Today I went over to Mike's Lumber and ordered two blocks for my project, and bought a router bit.  Ron advised me to go with poplar, though he said oak would have been ok too.  Unfortunately, the somewhat surly guy who took my order said it would take 1 1/2 hours, so I had to come back.  Also unfortunately, I was never able to make it back.  In the words of Blanche duBois, tomorrow's another day.

My other bit of progress along the way was to make a template out of a piece of posterboard.  I think this is de rigueur  when using a router bit, though I'm sure posterboard is not "de right material" (ha!).

More Bridge Problems

I was having a lot of trouble intonating, and the I realized that the posts were coming up out of the body again. posted on strat-talk and ended up in an interesting thread, even getting a response from Ron Kirn. His advice was to rout out the body, and glue in a wood  block,  so that the posts would go in to the block.


For this to work, I'll need to know how to rout the body (apparently one uses a router bit), and it seems like I'd be ok with a 1/2 " diameter, 1" length bit.  There's a link to a source in the thread linked to above.  Today I traced the outline of the routed part of the back of the guitar, and made some measurements.  Here's my diagram:

So I need a block that's 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches.  Ron said I should use a hardwood like alder or ash, but the local lumberyard has only oak and poplar.  This launched me on a dangerous quest to understand wood hardness.   After killing a troll with a sword I found once I opened a chest with a key I got from a magical hen in exchange for an egg I'd stolen, I found out that wood hardness is measured using the Janka Hardness Test. This test measures the force (in pounds) required in order to embed an 11.28mm steel ball into a piece of the wood, to half the ball's diameter. Why they chose 11.28mm is still a mystery. There are many tables of values on the web, such as this one.

Some interesting values (some I had to find on other sites):

Ebony	3200
Mulberry	2820
Rosewood	2200
Mahogany	2200
Maple	1450
Ash	1320
Oak	1200
Alder	590
Poplar	540
Basswood	410
Paulownia	250-290
Balsa	100

So it seems I should go with oak.  I'm nervous about doing this, but I think I can do it. If I can find the time today, I'll go over to Mike's Lumber.

More on the Trem

When working to get the trem set up correctly, I noted to my horror that the posts were rocking back and forth. I removed the bridge and found that I could just yank out the ferrules by pulling on the posts.  This is the kind of thing that made people complain about Paulownia (though perhaps it could have been avoided by my having used a smaller drill size in the first place).  I glued some shaved down toothpicks (courtesy of Artie's Deli) into the holes, let it dry over night, then pushed the ferrules back in.  For one, I had to lightly tap with a hammer to get it in, which made me feel as though I was doing a good job.  And now it works!  Since I don't intend to do any heavy trem stuff, I hope to be fine.  I've got the tremel-no in there, and I'll probably just leave it tightened.

The guitar is in pretty decent shape now.  Here's my current list of problems

• I stripped one of the intonation screws (B or G, I can't remember).  I need to replace it and also cut the spring so I can get the saddle further back.  Intonation is not bad in general, but it needs some work, in particular this string
• It's sounding pretty decent other than the bridge pickup.  I ordered a Lace Sensor Burgundy on ebay as a replacement.  
• The neck is ok, but I am now lusting for a nice Warmoth neck.  The one I want is $277, with  a lot of that cost being the "vintage blah blah satin nitro" finish.  I expect I will get it eventually
• I dinged the pickguard a bit when dremeling it to fit (the trem was hitting it a little).   So I should probably replace it.

A bit more on the pickups.  The Lace site has nice information on the differences between the different models.  I ended up with Burgundy, described there as follows:

New! Lace Sensor-Burgundy: Recommended as Bridge pickup for slightly fatter tone.

• Position: neck, mid, bridge
• Resistance: 8.9k
• Peak Frequency: 2700
• Inductance: 4.44 henries
• Music Styles: Rock, Blues, Fusion, Progressive
• Think: Page, Gary Moore, Santana

Then I may ultimately try Bill Lawrence's NF's (280/280/298).  As always, I'd be better off playing more and tinkering less, but this is a lot of fun if nothing else.

I've also been thinking about trying something with a full size humbucker and a coil splitter on a push-pull pot. This would be a new project, though.