Building a Jig to Shape my headstock | Bass Build EP3

in today's episode of homeboot workshop we're doing a jig no i'm not doing a jig you guys definitely don't want to see that but we are going to build this jig right here which i'm going to use to route this recess in my bass guitar neck so that i can put my logo on there i'm also going to show you a quick tip about a one way you can use fusion 360 to design something around an existing shape so stick around [Music] hello everyone welcome to this episode of homebuilt workshop my name is jeff and today we are back on the bass guitar neck build in the last episode you saw me get it all ready up to this point but i wasn't able to finish it because the very next step that i need to do is to route the recess in here where i put my logo to do that on a regular guitar neck i have a jig that i built that the neck fits in and then a plate goes over the top and it guides the router right where i need to cut it but since this headstock is larger it doesn't fit that jig so i need to build an entirely new jig that fits this size headstock now the jig that i made for the guitar necks was really just a trial and error process of using random scraps of wood glued on in different places and i was able to make that work it's kind of crude but it works really well however i think we can do a little bit better for this jig since i have a lot more experience now with fusion 360 in 3d printing i think we can design something that the headstock will sit down in repeatable every single time and then we can have a template that will index somehow over the top now fusion 360 has a couple of tools in there that i find really helpful especially for applications like this where you want to take an existing shape and be able to sketch something in my case the outline of this neck and be able to pull that into fusion what i'm going to end up doing is taking my guitar template and basically putting it on my scanner with a ruler next to it that's going to allow us to scale it to the actual size where we can then trace around this using the spline tool to create basically this exact shape so let's jump into fusion i'm going to show you really quick just those couple things and then we'll get back to this jig so this is going to start out outside of fusion 360 with me scanning my guitar template with a six inch steel ruler and saving that picture to my computer then we'll jump into fusion 360 and we can insert that picture by going to the insert canvas and then you can browse to where your picture is and open that up so this is the scan that we're starting with and if we zoom in you can see that we have a ruler here where we can see the marks on the ruler pretty clearly and then if we go up here to the calibrate menu you can select your points i like to try to select at least several inches i don't want to just select one small portion although i guess you could to do mine i selected i think four or five inches and then when you're done with that it will scale it to actual size so it gives you a very accurate starting point to do your sketching then from this picture i was able to create a new sketch very accurately by going in really close you can very accurately draw around your shape inside that sketch i use the spline tool where you can accurately follow curves to draw everything out and it worked really well from there i was able to create basically the outline of the template that i wanted and extrude that out then on top of that i created another template which basically has my cutout shape this was another sketch on top of that picture so that now when we turn off all the sketches there's our cutout template and there's our headstock template ready to export and send to a 3d printer these other alignment holes in here are set kind of in weird places but that's because i have designed another odd shape template that i can sort of fit on my printer so if i do need to make any sort of changes i can export kind of this weird shape thing and although it's not ideal it will fit on my printer it just doesn't look very good but it's an option if i need to make any changes rather than trying to have another one of these larger ones printed that doesn't fit on my printer but overall it's a pretty simple process and it works quite well you just have to go in and make sure you scale your original picture correctly you want to use a ruler that you can you can see the lines really well and really zoom in there when you're setting your scale you want to try to click right on the line and it should work pretty good you may have to play around with it a little bit i think i had to rescale mine maybe twice or so just to get it just right but overall works really good once i had the templates all modeled up i was able to export that and save it as an stl file which can then be sent to a 3d printer the only problem is that these templates are too big for my 3d printer is that an excuse for a new 3d printer i don't know but my good buddy dennis has a larger 3d printer and he volunteered to print these out for me so i was able to email him the stl files and voila here's our templates ready to make this jig thanks a lot dennis for printing these out man i really really appreciate it this is going to make this project go a lot smoother and just to show you really quick that fits perfect now just like i do with my guitar templates i am not going to use these as the actual template i'm going to end up making a copy of these and setting these aside especially since right now i can't duplicate these if i were to damage them so we're going to use these to mock everything up and then when the time comes we'll make a duplicate of these that we'll actually use for the jig i'm going to use this scrap of three-quarter inch plywood for the base i think the length is okay i know that it's way too wide but at the moment i'm not quite sure where i'm going to need to rip this down once we figure that out we'll rip that down i think we'll leave the length where it is i want the neck to be able to sit somewhere in this orientation and i want space on either side because i'm going to build this so that if i'm working on a left-handed neck i can also index it in exactly the same spot we'll be able to just flip the jig over and have the exact opposite route so this will go somewhere in here we'll measure this find the center i've also got these little brackets that i've made that will fit in the corners which will hold this piece in place but it's got some standoffs on here which will keep the top template spaced up off the neck hopefully that makes sense and hopefully you guys can see that because this black is kind of dark it'll make sense when we get to that point i'm going to lay the pieces in place and take a couple of measurements that way i can determine how wide i need to rip this piece of plywood then i'll locate the jig in the center of my piece of plywood and clamp it down now i can drill some pilot holes and screw the little riser blocks in place now i'll just flip it around and do the same thing to capture these other two corners [Applause] [Music] that is the last screw so just really quick how that's going to work is once we have the wooden model of this made this will be able to pop into place pretty much anyway left-handed or right-handed the neck will hang off this side that's why i left this kind of long because i want to make sure there's plenty of support so the neck doesn't want to tip we're going to add some toggle clamps later but i still want to make sure that neck has a lot of support there now there's one more thing that i want to do just to make sure the alignment can never ever shift and it's always going to be spot on i've got a set of holes modeled in here for some 3 8 dowels i want to have the dowels glued into the plywood so that the jig slips down on the dowels and then gets captured at all four corners by these little brackets i've also got matching dowel holes on the top piece that will also slide down over the top and make sure that they are always in exact alignment that way if somehow i have one of these brackets i don't know breaks or maybe it's off a teensy bit there's never a chance that these two can be out of alignment as long as they fit over those dowels we're gonna be good to go to mark out the holes for the dowels i'm just using a 3 8 diameter transfer punch it fits the holes perfectly we're just gonna mark those out drill them and glue in some dowels [Music] once that glue is dry now these pieces just drop into place really nice there's no movement whatsoever i think we're now ready to go ahead and make these out of some mdf now this piece is going to be exactly the same i'm going to make an exact copy of but the other piece i'm going to make an exact copy of the inner dimensions the outside needs to be the exact same width but i need to add 5 8 of an inch to either end that way it'll work with my little brackets to set the width of this piece i'm just going to use the original template to set the fence on my table saw [Music] after cutting the pieces down to size i'm going to attach my templates using some double-sided tape then at the drill press i'm going to drill out some holes for the waste material as well as the holes for the dowel pins before routing it flush i did use the scroll saw off camera to remove a little bit more of the waste material for the base portion of the jig i just used the band saw to cut away the waste material in the center [Music] there were a couple areas on the template where the router bit just couldn't get into so i just cleaned those up really quick with a file since it was mdf it filed really easily and only took a couple of minutes now i can trim the top template down to the final size and we'll remove the templates and do a test fit well so far so good i'm really happy with the way this thing's fitting together there's just a couple things left that i need to do before we can try this out i want to add a toggle clamp on either side here that way we can lock the neck in place i'm going to just screw on a block of wood and then attach the clamp to it and then on these little riser brackets i have holes at the corners and those are going to get tapped to use some thumb screws that'll tighten down just to make sure that this top piece can't move at all and then once we have all that together then i'll trim these dowels off below the surface of this top piece that way the router can pass smoothly across here and we'll test it these are now called bird clamps because they look like a bird is that the technical name um no i don't know what the technical name is they're not bird clamps i like it [Music] these pieces are basically just made of plastic so they're not going to be super durable but i'm not really worried about the screws stripping out because it's just going to apply a little bit of tension just to help hold that top template in place and keep it from wiggling around if at some point it does become an issue i can easily reprint these and use some threaded inserts to help make these more durable now mark the height of the dowels and use a flush trim saw to trim them off just below that height the pins are now below the surface that way when we run our router on there it's not going to snag on anything i think we're ready to try this out to test it out i've just made up a small copy of my template we use this to test it first before we actually put a neck in here let's load this guy in now it's not long enough for the bird clamp to catch it but i think it's going to work fine for testing cut out template in place snug it down i really don't know if i need all these set screws but it's fine and i'm just going to use a cordless trim router with a flush trimming bit test this guy out i know that the first pass is going to cut into the lower template as we remove some of that material and that's totally okay it's not going to affect anything at all i was planning for that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right let's check this out this is looking good i think we're ready to move on to a neck that looks cool forget to tighten down the bird clamp [Applause] [Music] that worked awesome i couldn't ask for a better result and now let's make this official it's a hayley and there we go that turned out awesome now some of you might be wondering why go to all this trouble to make a jig that i'm using for a one-off commission project and that would be a great question but really this neck design is going to be used for a lot of haley guitars builds really for this project the only really custom aspect is the body that's a totally commissioned piece but for the neck i'm going to use this for other builds so it's kind of something that i've been wanting to do anyway to build a nice jig for shaping the base necks but now that i've got it i can use it on a ton more projects not just this commissioned the body for this one is really the commission piece this will be used on a lot more builds for haley guitars with the jig built and the logo in place i'm now ready to move on to radiusing the fretboard installing the frets and then finally on to shaping the neck i'm going to do that off to the side outside of this video you guys have seen me build necks before you've seen me install frets as well as radius the fretboard it's going to be the exact same process i'm going to put some links down below in the video description if you want to see my process for doing that on a regular guitar neck it's going to be exactly the same for this one guys i hope you found this helpful maybe it gives you some ideas for building some jigs or something that you're looking to do in your shop and some ways to do it maybe using fusion 360 to design a part that fits around an existing shape hope you guys enjoyed it thanks a lot for watching i appreciate you guys you guys are awesome we'll see you next time [Applause] and a fly flies around my face [Music] three

Channel: Home Built Workshop

Views: 960

Keywords: Home Built Workshop, Jeff Baker, Building a Jig to Shape my headstock, Shaping a guitar headstock, 3D Printed Router Templates, Headstock shaping jig, Hayley Guitars Bass Neck, Hayley Guitars

Id: sRV-VaqpEvg

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021