To me, the part that's really cool about this is that it's being done with essentially woodworking tools. You always think of metal work as needing large milling tools and exacting tolerances, but Mr Jury here is kicking ass with basic shop tools. Inspiring!

It's not far off from how the earliest Travis Beans were done from what I've read!

c jury wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:22 pm

Garth wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 11:20 am It was kinda mentioned earlier but what do you expect the total weight to come in at?

Boy- maybe 8ish?

I've never played a Bean or EGC guitar, but that doesn't sound nearly as heavy as I would expect!
Heard people talk about their weight, which always surprised me as Aluminum is on the light side, as far as structural metals go.

tallchris wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:55 pm It's not far off from how the earliest Travis Beans were done from what I've read!

I guess aluminum is soft enough so you don't need crazy milling machines or whatnot, but still impressive!

brownreasontolive wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:07 pm I've never played a Bean of EGC guitar, but that doesn't sound nearly as heavy as I would expect!
Heard people talk about their weight, which always surprised me as Aluminum is on the light side, as far as structural metals go.

Aluminum is light for a metal.

I owned a couple of the earlier thicker bodied Travis Beans: a short horned TB1000S and a TB2000, both of which were about 13 lbs. I believe they lost a couple of pounds when the bodies got thinner and they started constructing the necks a little differently. I think the standard EGCs are in the 10-11.5 range. Some of the earlier custom stuff was heavier. Perhaps some lighter? I think most of the new EGC-made Travis Bean Designs are closer to 8 lbs. No idea about the panback ones.

10 lbs is my personal back pain point with under 8 being ideal.

Had a good run today- got the neck HB cut sized right, but still need to clean up a couple edges. started lapping the surface where the fingerboard will glue up. headstock and back of neck have been sanded to 600#. Got the last parts (fretwire and a tele bridge adapter ring) and did the final layout. Sprayed the inside of the body black. Tomorrow should have a chance to start on the bridge PU cutout and maybe drill for the bridge.

As mentioned, I think I'm probably benefitting from some backlog of knowledge from my days as a machinist and growing up w/ a father who was a naval machinist. It is a pretty simple pallet of tools, and some bedrock metalworking skills. Just takes some patience and planning I suppose- but nothing anyone couldn't manage. I'm really trying to focus on outlining processes and fixtures that could allow this to be done much easier, more repeatable, if I wanted to do this as a small production run.

Been able to get into the shop a bit this week. Did the bridge PU cutout, drilled mounting holes for mounting the receiver to the body, the bridge to the receiver, and lots of general cleanup. Now at 4lbs 6oz.

Goals for the weekend: final routes on body, mount receiver, mount bridge, drill string-thru, maybe think about attaching the fingerboard.

steady progress.

apologies if this is an obvious question but are you doing aluminum on the fretboard too?

Garth wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 6:45 pm apologies if this is an obvious question but are you doing aluminum on the fretboard too?

no, will be rosewood w/ binding and block inlays.

Finalized all drilling. getting ready to cut out the back of the body for the string-thru. weekend goal is fretboard install- then I can get to work on doing final leveling and frets.