Steel Guitar Builder

I recently bought a Carter U12 and found the knee levers were hurting my knees, so decided to make some paddles. I couldn't find anything here in a search but found an old thread on the pedal steel forum here,

http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/007980.html

Decided to have a go at making something similar, so I took the basic idea and adapted the sizes to suit the Carter style knee levers. I wanted to bolt them on from the back so decided to use Aluminium rectangular tube instead of Aluminium channel. I found some 25mm X 16mm tube which was almost a perfect fit for the width of the Carter knee lever and also bought a piece of 2" X 1/8th" Aluminium flat bar for the paddles. I didn't like the idea of using rivets as it would be difficult to get the inside of the channel flush onto the knee lever, so I used JB Weld epoxy to glue the channel to the plate.

I have 5 knee levers inc. a vertical, so decided to make paddles for all five. The 4 horizontal paddles @ 120mm x 2" and the vertical @ 100mm x 2". (forgive my mixture of metric and imperial sizes!).

Took photos of the build and thought I'd share the results with you all here. I made a trial paddle first, so the photos show the other 4 being built.


Here are the materials used.


All pieces cut.

Next I cut the corners on the plate,


Corners marked for cut.


Used scrap wood and double sided tape to make cutting easier.


All corners cut.

Next, cut the holes in the tubing for tapping. I decided on using 8mm bolts, so drilled the holes to 7mm for tapping. Put in 4 holes in each piece, (apart from vertical), although I'll only use 2 bolts on each piece, to allow for versatility.


Drilled holes on my new bench drill.


All holes drilled and tapped at 8mm.

Next, glue pieces together. I found a good tip on another forum which suggested applying the JB Weld with a piece of wet & dry as soon as the oxide layer has been removed from the aluminium. The resulting join has proved to be very strong.


Glue on pieces.


Clamped together in vice.


Excess glued cleaned off with alcohol and clamped to dry overnight.

All paddles glued.

Needed to cut 10 bolts down to about 10mm, this left enough room for a lock washer to be used when tightened.


Used wood cut to 10mm width to make cutting easier.


Nice clean cut.


All bolts cut.

Thought it might be an idea to put some foam on the paddles to soften them. I used 2mm Eva Foam, usually used in crafts. I used a spray glue to fix the foam onto the metal, sprayed onto scrap wood then placed paddle face onto the glue, then placed each paddle onto a piece of foam taped onto a piece of hardboard.


Glued onto foam.


Then clamped another piece of hardboard on top and left to dry overnight.


Then cut out paddles using craft knife.

Finally fitted paddles to Carter and adjusted knee lever positions to suit.






Verdict, I'm very happy with the result and it's made playing a lot easier. Also my knees are not aching so much after a session

I like it Geoff.

Thanks Ron, it's the first thing I've built in my attic workshop which I just fInished setting up in December, so I'm pleased that everything worked out more or less as planned.

It's a bit cold up there at the moment, I'm hoping to get started on my lap build once the weather gets better.