Steel Guitar Builder

Very cool. I'm seeing 18# music wire mentioned. Is that what you use? My wife works for a wire manufacturer so I may try to scrounge some.
Also, do you have any idea how much wire goes into each spring?

Thx

Iuse .029 diameter which is #12 gauge music ( according to a google search) wire as it was a recommendation from Bent, and Marty Weenick....Stormy

Hmm. It was a post by Bent that I got the 18# from. Perhaps he changed gauges over time?
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=382&p=2738&hilit=mandrel+18#p2738

Very well may be , I would go with what Bent told you the conversion chart(s) I looked at were pretty convoluted with about 6 different answers. I'm looking at mine right now and would have to say that 18 sounds like the gauge I have. I just micrometered it and it is indeed #18 gauge music wire. I gotta quit assuming that I actually have a functional memory.....

I know exactly what you mean, Stormy. I suffer from the same affliction. This getting old thing sucks.

Frank....no, I mean Dave

I use music wire size 17 and I buy it in 9m lengths

This wire I bought came by weight 1/4 LB not a very large box but the roll of wire looks like it's a shitload if it were straightened. Geez Ron 17 ,18 for our purpose they're the same , i mean whats . thousandth one way or the other amongst friends eh. lol. I cobbled up a jig like Bent instructed 5-6 years ago and wound up about 25 or so of the little pull rod to bellcrank keepers, apparently I lost them somewhere before I even used one DOH!!

Hey guys ,for what it's worth. There is an email scam/virus going on so if you get a piece of spam/junk in your spam folder with the title.."Fedex International" and you have no reason to be expecting anything from Fedex, DO NOT even openthe message as it or at least the one I cliked on last week ,seriously fukked up my pc. I barely caught the ending of the contained message it said ..rootkit.exe. Rootkits are possibly one of the most destructive malware code thrown at you as it can actually do irrepairable damage to some hardware particularly your HDD. I use MalwareBytes with Microslut Security proggy and MalwareBytes caught it when I ran a scan but when I was deleteing it from quarentine it broke my MalwareBytes install, yep the little bastard tried to kill the code that detected it. Took all friggen day to get things normalized. Just thought you all outta be aware...Stormy

Thanks for the heads-up, Stormy.

I struck out sourcing music wire from my wife's company - they don't make it, apparently. I was hoping for a cheap source of SS wire. I'll now resort to other sources and probably just go with regular steel for the time being. I can get a pound of it for under $10 CAD.

I don't know if thats a good idea. If you are making springs or anything that requires any action that resembles "springy-ness" you must get some kind of high carbon wire that has this property. I am fairly sure that plain steel wire will not work...Stormy Hell Dave give me your snail mail addy and I'll send you a box of it as I've got PLENTY.