Steel Guitar Builder

18ga steel. The groove is about .018 deep

Slow day yesterday. Nothing accomplished. Managed to turn a spring-winding mandrel tonight after work based upon a drawing posted by Bent Romnes. My second attempt at winding one worked out ok for the prototype. On the first one I was not prepared for how much wire actually goes into one of these springs.

Not sure if anyone's interested in this stuff, but the forum is pretty quiet so I figured I would at least document my progress for the sake of any future noobs like me that stumble upon it....

Tonight I milled a little block of aluminum to support the finger assembly in the one-string mock-up. Already it has shown what I think is going to be a problem - restricted rotation of the finger.

I for one am very interested. Keep it coming. I at one time envisioned my self building a pedal steel, after 3 lap steels and a 4th in the pipeline, I can't seem to get motivated to finish the lap steel much less build a pedal steel . Maybe some day though. Hopefully I still have a few years left and may some day get one started at least . I have a nice Smithy 1220 3 in 1, that I got 11 yrs ago when I retired with just this in mind, and a Grizzly G0759 mill that I got 3 yrs. ago. Maybe some day.
LaVern

I'm really having a blast with this, LaVern. So much to learn. Keeps the brain active.

Tonight I made a 1-string roller nut for the prototype. It, as with the finger block I posted about last night, will be bolted to a piece of plywood for the mock-up. Next will be something to hold one of my machine heads and then I can start bolting it together and get it strung.

Looks good!

LaVern

I believe the mill you have is the same as my G0704, LaVern, but with the DRO included straight from Grizzly if I recall correctly. I added my own cheap chinese DRO setup. I was screwing up too many parts trying to properly count how many times I'd turned the cranks . I still screw up fairly regularly, but not quite as often.

Looking very good! So how long of a piece of wire did it take to do one spring?

Limo wrote:Looking very good! So how long of a piece of wire did it take to do one spring?

Thanks. About 3 feet or so, Limo.

Yes your mill is the same but without the DRO. I added the power feed too. So far a pretty good mill but I think it has plastic gears. I crashed it once and was getting a tic, tic ticking, sound from my gear head. The gears weren't stripped but looking through the side flip up cover I saw that they were distorted a bit. I ran it for a while and it eventually quieted down. I think the gears are so malleable that they form corrected themselves somewhat. I read on the HobbyMachinist forum that there are metal gears available for it but haven't had any luck sourcing them out. Other than that it is a great little mill and I get quite a bit of work done on it. I actually removed the milling head from my Smith 1220 because I found the head to be in the way a lot when using the lathe and since I had the Grizzly why not.

Great progress on your build. Keep it going.

LaVern