Steel Guitar Builder

I need your opinions about using metal versus wood end plates. By not having equipment to work with metal, my tendency is to use wood. However, I'm wondering what the disadvantages would be. It seems that used metal plates are hard to come by, and new ones (for me) are a bit expensive. Fred

May be slightly more complicated to incorporate a rigid leg-attachment, and wood end plates must be thicker than their metal equivalents.

Apart from that I personally can't see any advantages in using metal end plates on a wooden body.

If you want to try and combat the cabinet drop, you would need metal end plates to have something to bolt the metal side rails to.
Wood would be ok for a novelty and something to just play around with at home. Like Georg says it would be harder to get a rigid leg attachment in wood.
So I see a bunch of advantages of metal end plates on a wood body.
I vote for aluminum end plates.

Thanks Bent and Georg. I guess I was trying to avoid the obvious (aluminum end plates). So, I'll have to keep looking for them before I can go any further. Fred

Fred , I got my endplates custom cnc'd to my specs by Dale Tenney aka: DTE Enterprises in CA. They we're my first run so they ran 300$ incl s/h per set SD-10 made to replace stock Super Pro cast endplates. Dale told me if I get more in the future they will be considerably cheaper cause he already has the cnc/ cad layout backed up and on file.....Stormy ..let me know if u want his eddress .

Storm,

Thanks for the info. and help, but I already found a pair on the PSG Forum. Fred

Fred,
If you were to use wood, I can't see that they would need to be built as "endplates", in the normal sense of the word. Couldn't you just cap the ends of the cabinet? Seems to me that if a proper joint were used... Say, dovetails... That the cabinet would be plenty sturdy. Then whatever you were planning to attach the legs to would just bolt up inside the edges of the cabinet. If the side rails were attached to the, let's call 'em "leg plugs", it may be plenty sturdy. The proper jointing in the ends would work wonders at keeping the skirts from twisting.

I know it wouldn't have the same shiny look that we're all used to, but, personally, the more beautiful wood the better! as you can tell, I'm definitely not a mica kind of guy. Anyway, just me thinking out loud.

Jeffrey

For a shiny finish over wooden end-plates, try 1/16" aluminum sheet metal.

Thanks guys for all your help. Man, this forum is awesome! Fred

hi again friends ,
as a one -off , a person could do pretty well with wood
or 1/8/ - 1/4 aluminum flat plate across the ends and cap
the corners with 2 " aluminum angle cut to fit.
polish or brush finish as needed and yer good ta go!
personally , i like just flat aluminum plate on each end , polished
to a high shine . to each his own - just my 2 cents.
you will still need leg mounts - i use 1/2 " alum plate with screw holes and 13 deg angled leg area - threaded for leg -spans across width of body - pretty strong and not difficult. pastor bruce