Corvus Guitar Works - builds, paint, mods/servicing, Cambs

Corvus

Cheers Dave!

Corvus

I haven't posted anything here for a while so will start to put up a motley collection of odds & ends.

This Firebird wearing Ash's new noiseless P90s. What a lucky strike for me, these things really are all P90 and none of the noise. I love these things. And the covers they came with suit their new home, with the aluminium parts & plates-

Corvus

A rescue of a 70s Arbiter Junior, this had been a bare carcass for many a year/decades. Brought back to life keeping it's age and the stripped/varnish finish look - that was AWOL in areas including the neck & head. Tints and shellac evened it out without the whole resto running up too wild a cost.

Some parts were missing but the pickguard was there, though Dulux painted, tuners present but mostly dodgy, plus an old fugly replacement bridge. A new one was bought, our guy wanted some intonation.
Rescued the bent and sloppy tuners - owner: "how are you going to fix those?". Me: "I'm going to hit them quite hard with a hammer when you're not looking"

Before pic, except the board's been revived and the green corroded frets brought back:


After:



It's got a Fletcher dogear that came from the classifieds here, this thing now sounds great and plays much better than it has a right to. 

Corvus

I seem to have made a small wooden penguin and he seems pleased to see you -

Corvus

It's a binding thicknesser, a quickie thing made from scrap and a spare plane iron. It works well and was surprising how accurate it is -

The top bolt doesn't do much, it's just lightly nipped up. The strap at the bottom is needed against the iron flexing or chattering. Adjust the iron with light hammer taps, down and side to side. Thin & taper one end of the binding, pull through and slightly downwards. 

Corvus

Randomness

Si's Hamer, refretted

Sun tan:

HJ Williams. Not a fan of quilt particularly but this thing's nice and spangly

Pretty CS Tele with dubious fretwork. For the price of them, really...

Nick's Squier Jazz V, rewired to MV/blend/MT and a new bridge and setup. This is all good this one - the neck profile feels very nice, the maple colour's nicely non-Donald dayglo. Looks cool in black. A good bass

I've no need for another spokeshave but fancied one of these Prestons just purely for the Victorian fanciness, this one was cheap. I'll rescue it as & when time allows (so not anytime soon). But not terrible shape for over 100yrs old

"It won't hold tune very well"
Either a bad casting or PO being over-keen. One other was fractured but holding

Aria RS600. Interesting setup with the middle pickup being a dummy coil only there for hum-killing. A hideous phase option on  there but it felt good to play and most sounds were good -

Corvus

A PRS came in which the owner has had for 15 years, it was well gigged but mostly near pristine. But he hated the worn-away fretboard lacquer and greyed board, wanted a refin and refret. Though the frets were mostly in a good state. So instead of that I removed the finish and bleached any oxidised grey that didn't go away. Built up coats of Tru Oil and gave it a polish up.
A faff and fiddle but less nuclear, saved him a good lot of money and a bit of fretwork gave it loads more life. "It's like new" he says, so we're both happy with that - 

Corvus

Les Paul:

Corvus

Les Paws:

Corvus

Couple of bits here:

The 100+ yr old spokey came up good, it's flat, slick and sharp and takes shavings like you'd want -

Corvus

And a couple of finished LP pics, all I've got at the moment. It came out well, honduran mahogany + imported maple, custom pickups by Catswhisker sound really great. 7.5lbs region in the end. Light ageing which bits of wear and checking etc, not that I've got good pics of that.
Sometimes it looks faded amber, sometimes the edge burst shows, other times it looks dirty lemon with hints of olive green up at the neck end of the burst. Sometimes the flame all but goes, leaving a vague impression of something other than straight paint/plain top. I do love doing bursts and the subtleties of them.

Corvus

So I'm now closed for 2-3 weeks for setups & repairs and the like. But anyone local needing an emergency type of fix for gigging, do shout, I might be able to get it sorted.

I'll be out somewhat longer for fresh builds and paint, while a move and new workshop build happens. We'll still be in this area. The timing's annoying with three nice tasty edible builds in the pipeline, but it can't be helped!

BillDL

I'll need to dig out my old spokeshave again and have a look.  I have a feeling it says Prestons on mine also.  It has similarly ornate embossed pattern on the handles but the body is coated with some rock-hard blue enamel type stuff that's chipped and worn away (relic'd) in the areas of most hand contact..  It was my Grandfather's (my Dad's Dad's).  Maybe he painted it at some time.  I could never quite get a fine enough cut on it without it snagging and digging in vwhen I tried using it for profiling necks.  I see you have the blade slightly angled.  Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.

What do you have as filling in your cut / pulled fret "cribbage board" holder that's visible as a tiny anthill in each hole?

Corvus

I think the nickel plated some and black japanned others, mine cleaned off with paint stripper so might be a DIY paint job from donkeys ago. Unless japanning comes off that way too.
The pic there, was just put together without adjustment or setup. But a skewed blade is a thing especially on ones without adjusters, to save faff - fine cut one end, deeper cut the other. This one has a lateral adjuster though.
I reckon the main thing is a super sharp iron and no sharp edges on the sole.

The fret holder, that's just an optical thing I guess - stain running down into the holes a bit - didn't bother trying to get into the holes, though not doing it has bothered me since, when I notice it!

BillDL

Thanks @Corvus.  Yep, optical illusion time.  It's funny how once you know what you're seeing it's almost impossible to flip back to how you saw it before.

Corvus

It's been a while. We moved (not that far away), the new workshops are well underway and the finish line is getting closer.

The garden was an overgrown jungle, you couldn't see fences, there were dead trees and massive inch thick bramble whips etc. It had to get cleared out, levelled, new fences & gates and then start groundworks.

I'll be in touch with people waiting for things in a bit. Just now building the spray room so I'm not ready for full builds quite yet. But doing some quicker setup-type things.

Some random randomness to follow..

Helper dog:


A long-awaited NGD -

Corvus

I'll be doing a personal project and bought a couple of violin planes to start tooling up -





This is the box it landed in -


And here's the wrapping ... 



 

Corvus

And.. ordered two from the same place, they arrived in separate boxes ... bonkers

Supportact

Glad to see you're getting back up and running again.  I'll have to pay a visit some time. 

BillDL

That's one of top ones of my Victor Meldrew agendas.  I ordered about 9 different sized taps (i.e. the threading kind, not water taps) and a dwang / handle.  The taps each came in their thin plastic hang pockets that took up no space whatseoever, and the tap handle would have fitted in something no larger than a small spice container, but they came in a box about 12" x 9" x 6" that was filled with a mixture of wood shavings and polystyrene "corncurls".  A fully recyclable jiffy bag with fluffy cardboard and paper padding would have held them very easily and it could have been posted through my letterbox.  As it turns out they had not packed two of the taps I had ordered, and it meant me raking through all the shavings looking for them while trying to pick out the polystyrene bits that aren't recyclable.  It's not as though this was a tool retailer whose main business was larger tools and machinery and they don't have a variety of packaging sizes, because they sell plenty other fairly small items.  I mentioned this in my review when prompted to give one, because to me this is an important consideration.

I realise this may make me sound like a right twat, but those dinky little thumb plains are ..... cute