Leaderboard

You lucky Guitarchatters get this before those pesky bassists, the finished and fitted vice. Three coats of varnish on the chop and all shipshape and Bristol fashion. Which means what exactly, it's a slave vice? It has a maximum capacity in line with the screw of 250 mm, and that's right on the limit of thread engagement. It's width capacity is technically as long as I can fit in it, and I suspect, but haven't tried it yet, that if the leg met the chop all the way down you'd have an even clamping force nearly to the floor, you could glue up a length of around 900 mm if you wanted to. My vice jaw addition is 130mm deep, to the top of the screw really. I hope you've enjoyed my journey into chaos and insanity, and I've made the mistakes for you if you make your own version.

Whilst the chop was drying I made a start on the scissor mechanism proper. A length of 20mm square bar cut onto two 500mm lengths, it turns out that was too long, so I had to cut them down a bit more, they're 490mm long now. Drilled an M6 clearance hole in the end of ech of them, you can just see it on the other end in this picture. Here I'm filing the end into a semicircle. I decided, looking at the slot and the physics of the thing that it doesn't need a full semi-circle at the end, it just needs to corner knocking off. The opposite side of the end, if that makes any sense, doesn't run against anything. Time will tell if this is enough rounding playing with it suggests that it is. You then need a hole in the middle. This must be the same orientation as the other, if you drill it crosswise then youn can't mount it! No I didn't do that. It's another M6 clearance hole. Bolt it up so it spins freely but doesn't wobble. I used a nyloc nut on it, though there's hardly any rotational moment on it so a normal nut would probably suffice. It's symmetrical in length, which turns out to be wrong as you'll find out later. Hang the scissor mechanism to try out out and sit back feeling pleased with yourself. It may need a little notch cutting out for the middle bolt heads when it's closed.

I've got a confession to make.. I've been neglecting you dear Guitarchatters, I've nearly finished the vice and Basschat know all about it. Sorry. Here I've finished the bit where the scissor mechanism runs, cut the middle section to leave the hole for the screw and the rebates to either side. I cut the outers of the middle block of 5 and made some cheeks for the top to make it wider. I also drilled each part for 10mm dowels as discussed above somewhere. Mark up each piece with a number... I Because this was always possible, dropped the bits trying to pick them all up at once. Apply glue, clamps and time.

New things ? How about the PRS SE Hollowbody 2 with piezo. Sounds good to me and I will know later today just how good .