LINT Meeting Highlights for August 2000

The August 2000 LINT Meeting was held at Bo Walker's place in Benbrook, TX on August 20th. We had ten folks at this month's meeting including three new guys, Wayne Roy, Fred Fernsemer and Steve Mayo.The meeting began, as always, with a swap meet. Ed Scheafer, Chris Jenkins and Bo Walker all had tools and supplies available. Ed has been reorganizing his shop and brought a bunch of tools and supplies that were snapped up quickly (I really need to learn to control myself better during these temptations). For the Show and Tell portion we had three members bring instruments.
Ed Front John

Ed Scheafer (above) brought in his newest archtop creation. This guitar is a beautiful transparent green number, reminiscent of D'Aquisto's later guitars.

The other two guitars were both "First Guitars". John Timblin brought in his beautiful 000-style guitar (above right)with highly figured mahogany back and sides that John says were scrap from a furniture project and a lacewood neck.

Steve Mayo (right) also brought in his "First", a beautifully executed Indian Rosewood dreadnought he built from a Stew-Mac kit.

If I would have known that this is what first guitars were suppose to look and sound like, I would have quit after my first and taken up rock crushing as a hobby.

Steve
We then moved into Bo's shop for the main part of the meeting. Bo builds and repairs guitars and mandolins. When he built his new home, he had a dedicated shop built onto the side of his garage. The shop is air conditioned and has dust collection built in. Bo talked with us about jig designing and building. Bo had several jigs to show us, including his body mold, fret slot cutting system and his compound radius fingerboard jig. Bo's jigs are simple to build and extremely effective. His body mold is a three piece affair that allows the builder to remove either half of the mold from the side of the guitar. This also allows Bo to use one half of the form as a bending form for his sides.
The compound radius jig (shown right) was probably everyone's favorite. Bo has a carriage that holds the fingerboard. This carriage swings from a pivot point on each end. Those pivot points are secured at two different distances from the fingerboard carriage. This allows him to cut a compound radius that starts at 12" at the nut and changes to 16" at the twelfth fret. The fingerboard is cut by a router that is suspended above the fingerboard carriage. This technique produces a faceted surface that is then easily smoothed out by sanding. RadiusJig

As with all of our meetings, a great deal of insight came from the other members. I think everyone was able to take away some great ideas from the meeting. Bo also showed us one of his latest projects. He is building his first lute. Luckily the customer is patient, because Bo admits that he is learning how to build it as he goes along.

 Lute