Does anyone use one of these or similar - to true the body?

[David L]

I think that you could do it by holding guitar side against the stop and rolling and feeding at the same time until the side touches off on the sander and keeping it in motion completely and pulling away while still in motion, repeat, repeat, etc... I understand that you are merely trying to true the sides and not thickness sand however, I still think that without some kind of automated/mechanical feed mechanism you run the risk of rippling should your feed rate falter, no matter how many stops/safegaurds you instill, sanders work differently than routers.

David L

[deadedith]

You're probably right also. However, John Parchem trued his by moving the instrument over the spindle; others have moved the hand-held spindle over the instrument. One element or the other must be static.
If I feel better tomorrow, I will cobble something together and see where I'm going wrong. My aim will be to have a steadily and slowly turning spindle, a stop, and a sliding foam-topped fixture that will present the guitar sides perfectly to the sandpaper. There is an excellent chance that I will NOT use an actual guitar side for this test! :-)
This is fun for me.

[tippie53]

people also use scrapers to true up sides. You may be over thinking this . Keep it simple .

[deadedith]

For that matter, I've been truing with some pvc and stickon sandpaper and it works just fine. A dusty job in hot weather, but no big deal. Sometimes - no, all the time, I like to think of different ways to do things just for the fun of it. Usually don't work out but like I said, it's fun.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Dave,
The idea is correct, but how would you manage in a waist area? The spindle would have to be very small diameter and the indexing surface would have to be very short on either side of the spindle, I would think....something in the idea of a horseshoe wrapped around it.
The other problem is keeping the side of the guitar perpendicular to the spindle....with the top down you could probably do it off the table surface, but you would have to always sand this way, which would probably work fine anyway.
So figure a way to do the waist, and I think you have a pretty good idea there.

Kevin

[deadedith]

Kevin - I have a good idea for the waist area and such. If I get to the mock-up I will post it.
Thanks for the comment.

[David L]

I want to encourage you to keep driving on, as I would still like to steal it if you can get a good working model of it, trueing up the sides by hand is a lengthy, tedious, boring process that I would much rather accomplish with a nifty device that takes the elbow grease out of it.

David L

[deadedith]

David, I'm with you. If I get over the 'trotskies' I'm having today, I'll try to work something out in the next couple of days.

[David L]

I'll be looking for it!

David L