No laughing at my construction skills now. I'm not in the same league as Oldwailer who is the man for inovation on this forum but I try my best. Iv'e a box of about 50 MB's here all waiting to be rebuilt and the pearwood combs are a pain so I fancied some in corian but at $22 plus p&P to the U.K. I could not afford them so this is what I came up with to cut them accurately myself.
Hey, it works. I like the part about "we're making harmonica combs, not splitting atoms".
It's like setting up a guitar. Someone brings me one, I make it play great. Someone brings me one with a set of "super specs" that's what they get. Sometimes I just tell them if they are so good to tell .001 here or there that I am not good enough to work on their guitar. I learned a long time ago that the most profit from some customers comes from not doing the work!!
Good luck.
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Just when I got a paddle, they added more water to the creek.
I'd love to see a video of your machine in action. It would be great if you could make a video of you cutting a few slots into the a comb. Thanks for showing us all your creation.
Very nice. Have you got a system for controlling the slot depth or doing this by eye? As long as you were doing batches at each fence position, you could simply make a series of boards, one for each hole - that anchored up against a fence on the right side - then just set you main fence, say, for hole 3, put in the hole 3 stop board and push each comb to the stop. ---------- /Greg
Yes, I did think of using boards for each slot, also having holes behind the fence with removable pegs that the fence could be moved to for each cut. I like the laser though, it's so gimmicky it makes me chuckle 'cos, let's face it, the table is functional but it ain't no work of art. If I didn't have the laser I'd have had to add fairy lights or something. I mark the slot depths on the workpiece before cutting. I tried it marking the table but found it better to mark the piece to be cut.
Accent!!!! What accent. I ain't got no accent, it's anyone who lives more than 20 miles from London whats got a bleedin' accent. I learned to talk proper when I were at skool, and how to spell difakelt wurds.
@REM
I now have a vid of the cutter working and the end result. I will try and post it.(Still trying to work out if it's gonna look better with fairy lights as well as the laser)
Cool machine, Wheezer--I'll be looking forward to seeing it work--I learned to make combs on a mill, pretty much by eyeball with an 11/64" end mill--but I would definitely like to have a machine that could do it faster and more accurately. . .
I fancied a milling machine but couldn't get one the right price. Had I had one (I'm talking about one with the bit held vertically) I was going to use a cross vice to hold the workpiece which would give you a thread action to move the work piece into and along the miiling piece. If it's any help, reed centres are 7.5mm apart.
Well, with a mill, the cross-vice works great--the trick is to get each cut perfectly distanced from the last one--the best way I've found to do this is to use an old pearwood comb as a template--then I don't have to worry about measuring anything--just keep aligning with the old comb.
This works pretty well, but I have to stop the mill and position the bit each time I cut a slot--so its slow--and I will almost always end up with one or two tines just slightly skinnier than the others--not enough to matter in the working of the reeds--but enough to make it not perfect.
This is the same way I learned to make them from Chris Mikalek--and I have noticed some slight variations in the thickness of the tines on his combs too--so I'm not alone in this.
A CNC machine, if you build it from the plans available online, can be built for much less than the cost of my mill--but I don't even want to think about trying to program it to make a comb--I gotta save some time to play my guitar, steel guitar, and harps too! ----------
Getting the tines even is why I decided to work out the centres of the reeds. As I explain (or try to in the next video) if you work from the centres measurement all you need are two parallel lines. One is fixed i.e. the laser (mount it to the bench behind and slightly to one side of the milling machine) and an adjustable fence will be your other line. Once you have cut slot 1 you move the fence 7.5mm (checked with a rule by the laser shining on the rule) move the workpiece to the fence and your cut will be in the right position each time. I'm always amazed at your inovations, and look forward to your next creation. I hope that explanation makes sense. Pete
If you worry about accuracy, here are just my two cents:
Those small sherline milling machine have scale and measurements written on them on all the three axis. You just need to measure what distance you need on a stock comb and after that you just manually mill the comb by looking at the measurement on the mill table for the right distance between the tines. and it is very very precise (+- 0.1mm)
That is what I am using and it works perfectly. Not as fast as a cnc mill but not as pricey too! It is very small too, which is great if you don't have alot of room. It is also very quiet since it is small. For harmonica combs you really don't need bigger than that.
Of course it is cheaper to buy combs from some of the custom comb makers at 20$ each comb if you only use it for your personnal harmonicas unless you are like me and like to do it yourself.
I just like to build my own stuff and to experiment so that's why I bought this mill.
Last Edited by on May 21, 2012 6:04 PM
