Building my first two lap steels

[Andy DePaule]

[You are correct about some company building this Guitar Andy. It was my company.

Well James it sure looks like you know what your doing there.
Hope you have good sales with those steels.
The fretboard looks real nice.

Scotland, nice place to be from. I've only ever seen pictures but it sure looks nice.
I was born in Oldham near Manchester, not much of a nice place, but they do have Manchester United.

[Fred Treece]

While we have the attendance of at least two excellent builders on this thread, I have another question regarding headstock design.

As far as I know, there are 3 basic types:







Can anyone explain the advantages and disadvantages of each, from both the player’s and the builder’s perspective?

[Andy DePaule]

Hi Fred,
Since no one else answered, I will.
The first two are good because the tuners stick up and are easy to tune.
The steel at the top with a cut out peghead slots needs just one board to build.
The middle steel needs two boards so will be thicker and more work to make.
The last one is still tunable, but you have to reach over.
The reason I did that was to keep it more like the National New Yorker that I was kind of using as a model.
As much as I like my design, the other two would be more convenient to tune.
Hope that answers your question?
Best wishes,
Andy

[George Piburn]

The Steel Guitar Head in the Middle photo is far superior in many ways.

The Nut can be much heavier and is attached to the body inside the pocket 1 & 1/4" tall with Screws increasing Sustain by immense percentages.

The Graduated Stair Step allows the String pulls to be at or near to straight to the tuner shafts, increasing sustain, resonance and bell like tone , also lessens the string breakage factor.

The over all body is made with a router with no rear pockets so that lessens the build time greatly.
_________________________________________________
The Routers that were used to make these are Computer Numerically Controlled to less that .005 tolerances , making them extremely accurate from one to the next, so If a person wants several guitars to play as close to one another this design was well thought out for mass production.

If you add up the total time to make pattern jigs , attach them route by hand - change to another , drill holes and so on, it takes some where around 10 hours to hog out the basic shape of a steel guitar of this amount to detail Similarly to the detail of Andy's Design. This manufacturing process reduces the time to less than 30 minutes. Shortening the build time astronomically.

Rogue - Fender - Gibson - PRS - Taylor - Martin and pretty much all of the major manufacturers have done this modern hog work since 1980.

The builder can be at home drinking coffee and watching the TV far away from all of the High Speed Cutters that can cause catastrophic injuries breathing of the carcinogenic dust, or doing any clean up or disposal, so safety-health wise, there is no comparison.

Just an Opinion though. Hope this answers Fred's Question.

Mr.Boards

[Fred Treece]

Thank you for that helpful insight, Andy & George.

[Andy DePaule]

Hi George,
I think you got it way better than I could. I just felt that someone should respond to Fred's question.
Not having a good image of that black steel I guessed it to be two parts like some I've seen.
My guess is you'd be right because you would know way more on this subject than I ever will.
I know only the very basics of CNC and have never even considered using it at my age. Also that is because I love the freedom of not having CNC though I well understand the advantages for production.
Still looking forward to meeting you some day in the not too distant future.
Best wishes,
Andy

[Bob Littleton]

Beautiful work Andy! Love that peghead joint! Wow!

[Andy DePaule]

Thanks Bob