For me the scratches usually happen when I dust the chips off, so they can end up anywhere. Maybe my bit gets too hot? I am using a hand drill at the moment.
The powder coat from tayda seems pretty tough. If you’re doing your own paint, that would be a different story. I don’t know if I’d trust rattle can paint to hold up to drilling. I also don’t know anything about the UV print stuff and how easy those are to scratch. I think if I was doing that I’d spring for the drill service.
I wipe the chips off with a little paintbrush, and with the residual alcohol they slide off pretty easy. Wiping with a rag or something that might trap chips or apply too much pressure might get you in trouble.
The powder coat from tayda seems pretty tough. If you’re doing your own paint, that would be a different story. I don’t know if I’d trust rattle can paint to hold up to drilling. I also don’t know anything about the UV print stuff and how easy those are to scratch. I think if I was doing that I’d spring for the drill service.
I wipe the chips off with a little paintbrush, and with the residual alcohol they slide off pretty easy. Wiping with a rag or something that might trap chips or apply too much pressure might get you in trouble.
I usually just use Tayda’s powder coated enclosures, no UV prints. And make laser faceplates so a couple scratches on the face of the pedal won’t be visible anyways. I do think using a drill press and a nice vise would make this easier. Part of my problem is the surface I use to drill on which gets covered in shavings which are hard to remove and then the enclosure ends up on them and gets scratched… I’ll try your technique once I have access to a drill press.
After generating a PhotoShop mockup of the two M800 pedals I'm working on, it occurred to me that I wanted to have the stomp button & LED bezel also in gold. The stomp was easy to find. However, gold 3mm LED bezels don't seem to exist. When I asked around in a FB group, one person suggested "Tiffoo Gold" - a liquid that will gold-wash aluminum, steel, silver & copper. So I got to searching on Amazon for it and other ways to color the LED bezels gold. I didn't find the "Tiffoo Gold" wash solution, but the "JAX Gold Finish" came up and looked promising. But after reading the reviews, I wasn't pleased with results people were getting. I kept looking for other products and two that (according to reviews) would work.
One was a Gold UV-Cured nail polish. When I tried it and cured it 3 minutes under a cheap little UV flashlight, it hardened nicely on a test piece. However, it it adds a bit of bulk and looks painted.
Then I found a nice set of Gold Metal gloss pens for 10 bux on Amazon. These worked great! So I took two black, 3mm LED bezels, chucked them in my cordless drill and sanded off the black to expose the shiny aluminum underneath. I used a small mill file first, then some increasing grit sizes of sandpaper to finish them cleanly. After applying a gold pen to them, they looked great!
After sanding & before gold Pen application -
After applying the gold pen treatment - I chose to leave the black anodized coating on the inside of the bezels for the first test and I think I'll leave them like this.
I'll post Build Report when the pedals are completed.
Years ago my sister put a warmoth telecaster together. The neck had the perfect dimensions for my hands. So naturally, rather than order the same neck from warmoth, I found a Canadian luthier to build me the same thing. When I finally got the instrument I was blown away by how it looked but the neck felt like it had been finished with chewing gum. Absolute dogshit playability. And the pickups sounded like muddy garbage. I did some light sanding on the neck to improve it, replaced the pickups, but it was never as good as my other guitars.
I finally decided to just sand the thing down to the wood. Refinished in osmo polyx (as god intended).
The body used a toploader bridge, which gave a pretty inadequate break angle. So I drilled that out too. It's vastly improved but arguably looks a bit worse. Pics because the walnut top is hot.
This is not my bench, but a customer's, but I was so impressed that I felt I had to share it. This is the most complex combination of JTEX products I've ever seen in one place. I don't think I could even have thunk it up myself. There's my buffer/booster, low pass tunable filter, 1-band EQ (lows), and my Rock Engine -- all in one bass pedal, somehow working together and (I'm told) sounding amazing. I take my hat off to the builder, whom I won't name in case he doesn't want me to. This really makes it all worthwhile for me. Mad props!
Waiting for parts to finish stuff up. A Silvertone 1484 amp sim/preamp. Everyone has the schematic floating around and there are production runs of it from a few companies. This is the Argentum on this site, plus an extra jfet somehow. Sounds pretty good. I'll have to compare it to the real thing soon.
So I’ve been working on building an anodizing station where I can anodize my parts/enclosures!
So it’s not as pretty as I’d like it to be but for now this is what it has to be. I’ve rigged up temp controllers and just finished making all the baths!
I’m not done yet but I’m pretty proud of what this is becoming! Looking forward to showing off some anodized enclosures
So I’ve been working on building an anodizing station where I can anodize my parts/enclosures!
So it’s not as pretty as I’d like it to be but for now this is what it has to be. I’ve rigged up temp controllers and just finished making all the baths!
I’m not done yet but I’m pretty proud of what this is becoming! Looking forward to showing off some anodized enclosures View attachment 84127
I found this video that gave me a lot of courage to follow through with it! My setup is pretty much the same with a couple things different. Im using Sodium Bisulfate instead of sulfuric acid.
So I’ve been working on building an anodizing station where I can anodize my parts/enclosures!
So it’s not as pretty as I’d like it to be but for now this is what it has to be. I’ve rigged up temp controllers and just finished making all the baths!
I’m not done yet but I’m pretty proud of what this is becoming! Looking forward to showing off some anodized enclosures View attachment 84127
Ive thought about blueing a few of the steel enclosures in the past. After looking up parkerizing, Im surprised i never came across the process! Ive been trying to find a way to finish the steel enclosures in a finish thats not a powder coat and will still prevent rust.
