Make your own keeper bars -- question or two

[Zhangliqun]

I know -- or think -- Spence makes his own keeper bars (pole shoes) and he's probably not alone. We've seen a bunch of tools for cutting across a length of steel, but what about lengthwise? I've been doing it with a bandsaw but it's hard to get a consistent/straight/accurate cut. Is there a better tool or is it a matter of getting a proper jig/template for holding it solidly in place at a perfect right angle?

I'm looking at experimenting with various grades of steel and dimensions for the tone effect.

[Spence]

Stew Mac makes a sanding station. I bought one with the intention of using it as a thicknesser for maple P90 spacers. I have since used it to get pole shoes to the right size too. The important thing to remember when cutting or sanding, grinding etc. is that you may be work-hardening the surfaces to some extent.

[Electricdaveyboy]

It can be hard!

I am looking for a company to make the keeperbar and slugs for me.
It is hard to find those low carbone steel in the right dimensions.
Best thing for poleshoes is to get them machined out of a block.
First drill the holes and then cut the block into pieces.
I am tiered of drilling and sanding.

[NightWinder]

Pm Sent

[Spence]

I am looking for a company to make the keeperbar and slugs for me.
It is hard to find those low carbone steel in the right dimensions.
Best thing for poleshoes is to get them machined out of a block.
First drill the holes and then cut the block into pieces.
I am tiered of drilling and sanding.

They should be made by hot rolloing and the holes punched.

[SkinnyWire]

I've had two different sources machine them for me out of 1018. The challenge there from my perspective is cost per piece and/or minimum quantities. I've received samples from one fellow for $2 per piece that were pretty nice but had some issues. They were laser cut/drilled and I had him mill one side to make it flat. I received some nicer samples from a different fellow but he wants closer to $3 per piece with a minimum of 400-450 pieces. The were milled, similar to Andrew's keepers. The first guy would cover 200 piece minimum but again, the quality wasn't quite where I wanted it.

That leaves me looking at doing it myself again as well. I don't really care for the stamped fare, but I'm back to using them right now until I can work something out. I've never built jigs/fixtures for this type of thing, but the "sled" that was mentioned in the previous thread regarding straight cutting 1/8" thick steel (I assumed it was a keeper bar issue there) looked promising for rough dimensioning the pieces with a band saw. A sanding station/poor mans surface grinder would be helpful for finishing. That just leaves the holes to drill. There's a machinist type or two here that should be able to advise on jigs/fixtures I think? I'm interested in that. I've made them before, and the holes were always the bigger pain.

[Possum]

duplicate thread...

well I guess you guys didn't read the thread on cutting straight lines on a band saw.

I bought some better band saw blades to try, not yet though. I am seriously considering getting that harbor freight micro mill and using that to finish them off. Any way you look at it, its going to be time consuming and a pain in the ass. What I'm thinking is rough cut them on the band saw then put in a vise and use the mill to flatten the sides then use it again to drill straight spaced holes.

Making slugs and spacers is something any machine shop can do but how they do it is key. If you look at old 50s Gibson spacers they cut out of cold rolled stock that was already the right size. Well you can't find that stuff in that material and that size anymore, sob. I got some killer material thats hot rolled, but hot rolled material is always very rough tolerance so its too damn thick so needs to be thinned down as well as cut out of sheet straight, so I"m in the same boat here looking for solutions. Its awful hard to hold a small piece of steel square to grind/sand down flat and that stuff gets really hot in the operation, easy to get burned. The sanding station looks cool, but its going to wear down one small section of the sanding part real fast and you'd probably need the vise to use it at all. I wonder if a mill would be a better investment, the sander is almost 2/3's the price of the mill.......

[Possum]

end mills or fly cutter...

OK, so you got a mill, you cut out a piece of steel and want to flatten the edges and cut off some thickness of the piece. Would you use a fly cutter or a bit end mill to do the work?

[SkinnyWire]

I was referring to your thread in my response above - figured you were working on keeper bars.

I THINK a mill is the way to go for uber flat side(s), but I had a machinist type tell me that this is basically a drilling job since you can get flat stock and may be able to get it in quantity with the proper dimensions at a reasonable cost. I have a quote for 5x3mm 1018 flat stock that's about $1 a foot. For a $25 setup charge, they'll cut the pieces for $0.20 per cut. That just leaves the hole drilling. One of the machinists I was talking with recommended a Palmgren x-y table for my drill press. Drill a hole - crank 5mm (or whatever you need) - drill another hole - rinse and repeat. Should work okay with a stubby bit I'd think.

As with the band saw, 99.9% of the battle with a mill is getting it setup for the work so you get good flat sides and don't end up with some odd trapezoid shape when you're done. I think rigidity comes into play here too, which is where some of the smaller mills may fall short.

You can get a small Taig CNC for about $2k, but rigidity might be a problem there again. Here's where we need the machinist types to chime in. I've been looking at something like this since it's not too expensive:

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mill...hine-25/G1005Z

I really liked Andy Cs "milled" keepers. They were dead flat, and worked out of the box with no cutting and drilling - at least for me. Wish he'd kept selling the parts, but I might have been the only one buying them. They appeared to me to be surface ground flat - at least on the sides - versus milled. Surface grinders are big bucks though.

Anyway. I hate messing with the punched/stamped stuff. The way I build buckers, I always have to cut a little off the ends of each one of typical stuff and drill the holes out a bit to fit 5-40 screws. It'd be a lot of work doing these bits by hand though. I cut wood spacers about twice a year several hundred at a time so I don't have to "do the nasty" too often. I think it would be the similar with these (not hundreds at a time though).

[Possum]

...

Well for $300 a mill also gives you drilling X/Y ability so I think its the way to go for me. You can find correct size cold rolled stock in 1018 but its real hard to come by, I bought as much as I could when I found it and its probably not available again next time.

[Joe Gwinn]

OK, so you got a mill, you cut out a piece of steel and want to flatten the edges and cut off some thickness of the piece. Would you use a fly cutter or a bit end mill to do the work?

If you are making more than one, use an end mill. Fly cutters are very flexible, and very slow.

[Zhangliqun]

well I guess you guys didn't read the thread on cutting straight lines on a band saw.

Link me...

[SkinnyWire]

If you are making more than one, use an end mill. Fly cutters are very flexible, and very slow.

Advice on a mill that can produce good results without breaking the bank?

[Joe Gwinn]

Link me...

http://music-electronics-forum.com/s...1&postcount=28

[Joe Gwinn]

Advice on a mill that can produce good results without breaking the bank?

Depends on what you want to do. One can spend from $300 to $300,000.