Brian Mark - Guitaraholic

I was asked how the assembly of the X-Carve was coming along. Well, slowly. I've been pretty busy outside of the workshop lately, so it's been slowly getting assembled. At this point, I have the X-axis pretty well done. The motor can glide across the rails nice and easy. While it doesn't look like I've done much, there is quite a bit of small assembly to do on both of those end pieces, and getting the screws that were missing took some time as well. I think I'm back on track to get this assembled, though. Next up is the Y-axis, and then I can start really making it look like something rather than a fancy clothes hanger.

I've built a few guitar kits, and have a few more that I'm working on, but I feel it's time to move on and really challenge myself. That's why I'm moving into the world of CNC routers. I grabbed an X-Carve from Inventables, and while the assembly process left a lot to be desired (only instructions are online, for one and being shorted screws and nuts for another) I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what I can do with it. Now for the tricky part - guitar blanks are typically 14" wide, but most thickness planers are 12-1/2" wide until you get into the really expensive models. I'm still looking for solutions to that problem. Once assembly is finally complete and I have it running, I'll post some pics and maybe even a video. My son is really excited, as he wants to help me build guitars as a career. We'll see how long that lasts.

Yay... I got a project finished! Only ____ million to go. So, at last check , I had glued the neck to the body and was waiting on a drill press. Well, it arrived on schedule, so I got it assembled and started seeing what I could do about making some holes. I opted for a WEN, mostly because of the price and features. 10" press with 5 speeds and laser cross-hairs. Seemed like a winner for about $100. That led to the next thing, though... I needed to get the body held sturdy enough to drill. Hey, I got a clamp for gluing the neck that could work for that! You can see, I got the spots marked ahead of time. You can even see the laser X in the picture if you look closely. I wasn't sure exactly what size hole I would need, but it turned out I didn't have the right size bit on hand. It was between the 3/8" and the 1/2" that I had in my set of bits already, so a trip out to the only place open at that time of night was in order. Wal-Mart got the business. ...

Apparently, ToolBarn.com is 1 page out of 1 Billion plus on the internet discussing tools. I'm sure there are lots of types of tools (web tools, power tools , photo tools, hand tools, blogging tools, David , etc.), but today Google says we're the best when it comes to tools. Thanks, Google. I appreciate the compliment. Now, if I could just get those people to buy something. Yeah, head term conversion rates stink, but they're sure nice for branding. It's also causing yet more server load issues, so it's really good we went memcached heavy over the past few weeks so we can handle it without a terrible load on the database server. That leads to the question... now that I've hit the biggest target in our industry, where do I go from here? The joys of doing SEO well on a big site. :)

As we were talking about some of the new products we were adding to our website today, this one became the center of our discussion. What was Occidental thinking in creating a product and trademark for "Full Fist", much less having a 3X size. Yes, that's XXX Full Fist action. I'm eagerly awaiting the search traffic on that one, let me tell you. That goes right along with the 4' vibrators we sell. These tool companies, I tell ya.

For anyone working in the IT industry, you know how frustrating it is to have to try to find the other end of a cable. Regardless if it's phone or network, it could be a very long cable that is wrapped throughout the building. Well, some time ago we bought a tone generator and probe. We bought it elsewhere at the time because we didn't carry them at all. But we now have several models to choose from. The one we bought was the Greenlee Classic Tone and Probe Kit . On the one end, it allows you to plug in to either a jack or use a coupler to attach to a cable. The other device goes to the other end so you can figure out which wire you've plugged in to. I luckily don't have to do all that much with wiring, but there have been enough times, even at home, where I can't figure out what the wire is that I'm trying to use that I consider this an essential tool. Without it, one could easily spend hours trying to find that one elusive cable - and I've done that. How m...

We've never really wanted to offer free shipping. After all, it something we get charged for every single order we send out. So we're running a test. Let's see what our conversion rates do. It's not actually free, but it is one penny. Close enough for me. Over the holidays, we had some manufacturers pony up and pay for shipping on a lot of the orders. Our conversion rates really went up. But this will mark the first time that any order over $99 (and under 75 lbs) will ship for 1¢ on ToolBarn. I've got my eye on it, and when I learn something, I'll report back here. But for now, it'd be a great time to buy something from ToolBarn .

The V28 power tools have finally shown up. Milwaukee's Lithium-Ion technology is putting everyone else to shame right now. This stuff is so cutting edge that the Ni-Cad stuff that most tool manufacturers still use should be blown out. But, since so many people already have those batteries, it won't be. At our tent event last weekend, the V28 recip saw was used to accomplish this: It took 1:45 to cut the car in half sideways, and it was a hoot. It was the first time we know of that the Hackman (Lenox blades car cutting people) was going to use a cordless. Due to some sort of conflict, nobody from team Hackman made it, so it was our local rep who took it upon himself to cut the car. At first attempt, the saw bound. This of course got a good reaction from the other manufacturers as they gave our Milwaukee rep a hard time about "Look at that 28 volt piece of junk" and "Battery dead already?" But it did a great job once it got going, and it was more a case of ne...