Vibramute tremelo plate manufacture
Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:27 am
Ok, some time ago Dantana asked me to help him out in drilling the holes and finishing his cast Vibramute tremelo plate, he was going to post some pics but must have been waylaid with something else so thought I'd share what I did so if others buy a cast plate they might be able to replicate what I did (if you have access to some proper tooling!)
Firstly, I marked out the location of the hole centres using a Vernier height gauge.
Then I clamped the plate to a faceplate ready to drill the two main holes that house the bearings, (needed to make sure that these holes were perpendicular to the 2 forward bridge holes that I drilled after);
Then it's back to the bench to drill and tap the bridge post holes;
I also opened out the mount hole locations, this was just a simple task of letting the drill find the centre of the countersink in the casting and drilling through using a pillar drill.
We decided to go with the polished look and although I didnt have a great deal of time to spend on this, it came out pretty good. I firstly smoothed off the entire surface then gradually stepped down grades of sandpaper before I went to a coarse polishing paste down to fine to finish. After the polishing, I masked the area to be sprayed and painted with a base primer then a matt black to achieve this finish;
Then, finally, went over the tops of the letterings to get the final result:
I did go over the countersinks after this shot so that they were simular in size as the casting was pretty rough! I think once assembled this would have looked pretty sweet, though I would have liked to have spent more time polishing out some scratches, it's a long arduous process if you havent got the right tools though!!!
Firstly, I marked out the location of the hole centres using a Vernier height gauge.
Then I clamped the plate to a faceplate ready to drill the two main holes that house the bearings, (needed to make sure that these holes were perpendicular to the 2 forward bridge holes that I drilled after);
Then it's back to the bench to drill and tap the bridge post holes;
I also opened out the mount hole locations, this was just a simple task of letting the drill find the centre of the countersink in the casting and drilling through using a pillar drill.
We decided to go with the polished look and although I didnt have a great deal of time to spend on this, it came out pretty good. I firstly smoothed off the entire surface then gradually stepped down grades of sandpaper before I went to a coarse polishing paste down to fine to finish. After the polishing, I masked the area to be sprayed and painted with a base primer then a matt black to achieve this finish;
Then, finally, went over the tops of the letterings to get the final result:
I did go over the countersinks after this shot so that they were simular in size as the casting was pretty rough! I think once assembled this would have looked pretty sweet, though I would have liked to have spent more time polishing out some scratches, it's a long arduous process if you havent got the right tools though!!!
