Byrnes Model Machines

[Jim Hoffman]

I stumbled across this yesterday……

https://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/index5.html

He makes what appears to me very high end tools for the hobbyist.  His table saw is slightly more expensive the Micromark unit I bought this year, but it looks more precise.  His doesn’t have a tiltable blade like MicroMark, but there’s an optional tilt table feature.

Check out the Rope-making tool.  Everyone needs one of these.

[Joe Bowman]

Thanks for sharing Jim.  Looks like quality machines.  The prices look reasonable also. I like the planer.

[Mark Gerber]

I bought the Standard Thickness Sander.  It works very well on balsa, spruce and maple.  I can sand parts to within a thousandth or two.    I made a clamping fixture that allowed me to make spars from laminations of two 1/8" x 1/4" with carbon fiber between.  After gluing the fiber/balsa sandwich by wicking in CA, the spars were slightly greater than 1/4" thick.  I also cut the width from balsa sheet with a balsa stripper a little larger than 1/4".  The thickness sander got the spars  to .250" + or - <.005" in both dimensions.

Long sheets (>about 18 inches) are tricky because the weight of the extended piece hanging over the back edge of the feed table tends to lift the rear of the piece if you don't hold it down very tightly.  It could use an extension on the back end of the feed table.  I'm thinking about adding one to mine.  That would make it much easier to sand intermediate thicknesses of balsa sheet -- e.g. if you want some 5/64" (.078") thick wing sheeting you can sand down 3/32" (.094").

It's also nice to have a digital caliper so you can easily check the wood thickness after each pass through the sander.

Mark Gerber

[Mark wood]

During my days running the luthier business and being in the pursuit of better tone for a jumbo size guitar, I created braces in a spruce - carbon - spruce laminate. I did this in a curing oven I built to cure prepreg materials. I would make "stock" from thin boards 5/32" x 4.5" x 24", no magic to those numbers just convenience size enough to make the necessary parts. Between these I sandwich the prepreg which was unidirectional fiber and used some thicker culling block to support the laminate during curing. The curing schedule was 140 F for 8 hours followed by a post cure tempering period of about 160 - 180 F for four hours, it's been 15 years so I don't recall specifically the post cure numbers but 165 F works well as a general rule of thumb. After curing, I would mill the braces as normal.

The stiffness is important when it comes to tone, stiffer equals brighter and the jumbo guitars lack brightness. These braces worked quite well and made significant improvement in the jumbo tone. One of those guitars, "Ten", played for the Pope in Rome.

Making spars in this manor would be very easy and wouldn't require using prepreg. West Systems epoxy responds quite well to post cure tempering in the 160 F temperature zone. I'd do a layup starting with uni fiber and mix resin 105 % equal weight to the fiber cut. Lay the fiber on some thick drop cloth and us an ink roller to spread the epoxy out in the fiber, then remove the wet carbon and laminate in the balsa or spruce. Using the West System I would change the curing schedule slightly beginning with 100 F for 6 hours or so, I need to experiment some on that and then for another four hours at 165 .

BTW, I was looking for any others having experience with this sander as I don't want or need the several thousand dollar machine I had in the Luthier shop. My needs today aren't that high and bench top machine would suffice. Thanks for your review Mark.