DIY engraving on Bigsby type vibrato

joel · 2012-04-18T12:24:13+00:00

So , I found this guitar in a pawn shop a few weeks ago.... It needed a new tail piece , so I ordered one of these , because thats similar to what the original guitar has .... Turns out that that pos vibrato tailpiece, (as shown in the first pic ), leaves an image of itself on the wood , now that it has been removed . ☹ . So, I had to resort to look for a Bigsby...I was offered one of these.... A friend kindly removed the name for me 8)...... Now I have to find someone to engrave this on for me .... A jewellery shop nearby quoted me R800.00 to do it ? I've thought of buying a Dremel engraver (+-R350.00) and tackling this myself. I've never done this before . :-\ Can a total noob engraver (me) stuff this up ? The material is aluminium. I reckon , if I print it out and make a stencil of it , I'll give it a go. Any advice / other ideas , before I stuff this up ? :-[

Norman86

maybe a stupid idea i have, but if its aluminium, why not get another piece of aluminium to weld on top of it?

That way, you have a clean slate as it was??

slyd

Hmmmm . . . .

1 - Maybe fill the area with a translucent acrylic resin, within which a vinyl (or other) Hofner logo is embedded . . . ???

2 - Shape a piece of wood to fit the area (varnish or polish or paint), engrave on, or paint on, or have a vinyl logo made at the printers of "Hofner". Position logo on the wood as required, and give a bunch of clear coats over, buff, and viola' :-[
Picture the wood piece painted black, with a gold/white logo on it, buried beneath a nice clear coat . . . . 8) . . . or any combination . . . .

Neon-Gecko

Joel, get hold of Costa, he knows an engraver that is well priced.

slyd

I wonder if Ibanez will have any issues about another logo on their product . . . . heheheheh ?

Manfred-Klose

just have it laser cut, its cheap and quick.

some of the big companies ask you a setup charge, but the smaller ones should charge you about R100 to have it laser cut

Ray

SISS!!

MattAttack

Personally I wouldn't engrave, too costly, too difficult to do yourself.
Your best is to acid-etch it, just like diy circuit boards are made.
I've done this many time with aliminium and it's looks great. Done neatly enough it looks like it's been machined.

Process goes as follows:
1: Trace your design using vector software
2: Have it cut out of vinyl
3: Stick on the reversed out vinyl onto surface
4: Cover up everywhere else with masking tape.
5: Apply acid (Ferric Chloride) for no longer than 1 or 2 minutes (Aliminium dissolves like 10 times faster than copper pcb's) - in this case you don't want to submerge the whole unit as it's too big. You can just brush on the ferric chloride. Note you still have to cover up every part you want untouched.
6: Rinse, dry and paint your newly etched grooves!

Ferric chloride acid only dissolves metal btw, that's why you can just cover the metal with vinyl and masking tape and just leave the design exposed.

That's the gist of it, pm me for more details if you're brave enough to go through with this.
I can post picks of stuff I've done some time. It turns out really great.

Will try find some pics I might've uploaded years ago to show you. Watch this space!

MattAttack

Ok, I've found what I was looking for.

That's a metal plate I made for the coffin table that I made.
In person you can see how the letters recess into the metal, not visible in the pic.

Here's a post I wrote on a bike forum of some light I made, there's some more info on the etching process there:
http://www.customfighters.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27905

MattAttack

Hey that's turned out good, def easier than my route =D
The silver on black bigsby logo looks way better than the emasculated ibanez logo.

Well seeing that design now, you could easily try cutting out a piece of aliminium in the same shape of the black part, and etch out the logo onto it and rivet it on, or try counter sinking it if you're brave.

It's easy to chuck away a flopped piece of ally if you don't get it right, if you etch the bigsby itself and it goes wrong, it's more difficult to try fix!