Yesterday I was about to hammer in the first eyelet on my new fiber board when my cell phone rang. I dropped the board and picked up the phone. Yada, yada yada, bye. On to the board work... Bang, bang, bang... board ready for components.. Yohoooo!!
Starting bending components and it looks so nice and tidy. My oh my, this board will look great! On to the caps for the treble and bass and all of a sudden I realize that disaster has happened... The board is mirrored, because I flipped the damn thing when answering the phone..
Note to self: Never work on an amp when what you really should do is go to sleep. And set the cell on mute
I do shit like this all of the time. I do it so much now that I'm good at catching the mistakes before I commit to drilling. The 6G16 I'm working on almost got the chassis flipped front to back (I had the entire thing marked and punched wrong) and then drilled the circuit board for a 6G11 instead of a 6G16. Luckily I caught the first mistake before I started drilling and for the second mistake was a relatively easy fix (thank goodness!).
My brother called me the other day and I was marking out the holes for the tube sockets.As I was talking to him .3 of my brain was saying I wish i had 2 hands free right now,The old days a phone sguished nicecly between you shoulder and neck.Well I kept working and the freegen holes are so out.I drilled what i marked and it came out like crap because of a cell phone.
Lesson learned if your doing something that is unredoable let the dam phone go to voicemail.Amen,Mikey
I've done this a few times. Now I put a piece of tape labelled T so I know. I wish I had the luxery of dedicating uninterupted time to anything. I certainly follow the measure twice cut once, double check and check again, rule.
Don't beat yourself up you can always drill out the eyelets and start over.
selloutrr wrote:I've done this a few times. Now I put a piece of tape labelled T so I know. I wish I had the luxery of dedicating uninterupted time to anything. I certainly follow the measure twice cut once, double check and check again, rule.
Don't beat yourself up you can always drill out the eyelets and start over.
I do exactly the same thing. Screwing up is not that bad if you take the time to come up with a way to not let it happen again.
For me it's more measure once, cut once, run the drill at a weird angle to make the hole line up and file the chassis a bit. It's alright though, once the parts are in nobody notices.
In all seriousness, I've gotten to the point where I preemptively plan in some fudge factor so everything lines up straight. I also know triple check everything placement and fitting wise before I drill. I've drilled out well over 100 chassis (counting all of the effects pedals I used to build) and know the downfalls like the back of my hand, as well as most of the spacing dimensions that I use for 2" and 3" chassis. I used to hate the process of drilling out chassis, now I can knock out a complex one in a few hours.
The last thing I need to figure out is how to cleanly chamfer large holes quickly. Right now I use a flathead screwdriver and pry off the excess aluminum bits but this looks pretty bad sometimes by the time I'm done, especially on soft aluminum. Maybe I should invest in some good punches..
Years ago I won a Dremel rotary tool plus accessories as a door prize at a company picnic.
I didn't use that thing for a couple years then one day I got it out to do something.
Now I use it all the time.
From cutting off too long screws to chamfering holes, it really is a handy tool.
And after buying the little fret polishing wheels from Stew Mac, I can get my frets to look and feel like glass.
I use a shaft extension with that so I can get low down on the frets.
You can also bugger up stuff with it too if you aren't careful, such as slipping off and marking up what you don't want marked up......
I will never forget the time I worked for hours to shape a bone nut for one of my guitars. I thought it was so fine. Then I realized it had seven slots in it.
Buschman wrote:I will never forget the time I worked for hours to shape a bone nut for one of my guitars. I thought it was so fine. Then I realized it had seven slots in it.
He, he, that sucks I'm sure you got the next one with 6 slots perfect though.
I don't even need someone to call me to screw stuff up.
The other day I was doing some fairly extensive mods on an amp.Got it done fired it up.No sound .Hmm checked and triple checked all the wiring and components.Couldn't figure out waht I had done wrong.
Come to find out I didn't have a valve in V1.
At least it was an easy fix.
I installed the eyelets on my rectifier/bias board on the wrong side.
I thought about cutting and drilling a new one but since the amp is for me and the board is easily removable, I just soldered the components on from the back side.
I'm sure you got the next one with 6 slots perfect though. 
