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Knurling can be found on your volume and tone knobs. This helps you grip and turn the knobs better especially as you hands sweat after much playing. Knurling can be vertical, like on your Stratocaster knobs, or have diamond shaped serrations on the circumference of the work providing a better gripping surface. A good example…

A great catalog to order raw material and tools is McMaster-Carr Supply Co. P.O. Box 54960 Los Angeles, Calif. 90054-0960. They have the best catalog I have seen and are very helpful in finding supplies. If you’re trying to make brass bridges for your Telecaster I would suggest using a “Free Cutting Brass”. It’s great for…

My favorite book is by McMaster-Carr: you can get their catalog by calling: Chicago: Sales-312-254-0300 Fax #: 312-834-9427 Los Angeles: Sales-213-692-5911 Fax #: 213-695-2323 New Jersey: Sales-201-329-3200 Fax #: 201-329-3772

I find this interesting and I like searching for this kind of information to do articles on. I found an article written by Jim Boyd who writes for the Register-Guard a newspaper out of Oregon. Henry Phillips who lived in Portland, Oregon patented the Phillip head screw in 1934. The screw has the plus sign…

You can find many types of screws at hardware and speciality screw stores. The majority of hardware screws used today are oval head Phillips. The early years of Fender and Gibson, oval head-slotted screws were used in the majority of instruments. If you are replacing or needing extra screws, it is important to find the…

Most hardware stores carry both Metric and Standard Screw Checker gauges. The gauges I use are one’s made by “Ruelle Industries-6650 Highland Rd.-Waterford, MI 48327-(313)666-4433″. They are heavy duty and measure approximately 3″ X 5 3/8”. The gauges are made of .072″ thick metal and are tapped for various thread and screw diameters. The various…

Polymers are plastics used for Injection molding, thermoforming, extrusion, casting and film or sheets. Below are the common plastics used from guitar pickups to accessories. ABS: is a thermoplastic with good impact resistance and compressive strength. Acetals: are thermoplastics with applications similar to nylons. Has high impact resistance and ultraviolet radiation causes surface damage. Acrylics:…

Case hardening is a term that is used to describe a process in which changes the composition of the surface layers of ferrous alloys a hardened surface layer can be produced to made the surface harder and used on many bridges such as Telecasters, Precision Bass, Jazz Bass and others such as neck and control…

The plate used on the bottom of a Telecaster is made of a cold rolled steel and is copper plated to help keep the plate from rusting. The copper plating also makes it easier to solder the ground wire.

The brass bridge saddles standard on older Broadcaster’s, No-Casters, Telecaster’s and Esquire’s used a 5/16″ in diameter free cutting brass cut to the desired length and tapped 6/32″ in 3 places. The two vertical tapped holes are for height adjustment and the horizontally tapped hole is used for the string intonation. The early saddles were…