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December 2001
Posts: 7231
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I have had a damaged "Bluebird" body laying around for many years. I have often thought of just cutting it in half to see how the whole Foam/Aluminum thing worked. Well today I decided to so it. And before anyone sheds a tear, the body was pretty badly damaged to where "restoring" it wouldn't be worth the effort.
I do hope to get confirmation that the aluminum frame is the same for the UKII and Bluebird just different molds. Beal??
Anyway, before we see the pictures, a little info
So first up, was simply to put it on my chop saw and cut it in half. Went though like butter...
I should have taken a video of what followed, but it would have just been embarrassing.
Ok, it's foam and it can be cut very easily, but as far as breaking it... I was seriously walloping the area behind the bridge in an attempt to break off a large chunk and all I did was put hammer marks in the finish. The guitar was mounted in a vise. If this was a wood guitar is would have broke off on the first or second hit easily.
Next up was chisel work. I call it the chisel nibble. Be it using the aluminum frame as a guide and trying to get the chisel under the foam to "pop" it, or just heading directly into the foam... the same thing would happen. I would get about 1/8" in and while the blade would cut, the area above the blade would just compress.
Next, water. Hey, it's foam... it will absorb water. No it won't. Well maybe a little, and maybe if I soaked it for a few days... but essentially... you can soak it... and while it makes the surface a little crumbly... that's about it. If this isn't the stuff they make boats out of, it should be.
So next up... FIRE !!!! Yes, broke out the torch. I guess if I went for oxy-acetylene (cutting torch) I could have burnt off all of the foam, but as the frame is aluminum, it likely would have melted at that point so I used a standard plumbers style torch which softened the foam up a bit to get it dug out.
Finally after more chisel-work, sanding and scrubbing we have these.
I will at some point clean things up and take better pics. Mainly get the parts on the same plane so the perspective looks better. I may get ambitious and remove the foam from the other half as well, but frankly.. that was a lot of work for the first half.
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Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | Yeah, the same. The viper on the cover of "going to the dogs" was foam |
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Location: Thredbo, NSW, Australia | Wow! Thanks Miles for sharing this.
It's amazing what the Kaman engineers and scientists have come up with. |
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Posts: 10777
Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | That is not at all what I expected to see inside there.
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Posts: 9301
Location: south east Michigan | SCIENCE!! |
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Posts: 402
Location: Taxed To Death State | there is quite a bit of aluminum in there. |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | Engineer and scientist, I've never been called that before. I wanted the neck to attach directly to the aluminum which went back and had the bridge directly bolted into it. So you have the strings vibrating on top and a solid through connection of the strings to nut to neck to aluminum to bridge and the other end of the strings. The foam body was just a dress. I really liked the L-5S at the time so had solid body shape #3 (viper-1, preacher-2) made into an arch top and back design. Then we made one out of wood for the mold(to get the grain). There you go, nothin to it. |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | Craftsman? Artist? A few others might fit without getting too smarmy. It was a great idea, anyway. I'm going to take mine down and play it right now. |
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Posts: 1713
Location: Frozen Tundra of Minnesota | That is REALLY Cool!!!  |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | There is a book called Artists, Craftsmen and Technocrats by P. Pitcher. Describes the rise and fall of corporations. Perfectly fits what happened to Kaman Music. A little text bookish but still a good read. It's a true story about a Canadian company, she never says which one. Artists and Craftsmen are the good guys, they think best, first, leader in market share, the coolest. Technocrats think what is the return on investment and you need to be more efficient and reduce your inventory. F@$kin bean counters. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | danomyte - 2015-08-08 3:55 AM
there is quite a bit of aluminum in there.
Actually that's a bit of an illusion from the picture. The "cut-away" shows what looks like a solid piece, but in fact that's just the center wall running down the middle. I'll try to get a better picture, but if you look at the frame, think "chambered" on each side. With two large holes as well. While the platform for the neck and the two pads for the bridge mounts are 3/4" think, the rest of the frame is mostly 1/8" thick, but up to 1/4" thick in a couple of spots. The entire frame weighs only about 1 pound.
What really impressed me was the foam and the finish. Using wood molds to give a wood-grain effect was brilliant in itself. I had a UKII for years before I found out it was foam. I just bought it cause it sounded and played great. As Beal explained.. cwk2 - 2015-08-07 10:22 AM
The skin of the body was just the foam. We figured out how much you needed to fill the mold and then depending on how thick you wanted the skin you over filled the mold. Then close it and let it expand. Once it expands to fill the mold it keeps expanding which creates the skin, the more you put in the thicker the skin. . I can only imagine doing this any other way would have left the door open for the foam to separate from it's coating at some point.
As stated above, I'll take better pictures and edit this up when I have time, but I just got so excited when I got into this that I had to share. Check out these pictures. Really looks at it. You can see how the "foam" is more compressed to the edge and the finish, at least on this one, in most places seems only as thick as a piece of paper on the front and back and a little thicker on the edges.
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | danomyte - 2015-08-08 3:55 AM
there is quite a bit of aluminum in there.
Actually that's a bit of an illusion from the picture. The "cut-away" shows what looks like a solid piece, but in fact that's just the center wall running down the middle. I'll try to get a better picture, but if you look at the frame, think "chambered" on each side. With two large holes as well. While the platform for the neck and the two pads for the bridge mounts are 3/4" think, the rest of the frame is mostly 1/8" thick, but up to 1/4" thick in a couple of spots. The entire frame weighs only about 1 pound.
What really impressed me was the foam and the finish. Using wood molds to give a wood-grain effect was brilliant in itself. I had a UKII for years before I found out it was foam. I just bought it cause it sounded and played great. As Beal explained.. cwk2 - 2015-08-07 10:22 AM
The skin of the body was just the foam. We figured out how much you needed to fill the mold and then depending on how thick you wanted the skin you over filled the mold. Then close it and let it expand. Once it expands to fill the mold it keeps expanding which creates the skin, the more you put in the thicker the skin. . I can only imagine doing this any other way would have left the door open for the foam to separate from it's coating at some point.
As stated above, I'll take better pictures and edit this up when I have time, but I just got so excited when I got into this that I had to share. You can see the "foam" is more compressed to the edge and the finish, at least on this one, in most places seems only as thick as a piece of paper on the front and back and a little thicker on the edges.
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Location: sitting at my computer | Veeeerry Interesting!!!  Thanks for that Miles. I've always wondered what lurked at the core of the UKII. Also, didn't realize that the UKII's foam/shell was so tough. Good to know. Brad Durasa - SCIENCE!! CHEMISTRY!!   |
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | cwk2 - 2015-08-08 7:37 AM
Engineer and scientist, I've never been called that before.
Ha! There are worse things to be called.
When it came time to print up business cards for my (very tiny, hobby) model airplane business, I thought about titles. President, CEO, etc. sounded a little pretentious for the size/scope of my business. I settled on the title of 'Senior Design Engineer' mainly because it sounded really impressive. LOL! |
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Location: Pueblo West, CO | mileskb - 2015-08-08 1:21 PM
danomyte - 2015-08-08 3:55 AM
there is quite a bit of aluminum in there.
Actually that's a bit of an illusion from the picture. The "cut-away" shows what looks like a solid piece, but in fact that's just the center wall running down the middle. I'll try to get a better picture, but if you look at the frame, think "chambered" on each side. With two large holes as well. While the platform for the neck and the two pads for the bridge mounts are 3/4" think, the rest of the frame is mostly 1/8" thick, but up to 1/4" thick in a couple of spots. The entire frame weighs only about 1 pound.
What really impressed me was the foam and the finish. Using wood molds to give a wood-grain effect was brilliant in itself. I had a UKII for years before I found out it was foam. I just bought it cause it sounded and played great. As Beal explained.. cwk2 - 2015-08-07 10:22 AM
The skin of the body was just the foam. We figured out how much you needed to fill the mold and then depending on how thick you wanted the skin you over filled the mold. Then close it and let it expand. Once it expands to fill the mold it keeps expanding which creates the skin, the more you put in the thicker the skin. . I can only imagine doing this any other way would have left the door open for the foam to separate from it's coating at some point.
As stated above, I'll take better pictures and edit this up when I have time, but I just got so excited when I got into this that I had to share. Check out these pictures. Really looks at it. You can see how the "foam" is more compressed to the edge and the finish, at least on this one, in most places seems only as thick as a piece of paper on the front and back and a little thicker on the edges.
Aviation engineering at its finest. Good job, Beal. |
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December 2004
Posts: 572
Location: Denmark | Interesting. The patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4188850.html describes the invention(s) Seemingly the actual design is quite close. Are these guitars lighter than a comparable wood guitar? Compared to wood I would expect the foam to be lighter and the aluminum to he heavier. I have seen truss rod cover on all photos I have seen. Are they fake ?
http://www.ovationfanclub.com/megabbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=32... |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | They were a little lighter than an all wood body. The necks were wood with truss rods so they needed a trc. |
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December 2001
Posts: 7231
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Interesting that the patent info shows a similar design neck. As far as overall weight... as Beal stated... maybe a little more than an all wood guitar.
Another interesting point about the foam is it "can" be heavy. I believe Alpep has a UKII that he appropriately calls a "Rock" guitar because it feels like it's made of rock !!! I don't know how heavy it is, but if I recall, it's almost beyond playable heavy. |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | That is the one we made out of a different material, a real dense urethane. It weight about 20 pounds. Trying to see if heavier and denser sounded better, it didn't. But then again urethane is sort ot rubbery so it probably absorbed sound. |
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For those wanting to know what goes on inside a UKII
