Andyjr1515

I can't stop looking at those latest shots. Every aspect, every photo, takes my breath away*. Really. And that's completely ignoring the total McTrickery going on under the hood with those pickups and electrics. *and trust me, I am well aware that this is no time to end up in A&E with a serious respiratory complaint.

Actually, the folks at David Dyke have worked a bit of magic It was going to be tricky to get the right thickness without a lot of wastage (and with DD, you know the quality is going to be good) and so I spoke to them and they have cut some for me straight away and it will be with me tomorrow. Excellent service. In the meantime, I'm starting to get the fretboard ready for fretting. I'm going to do what I have on a few other builds - using a feature-line binding that will be attached a mm beyond the rounded fret ends. This is maple, but you get the idea: The binding is scraped to the radius and the edges rounded, but you still end up with the fret ends inset by around 0.5 - 1mm. What you also get for free is the demarcation line without the need to add veneers under the board The fretboard has been tapered at to 4mm smaller than the finished size to allow for the 2mm binding either side: The stainless steel fretwire is here but, before I start cutting and fitting the frets, I'm going to be adding a couple of swifts at the 12th - which is tomorrow's job

Well, two days under full string tension and it's still holding tune. So it's time to see if we can really break its spirit - by adjusting the neck relief 10 minutes after a required 2.5 'quarter turns' and still in one piece:

Matt and I are discussing offline the control chamber stuff and then I'll start routing some of the lightening chambers and I have some ideas what I want to do at the back. But that purpleheart is bugging me. It will be easier if I take it off and start with some new. To remove it, I did the same as if taking off a fretboard - a hot iron and lots of patience! The patches are oil coming out of it. Stinks too. Weird when the wood to work on always seems dry as a bone. Anyway, it's off...and the walnut is pretty flat again. Just got to get some more purpleheart - I'm going to try somewhere else than DD's with their leadtimes being so long at the moment...

The good news is that the mating surface of through-neck and wings are pleasingly flat And to the internal features and chambers - but to do that, I need to know, broadly at least, the external carve. And the carve to me is also an iterative process. The mathematicians amongst you will shake their heads disapprovingly and mutter, "Iterations on top of iterations...it's going to turn out like a camel..." Anyway, camel or thoroughbred, it's the only way I can work. So time to take some of the bulk away that I know needs to go before I can see what might make it look nice too... For roughing out, I ought to buy myself a proper carver's chisel, but this is what I'm starting with - including my trusty Veritas Pullshave...the one example (or maybe the ONLY example) of an impulse buy being exactly what I needed as well as what I wanted All plays havoc with the arthritis, but half an hour later: And another half-hour, a decent start-off point: Bear in mind that this body is still oversize, but just having this done helps me think where to take the back carve next. I would hate to do it CNC...there is no way I could envisage it all first!!

Had a look at the warp in the top and now understand exactly what it is and where it is - and I can put it to one side for sorting later as it may sort itself. End on - it's like this...and I'd be proud if I'd done it on purpose - it's basically the shape that @TheGreek asked me to do on his Psilos bass : This is an end-on shot looking from the tailstock towards the nut and it is the purpleheart that's doing it. It was glued under clamping, but the moisture from the glue clearly has expanded the pupleheart, the top has glued and is held by the less porous walnut, the bottom has then dried and shrunk and pulled it into a bow. The same sort of thing can happen when you are gluing veneer, but that doesn't have the strength to bend the underlying wood. Now, if I was skilled enough, I would carve the mating surface of the oak to be the same shape, because my cunning plan on reducing weight is to add a touch of this at the back - not as extreme as this (which is @Len_derby 's lightweight Swift) but more like the curve above : "And if I was skilled enough, I would carve the mating surface of the oak to be the same shape..." But I'm not Under clamping, it will flatten - but it is a huge force that I wouldn't want to be sitting in the middle of a bass over the next 20 years or so. But I will, any event, be routing out much of the purpleheart out and that will help. If it doesn't fully sort it, I can cut some stress relief slots along the length of the internal face of purpleheart that will sort is and still be fully invisible. But all of that can wait because it's onto finalising the back weight relief, control chamber, etc, etc, etc

No this is a real. Then again, I am an enigma...or am I ?? But no - if the wet and clamp doesn't flatten it then the best option is to get the purpleheart off, relieve the stresses and redo, but start with the purpleheart on the almost immovable oak.

Yes - Jon is excellent.

While I have done a number of trussrod replacements, generally they are with basses where the conversation of 'But there is always a risk...it might end in a broken fretboard or visible joint marks on the re-glue and finish' has been had and acknowledged and it's worth the gamble. A Thumb NT is a completely different kettle of fish! But I am very flattered, @Matt P Thanks @Manton Customs as mentioned by @verb sounds a good option to me...so, calling @Manton Customs

I clamped the above and second wing down on a sheet of toughened glass (a glass chopping board from Dunelm) before applying the sash clamps to glue the second wing to ensure that total surface is flat. There will be quite a bit of carving on the back: There is one area I might have to revisit. I have fitted quite a thick demarcation layer of purpleheart to the top - it is strips of fretboard inner splices - and this was, again, bonded on glass, holding it flat while it dried. But, even though purpleheart is tough stuff - much tougher than walnut, there is, at the moment, a significant warp. When the edges are in place: This is where the top currently sits at the neck joint...and that's supposed to be completely flush with the top of the neck! What I will do, it give it a medium soaking and clamp it flat overnight and see if it holds flatness. If not, I think I will need to remove the purpleheart from the walnut, add it to the oak and then add the walnut at the very end. There are, therefore a few options so it's fixable, but I'm surprised the purpleheart allowed or caused such a severe warp - it is one of those woods that generally 'ain't going nowhere!'.

Well, there's only so much pondering and prevaricating a bass can take. Time to get the glue and clamps out:

Three hours, still in tune... (the bass, not me)

Well, you'd certainly be able to hear those from Essex

An hour and still no ominous cracking noises

Now, I know the phrase, 'he spoke too soon' very well, but nevertheless... ... Certainly, 'So far, so good!' I find the same with any acoustic guitar or bass - you sense the enormity of the string tension much more than with a solid body. And so those last few semitones to bring it to pitch... But it's there. And so far it's lasted at least 20 minutes. And, while I've not plugged it in yet, it plays and sounds GREAT Just one buzzy fret position out of 87, which will be easily filed fixed. No fret levelling or re-crowning to do And so - assuming it holds itself under tension for the rest of the day it should be just a case of tidying it up. I'm probably not going to completely re-finish the neck - I think it's stained and getting the heel and headstock to match would be a bit of a nightmare on a glued in neck. So, while that remains the fall-back position, I'm going to start off trying an 'as invisible as possible given the limitations of materials and the bloke using them' mend for the fretboard join and either the same, or even a 'if you can't hide it, then flaunt it' jobbee for the scarf joint mend. But all of that will have to wait a bit because, with some more bits on the way, a certain single-cut beckons

Good to hear...and I bet it is!

Glueing the fretboard on is quite difficult. The challenge is clamping evenly when the back caul along the straight part of the neck can, by definition, be only a thin strip teetering on the spine of the neck, and then the part over the body being able to be clamped without crushing the hollow body. With a standard acoustic, you can pop a clamp inside the sound-hole for the upper frets, but this doesn't have a proper soundhole. But, at the end of the day, it's still a case of just swamping it with clamps and radius blocks to try to give maximum even pressure on the board itself: ...and I think this is OK. Not perfect, but probably better than I expected: It looks pretty flat and twist free, but before I spend any time on refinishing and re-levelling/crowning the frets, I'm going to see if the basic break mend cuts the mustard. So tomorrow, when I know the fretboard glue is fully cured, I'm going to string it up, bring it up to pitch and see what happens

Outstanding. Finished as good as it started

Ah - but we're aiming for between 7 and 7 1/2 Should be possible.

With the tried and tested luthier formula of: Assembled components - weight of taper removal and profile carving of neck + 5-string Superquad + 5th tuner - difference between borrowed tuners and hipshot superlites + difference between borrowed rosewood fretboard and ebony one + residual weight of finish after full evaporation and cooling - weight of plate - flour left on kitchen scales = projected weight of finished bass... ...I reckon that I need to lose around 1lb 8oz of weight from this point, in addition to the wood removed by tapering and profiling the neck already in the formula. Not impossible and will give me the excuse for the bit of styling at the back. I'll be doing a bit more drawing to make sure that my chambering from the top of the wings doesn't meet the carving at the back of the wings in a "France meets UK in middle of channel tunnel construction" kind of a way.

Yes - the whole thing has a real trad look about it. Looks great.

I have a bit of thinking and drawing to do on @Matt P 's singlecut before I do anything daft like cut or glue wood - working out control chamber size and position, weight relief chambering, back shape - so just to make sure that my hands don't seize up, a bit more progress on this. AHAH! I bet you thought I'd forgotten So, delving back in the memory, it was all about a potentially twisty neck. And out comes one of those tools that I rarely use but boy are they useful when you do. My mini hand router: What I am doing is levelling the tops of the rosewood packing/strengthening strips, flush with the top of the truss rod: Then I cut the free-bit-of-packing-waste rock maple to size: Then ran a thread of Titebond along the tops of them both and 'you can never have too many clamps': And finally, planed the strip flush with the top of the neck: And the neck is SO much more resistant to twisting So when I get another natural break from the single-cut, it'll be a refit of the fretboard - once I've worked out the best way to clamp it...

Lovely job

There are some notes I can't hit on my sax. The sax can, but I can't. So I play the ones I can and then just hum the ones I can't Could be a solution... And on a serious note - it depends on the neck. If there's a generous overhang after the 20th (ie, a fret to fret distance plus around 5mm, then yes it's possible. On a scale 0 to 10 of chances of wrecking a decent bass, around 3 for a bolt on and about 8 for a set neck . Could be cheaper to hum but not as exciting...

My goodness - it's a complete showstopper!