Jimothey

I've just bought a block and binded Jazz neck from Amazon for my bitsa P and its surprisingly good quality the frets are all nice and level and the ends have been filed so no sharp edges and it only cost £35 the only thing is the colour is a bit darker than I expected but I can live with it......... Here's the link if your interested in having a look https://www.amazon.co.uk/string-Style-Replacement-Canada-Maple/dp/B078HR2ZWZ 😀

Here's my bitsa P nothing special but I like it! Even more now it's got flats on it!

Started the weight reduction today its already considerably lighter than it was! It's now roughly the same weight as the original body, By the time I've routed the pickups, neck pocket and finished the control cavity I think it will be kinda the weight I was aiming for......... Just got some cleaning up of the sides and do the rebate then I'm ready to start capping it off................ 😀

The veneer turned up yesterday so here's how the top will look Only problem is that where the nice figuring is will be covered by the bridge and pickups! I might have to do a bit of jiggery pokerey to get it looking good!?!....... 😀

I reckon this will be the amount I will need to chamber out, the bottom chamber I'll cover with 6mm ply so I can just use that for my controls......... But before I do that I need to thin the body down a bit!!...........

That's where I got the idea from! I knew I had seen it done but couldn't remember where I'd seen it!! Yeah that's exactly what I had in mind and if I combine that with thinning the body down a bit that hopefully will take the weight down considerably... ........ 😀

I was thinking of possibly doing a chamber from the top and glue in a cover plate out of 4mm ply then veneer over the top?.....

Yeah that's a good point and it would probably work better thanks mate 👍😀

At the moment the body is approx 44mm thick and weighs I would guess 1 1/2 times the weight of the original body so I've got to do something to lighten it and I thought this might be the easiest option?........ I was probably going to try and keep it to about 30mm in the centre but I think I will have to taper it to the neck pocket, Apart from the arm carve I was going to keep the top of the body flat, I'm planning on doing a side jack So I think it'll end up being a very slow process checking, double checking so I don't mess it 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

@Andyjr1515 I'm thinking that I would need to take out a little bit less than this but I'm not sure how exactly it will go at the bottom of the neck pocket?? Or is this too much??

Luckily it was in a position where I could just cut off square and glue a peice on so I managed to repair it quite well and rounded off the back and chamfered the top........... I'll probably start the contouring tomorrow and my veneer should be here tomorrow aswell............ 😀 I'm thinking I might have to try and contour the back 'al a @Andyjr1515 style' to try and remove some weight as the body is a tad on the heavy side

Here's the damaged top horn!......

Yeah your right it is a thing that is overlooked I can only hope that the repair will look half as good as @Jabba_the_gut's but his skills far exceed mine!! The body shape I based it on has a chamfered top edge but I'm going to try and veneer the chamfer to get the drop top look (which I think will be an arduous task but worth it!!)

Due to the expensive outlay for a new oven I've had to shelve the Ash and Panga Panga combo idea and I've decided on the 1 piece Sapele back stained black and Macassar Ebony veneered top finished with some Danish oil I cut out the body today and started trimming the body to the template, everything was going swimmingly until the bearing on my router bit decided to explode and ripping a big chunk out of the top horn!! (sorry I forgot to take a pic) so I've got to buy a new router bit and glue a lump of a Sapele on then re rout it😠 Instead of rounding over the top edge I've decided to chamfer it which I think will look good but I'm going to test it on an offcut first.............

What about Bush but mostly their early stuff?

That's just thrown a spanner in the works I thought I had in my head what I wanted to do but I keep on looking at the macassar ebony veneer that I was going to use a couple of builds back but decided to do Zebrano instead now I just don't know??

I just searched for it and I came across this Is this the kind of effect you meant?? I not sure about the 3 colours but I really like the red which might be worth an experiment?? 😀

I was getting ready to order the Ash and Panga Panga but my oven has just died and it's going to cost about £700 to replace so that's scuppered my plans!! 😠 So I think the body is now going to be made out of Sapele back with Oak top as I've got them in the workshop but as I've already done that combo in a natural finish I think I'm going to try something different, I'm thinking of staining them both black and then lime the Oak so hopefully it will look kinda like this........

It will look exactly like this as this is what I used as a template I just thought it looked a bit small but as you say when you get tuners and strings on it will probably look ok 😀

I'm going to change the shape of the headstock as I think it's too small for the body and doesn't look right with the body shape, so I can stop the strips at the nut then when I glue the extra bits on the headstock they will butt into them I've made the correct width template so I've just got to make the trimming template now I'm a bit shocked on how much I messed up hopefully this will rectify it so I can carry on 🤞

After seeing @Andyjr1515 new thread its got me thinking about my single cut build I really want it to be a 5 string so here's what I'm thinking to get over the problem.......... What if I made a neck jig like @Christine has that fits into the truss rod slot and rout a 3mm ish off each side and then glue some oversized Sapele strips on then make another jig the correct nut width, rout it out then shape the sides of the neck?? 🤔

I'm sure that it will look awesome like all your work (that makes me sound a bit fanboy doesn't it? 😳) I just thought that would be alot easier than trying to scribe the body to the neck..........

I'll be very interested in how you get over this because I tried to figure it out a few months ago! So I could use my single cut body after I made a big mistake with the neck The only/easiest way I could come up with was to do a blind half-lapped joint by routing a flat portion on half of the neck and routing a flat portion the other way in the body but I haven't got a spare neck to try it out with??.............. I'm sure that you'll come up with a much more refined and more sophisticated solution 😀

Unfortunately they aren't going to have any Ash till late spring all he's got apart from Oak and Sycamore is Sweet Chestnut So I might just use some Sapele that I've got and top it with something light coloured ☹️

Thanks Christine they are only about 15miles away from me I'll give them a call and get a price off them 😀