Christine

Not got a real update today but just a look at my newest piece of technology which I really like. A Dremel 4000 which seems OK, I bought it to make inlaying a little easier than a big router and a chisel. The bit I really like is the base, it's the Veritas Dremel base, plunging like a real router and with a precision depth stop which is rather cool and very easy to set up. The base itself is made from Aluminium and is a delight to use, quite weighty for stability and dead flat. Cost me the grand total of £49 from Ebay; highly recommended as a base

I also got some downward spiral cutters, 3 x 3mm, 3 x 1mm and 3 x 0.5mm, tried them all and they are great so I'm looking forward to getting on with the fretboard and headstock inlays now

As you may have guessed I've been away for a few days but this is what I've been doing since the last update.

Being a natural skinflint I made a fret template and started building a new mitre box as I treated myself to a new saw last week, a Pax instead of my old E.T. Roberts and Lee. The fret template is made from 5mm x 70mm aluminium bar, I used the method shown by Susie Gardner in this video



The mitre box is unambitious for now, I'm considering buying a decent one or possibly using the idea Susie also posted:



For now it is accurate enough and I can adjust the height by using shims

and this is it:

In Bethesda North Wales with

Penrhyn Choir - Cor y Penrhyn
The Storyville Mob
Mike Peters from The Alarm 
The Third Generation
Band Pres Llareggub Brass Band

Maffia Mr Huws

Slade

https://www.zipworld.co.uk/rocks2018

and £15 of your Zip World Rocks tickets will go to Love Hope Strength (LHS), Registered Charity Number 1117505, to support LHS’s three grant schemes: the Get On The List programme; equipment and new facilities in UK hospitals; and support for cancer services across the globe, helping some of the most vulnerable families in underdeveloped countries. Find out more about how your support will help save lives at http://www.lovehopestrength.co.uk.

Sorry about the post it's all copy and paste

6 hours ago, fryer said:

ok, thanks. and the scarf joint is just glued ? 

Just glued, it is very strong, I can stand on the neck without it breaking, obviously not on these but I have on test pieces in the past. Even when jumping up and down on a test piece it was the neck that broke not the scarf joint

1 hour ago, fryer said:

In the 4th picture above, why are you clamping the headstock ? Isn't it from one piece of wood? How did you fix the headstock to the neck ?

The headstock is attached to the neck with a scarf joint at 14 degrees. The clamping show in the 4th picture is during the gluing on to the sides of the headstock the offcuts to widen it as the extremities of it are wider than the neck blank

Wow it's been hot today. Didn't get in the workshop yesterday, I think I slept most of the day.
Started the day by planing the scarf joint flat, I checked the necks for flat and they were both still good. The next step was routing the truss rod slot then making the template for the headstock then drew it onto the wood and bandsawed the shape out then used the offcuts to add on the missing bits on the wings. While the glue was drying I played around with the placement for the tuners as my initial drawings didn't look right. I made a test piece from some MDF just to be sure.

Once the glue had dried I again bandsawed the rest to shape and marked out the plan view of the neck and cut that slightly oversize. Now it looks more like a bass.

Tomorrow I will I think scribe in the neck joint to fit the body then make a start on the fret board, actually more accurately I'll make fret template for my home made mitre box.

Moving on from there, I'll leave the necks be until the fretboards are fully finished then I'll have a last check for flat, glue on the headstock veneer, cut the truss rod access slot and drill through before gluing on the fretboards. That I think will be the ongoing plan

9 hours ago, owen said:

Did you work with a company over Treaddur Bay way? I saw the most sublime tall boy chest of drawers they made years ago and I regret not buying it even now.

Aberffraw

3 hours ago, Norris said:

Lovely work. Did you make two cuts on your scarf? The grain matches rather well - lovely attention to detail!

I'm rather jealous of your cabinet making background - although I'm sure it would be much different doing it for a living rather than a hobby. I would love to have done more woodwork in the past, but the school timetable clashed with music, and I never really did any until the last few years. Now my eyes are about shot for close work these days, so I'm constantly switching between glasses, magnifying goggles and naked eye. It would have been so much easier back when I could see

Just one cut, the joint is flipped when you glue it but the laminates match up pretty well so I'm quite pleased with it

My eyes are like that these days too, I need glasses to see anything and the magnifier is a must if I do anything intricate but as long as no one can see who care I loved furniture making, everything about it from a making point of view, making a living was difficult though but we got by for long enough. I only got into it by accident when I showed interest in another makers work enough for him to offer me a placement, it seemed more fun than working in a shop

20 hours ago, owen said:

Closest build to me EVER!

So where are you at? I saw pictures of Llandwyn on your build thread

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

This is the first time that I have seen an arch topped guitar being made.  I know it's not strictly an arch top because it's not hollow but the only other real example I could point to is @owen's recent acquisition.  My last two basses have had tops and backs with a convex profile.  I like them better than belly-cut forearm-carved bodies.

Can it still be called an arch top if it's not hollow?

I also found that I like a volute.  Did that come into consideration with your necks?

Thank you for sharing with such detail.  Much appreciated.

Aren't they just called carved tops? Good question

Volutes, I did think about adding one but I'm not a lover and the scarf joint has a massive gluing area so it will be significantly stronger than a Gibson with no short grain on that neck/headstock transition where the breaks usually happen so I hope we'll be OK for a lifetimes use

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

That's no surprise to me - the only time I've seen a chisel that worn before was in the days that my father used to use his long-suffering Draper 1/2" to straighten up brickwork prior to plastering...

A bit like me Andy, old and worn out

I had a bit of spare time this morning so I pressed on. Ripped the neck blank down to slightly oversize and marked out the position of the scarf joint which worked out at 14 degrees with a 10mm (+ veneer 3mm later) at nut length minus 40mm. I made a jig for the table saw to cut the scarf but in hindsight I should have just bandsawn it and planed square and flat, not a jig I'll be keeping! Once planed I glued them together and now they can sit until Sunday when I'll get back to the workshop

8 hours ago, PaulWarning said:

I too switched to bass because it seemed an easier way to get into a band, but I first became aware of the what the bass could do listening to Alan Lancaster on the Status Quo albums Hello and Quo, nothing complicated but it made the band rock 

Similar, I became aware of John Entwistles playing quite early and developed a liking for the rhythm sections of many bands but it was Alan Lancaster's seemingly simple bass lines that made me sit up and think "I can do that!". It was only later on that I realised that he was actually a better player than I first thought, to this day he is one of my favourite bassists and along with John Coghlan in their day they were a powerhouse of a rhythm section

1 hour ago, scojack said:

Brilliant stuff.....was wondering if you were going for the full Gibson Tenon Join.

Methinks there's more to you than just an amateur bodger Christine ( like Most of us in 'ere! ).

Ian 😊

Thank you, I'm a time served cabinet maker believe it or not

54 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

I'm liking that last photo.

I'm assuming the chisels were longer when you lined the drawer?

LOL yes, spot my favourites and the ones that have never been used in 30 years. That 12mm chisel is really past it now

Yesterday I just finished the shaping of the second body and called it a day, hardly worth an update.

Today I played around with the neck joint, I made a quick MDF jig to cut the tenon on the router table and screwed it to the top of the neck along the centreline where the truss rod will be set in next week. I roughed out the tenon on the bandsaw and routed the neck. They turned out just a tad tight so a couple of wipes with a file saw them a perfect fit. Then I semi scribed them into the body but left the tenons needing to move forward by about 1mm when the neck has had some shape cut into it so by scribing the neck join this will pull in nicely. I did the rough scribing with a dovetail saw and then pared off anything that looked to be sticking out. The tops of the necks are still about 3mm proud of the surface of the body, I'll sort that out next week after thinning just to make 100% sure everything stays straight and flat

So for now we have two massive blanks for the necks waiting to be thinned and the scarf joints cut for the angled headstock will probably do that on Sunday, I have other things to do until then unfortunately







And for those who have been wanting to see what I keep in my drawers

31 minutes ago, Jimothey said:

Just being nosey I noticed on your profile your in North Wales? I'm in Denbigh where abouts are you? 😀

Anglesey

Phew it's been a hot one today! Not happy I have a blister on my thumb! How you ask? I'll tell you how

Started off routing a shoulder at the level of the top of the binding to give myself a clean edge to work to while shaping the tops, yes shaping at last WOOHOO!! After that I drew a rough contour map of the general curves I expected to get, after that well it was shaping time. I used a thing called an Arbourtech, a rather nasty carving attachment that fits onto a grinder, this is a method I do not recommend, it can reduce your guitar body to firewood in less time than it takes to blink. So why am I using one, I've had a lot of practice with it but even then it's a worrying procedure.

After rough carving I used some small thumb planes (blister!! ) to just get it somewhere like a shape at the back, the front couldn't be done until the angle for the neck/fretboard had been cut. For that I just made a jig, basically a sloping bit of MDF at 4.5 degrees with a hole in it to access the top of the body. There was some spare wood the jig didn't reach so I whipped those off with a drawknife, a bit like a massive spokeshave then took a bench plane to flatten it. Finally I took the thumb planes and some tiny spokeshaves and tuned the shape to something that looked right, it's sort of an intuitive process, try it you'll see. After that I was tired so I still need to tune the shape on the second body but I'm happy with the first, that just needs the neck fitting and sorting any snags before sanding etc.

Oh and I also checked the neck blanks for any movement, admittedly they are still blanks and any movement would be unlikely but if there is any movement at this stage then the blank is firewood. There was none but some of you may be interested to know how I checked. To see if there is any twist on a narrow board you used a gadget called a pair of winding sticks, these are basically two parallel wooden straight edges with two inlays on each one with a pair of black (Ebony) and one with a pair of white (in my case Ivory veneers from a piano), as luck would have it I couldn't find them so I used a pair of 12" rules one balanced at either end from which you can sight down to see any twist (wind) exaggerated by the length of the winding sticks. Handy thing to know

11 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Really liking this thread. Just out of interest, the bridge and tailpiece are closer to the neck than on other basses I’ve seen with Warwick parts. What scale are these basses?

Cheers

Jez

It's 34", it's based on the oversized Les Paul, yes the bridge does seem far forward on the body but that's also true on the Gibson too. I've based the tail piece position on the maximum distance I can get behind the bridge and still keep the silk wraps on the ends of the E string off the nut

Had a difficult day today, will explain in a bit. Started off where I left off yesterday and finished routing the pickup pockets. Then I moved on to making a jig to rout the bridge pieces which is where I had bother, no idea why but could I get the shape of the tailpiece right?? Three goes it took me before I got there, after that it was just a simple rout and that was done. I drilled through from the bridge, bridge pickup and tail piece for wiring; the neck pickup I got very lucky in that the front of the rout (which was angled remember) just nicked the rout underneath for the switch wiring so I can feed the pickup wire straight through there. I'd had a belly full after all that so I went and sat in the garden and had a nice cup of tea



Some shiny bits just for fun

That is an awesome build, very ambitious, a nightmare to get your head around all those angles I'm sure. I'm very impressed

Today I took the glued bodies out of clamps and trimmed the excess with the bandsaw. Then I flushed the tops on the router table, when I looked at them I had an "Oh heck!" moment as there was what appeared to be an open glue line all around the join but when I sanded a bit of the top op the disc sander it turned out to be just a little glue that had discoloured the back at the very corner and comes out with the slightest sanding, PHEW LOL; that had me going for a few seconds. You can see the line in the photographs, it looks just like an open glue line, in hindsight there was no way that I could have ended up with an open glue line but I still fell for it.

Next I scribed a line at 49mm all around which will be the line to carve the top to but also the line at which the bottom of the fretboard will sit at the neck body interface. I marked the position of the neck joint and pickup pocket routs and drilled out the waste to cut back on the amount of noise from the router. I fixed the routing jig to the body with a couple of screws, one through the point of the bridge and one near the edge where the wood will be carved away so no holes will be left after the body's done. I routed the neck joint on one body but then realised I had made the jig too shallow for the pickup pockets so I made a perspex spacer, I'll fit that and finish the routing tomorrow. The weather picked up so we went for a walk on the beach, it seemed a lot more fun than woodwork

I read an interview with John Lennon some time ago about the time they went to meet Elvis. He said that they were ushered into a room and Elvis was sat on the couch with his feet up playing a bass, made me think of that famous picture with a similar image. He also said they were bricking it going to meet their hero but it turned out that Elvis was bricking it too meeting the new thing; just goes to show, they were all as human as the rest of us

22 minutes ago, samhay said:

>You're a dream!!! Thank you How did you find that?

Their website pages are number sequentially, so it wasn't difficult.

I like the way you shield the cable rout - very slick. Do you get good electrical conductivity between the foil on the top and bottom?

 

Not yet I doubt but by the time it's done it will be good, if I don't from contact I' ll solder them to the cavity rout shields

Not in the most enthusiastic mood today but got a bit done. Flattened the board for the top with the try plane and cut the shape out a fair bit oversize. Marked the position of the back on it and then pinned in some panel pins outside of the perimeter to prevent major slippage when clamping the glued surfaces together. I marked the position of the cable rout and applied some shielding tape to that, the rout on the back has a shallow recess to allow for the thickness of this tape if you noticed the other day when i taped that up.. Spread some glue and clamped them both up. Ho Hum, wait until tomorrow now






This afternoon I'm going to work out the jig for the neck joint and the pickup routs or at least I hope to; I'm expecting a delivery from StewMac with some springs and some pickup foam, I'll decide which to use when they get here. I'm going to rout the neck pocket and the pickup sockets at the same angle as the neck angle.

Then there's the bridge, I'm not sure what to do there, either rout them flat or to rout at the approximate angle of the body carve, I'm thinking flat as it allows a little bit of extra clearance to access the adjusting screws and to put strings in. What would you do?