Christine

The wood will move across the cutter as is in a from the right to the left, so the cutter advances through the wood in the direction of the arrows. If the wood moves in the direction of the arrows it will become airborne faster than you could ever know.

Uphill, downhill is purely cutting with or against the grain direction so downhill (with the grain) you'll get a smoother cut than uphill (against the grain) so uphill you need shallower cuts

Along with @Jimothey you are using a template not freehand?

I used to cut 10" x 1/8 veneers in Rosewood, Satinwood and Macassar Ebony with a 1/2" 3TPI Hakansson blade, can't say more than that about them

You know I would love to be able to build an acoustic but I fear the skill set is vastly different from mine. I'll just have to make do with my Hofner

13 hours ago, lou24d53 said:

To be honest, I'm not too fussed about rushing it anyway, so I'll live with it.

I'm still waiting on my Bass Direct order too, since 30th April, purely down to the Hipshot bridge I've ordered coming from the US...fair to say the speed of this build won't  be setting any records! 🙄😂

All the time waiting can do this nothing but good in the long term, everything will settle and mature gracefully

Rant alert: I'd be tempted to cancel that bridge and get one from ebay or direct from Hipshot (very nice people to deal with). I had a similar experience with your supplier, worse than useless! I ordered a Lull pickup from them last year, was in stock on the website but after a month I'd still not had it so I called them. They told me that they had sold the other one just after I ordered so they would need to order another one for me, they had taken my money and sat on it for a full month knowingly before ordering a replacement and then only after I called them to see what was going on, 2 months later I got it. Not impressed!

17 minutes ago, lou24d53 said:

New decals have arrived, three to be safe...only thing is, the word "Crafted" is in the wrong font 🙈...

R&F's mistake, not mine...

Edit: Closed for holiday until 09th August as well, 🙄

Rothko and Frost are usually very good, at least they have been for me, they'll sort it out but a shame you have to wait

21 hours ago, Stylon Pilson said:

I still love that little recess for the Smoothhound at the back. Being able to not only go wireless, but making the wirelessness "invisible", is the sort of detail that really gets my underpants thrumming.

S.P.

That really caught my eye too (the recess!!). Such a simple idea but one I've never thought of, such are all great ideas

You'll not regret it, they are fantastic blades, streets ahead of anything else

3 hours ago, Slappindabass said:

Thanks. I intend using a table for the router trim around the body which i guess means I need to run the wood round in the opposite direction as the router is upside down. Re the bandsaw blade. Would love to change it but am worried about how hard it will be. Its running nice

at the moment and wouldnt want to mess that up but would like to start wirh a nice fresh blade. I wii do a search and see if thete is a guide.

In a router table the wood moves across the front of the cutter from right to left, so from above clockwise. the cutter cuts into the wood not out of it, the shallower the cut the easier it will be, if you end up with a lot of wood to remove you'll need to take shallower cuts, now that can be dangerous as the wood will be feeding into the cutter unsupported and liable to grab and be thrown across the room into your shiny van. You can make this safer by fixing a 6mm pin about 6mm away from the cutter and use that as a rest to support the wood as you feed it in, makes it a doddle. Then you can easily control the depth of cut moving in wards on each pass until finally you're resting on the cutter bearing for the final cut

Wow, brave lad and that's just stacking that lot next to the VW

Tips, get a good quality bandsaw blade, 3 or 4 TPI Hakansson, it will give you a better cut so you can gut closer to the line which means less routing, a big plus. Practice routing first and remember to go the right direction, going the wrong way can and frequently is disastrous for wood, router and body

1 hour ago, TheGreek said:

No progress in the past two weeks @Andyjr1515??

He's as bad as me, lazy sod

Have a look at my "Twins" build, it has many of the same elements in there

I generally lacquer first then tape and drill through the lacquer with a slightly oversized brad point drill before drilling the pilot hole. There's advantages and disadvantages with both methods, take your pick

8 hours ago, Jimothey said:

No sorry I really couldn’t!! Maybe you’ve got a better ear for it than me?

Now to me this dramatically different

In my opinion the big test for whether which wood you use makes a difference would be if you could identify what wood the bass is just by sound alone??

The differences are obvious there but there are many factors contributing to that. I'm surprised you can't hear the differences in the video I posted, especially with the pressure treated Fir, it has a much fatter sound, the other two are admittedly closer. I would expected the Fir to have sounded different because of its natural laminar growth

You can't hear the difference? I think it's quite dramatic, I can hear the changes with my eyes shut quite distinctly

This isn't the video I was on about but it's similar, see what you think

1 minute ago, Andyjr1515 said:

That's certainly looking really good from here

It's been a PITA! It can't have been much but could I get rid of it? The thing that gets me and I don't understand why, it that despite being grain filled, had countless coats of lacquer and flattened before each days spraying, the day after spraying the grain still telegraphs through the finish. OK it's only just perceivable but it's there. It will be fine once it's hardened, rubbed down and polished but how does that happen?

Well this one has been a learning experience but the sad thing is I'm not 100% sure what I've learnt

A light rub down with 600 and the result was good so two coats on top just to be 100% sure and I think the spraygun can go back in it's drawer

You can see the reflections are looking relatively straight bar the orange peel

Gosh, that's what I need, I'm way too aggressive with my strings

I have no idea what that is, educate me

I'm a big believer in the type of wood making a difference to the sound. Wood with a greater damping effect will kill vibrations from the strings quickly so they don't feedback back into the strings, conversely wood that doesn't damp will feedback more to the strings. Laminates have the effect of damping as the glue line is flexible and will kill vibration quickly (hence loudspeaker cabinets are made from ply).

There was a video posted here maybe a year ago where someone had a neck and made a few identical block bodies out of different timbers and the difference in sound was astounding.

That said, the Alembic claims do sound a little fanciful

I absolutely hate the build up to a gig, we don't gig often so we put in some extra practice. Then there's the nerves for a couple of days before and that gut wrenching fear on the day then the gig itself is usually great fun after the first couple of songs. Despite all that if it wasn't for gigs I wouldn't really see the point in it all , each to their own obviously but at my age ... playing my bass in the bedroom doesn't really do it for me any more

Hiscox here too, I honestly believe they are the best cases for Fender type basses

6 hours ago, mefgames said:

No return necessary. I am going to try to repair it with a deeper pocket into the body to act as a mortise, then removing about 1/2" to 5/8" of the lower part of the heel and gluing a piece of maple to it to act as a tenon into the deeper pocket. Not sure if it will work, but that's the track I'm on right now. 

If the worst came to the worst you could get one of those Allparts uncut headstock necks and have it cut to the right shape and re rout the body to suit or even have the neck modified at the heel to make it a set neck

There can be no doubt that that is the 100% correct finish, very nice

Do you get to keep what's left or is it going back.