The Guitar Weasel

Neck fit is getting closer - this is all hand tools shaping so it can't be rushed. Looking a bit rasp-rough at the moment ... but lots more wood to come off still. One issue that has been highlighted is how bodged the previous neck re-glue was and how 'out' the original neck pocket was built. I wondered why the neck appeared to have been glued in without being fully seated in the pocket - in other words glued to the sides but not even touching in a lot of the bottom of the pocket. Well that would appear to have been a bodged attempt to face the neck properly down the centre line of the body. with the new neck properly seated and its mating face at exactly 90 degrees in all directions the neck and the fingerboard (strapped on with tape for the test) point way too far over to the bass side f hole. The whole neck pocket must be out of true with the centre line. The solution is to plane and use a cabinet scraper to deliberately take the back of the heel down on one side - thus pointing the neck/fingerboard once more along the centre line. For those into tools - the lion's share of the wood stock removal on this project has been done with the 'rip' side of a 250mm Japanese Ryoba hand saw. I really can't speak highly enough about how good these saws are. Maple is hard - and a bitch to hand saw - but not with one of these. The Ryoba cuts like a sharp breadknife through a fresh sourdough loaf ... so satisfying.

I did physics at school - but preferred chemistry - as you could lean to blow stuff up 😁 I discovered ping pong balls dissolved in nitric acid can be used to make make 'gun cotton' - it's amazing how long it took for my eyebrows to grow back even with all the hormones of a fifteen year old at the time.

That's a super elegant solution - and I may yet go for that (especially if I cut an access panel in the cutaway, as the only other way of getting it in would be via an F hole. If you don't mind me saying this - and it's a compliment - that's the sort of solution my father would have come up with - apprenticed in the REME and finally a Staff Sergeant instructor - before finishing his time (I think it was 21 years back then) and joining Westland on the Black Knight and Black Arrow rocket projects (and launching the Prospero satellite) - and moving on to British Hovercraft - before being made redundant and buying a hardware shop! The only issue I see is I'm not super convinced the heel block doesn't taper towards the bottom slightly ... of course that would mean that the drilling angle on the plate might not be exactly 90 degrees. I shall do a bit more measurement and find out. PS my grandad was an engineer too - my dad used to say he'd be surprised if lathe cutting lubricant didn't run in my veins. As it happens though I wound up as a feckless musician - though all that changed when I started my pickup manufacturing business fifteen years ago - now I design music electronics - so a bit light on the full on enginearing practise these days 🙂

The problem I have with threaded inserts is that a double bass neck is two or perhaps three times the weight of an electric bass neck, and even with low tension strings the pull on that neck is prodigious. In order to get a full and stable fixing on the 30mm thick heel block you would need close to 30mm of threaded insert - and they ain't common - and when you do see them they are intended for furniture and relatively softwood. The heel block is hardwood and some of the long fasteners appear to be fairly dubious alloy. Most of the pro conversions I've seen done seem to use M8 - so that's why I intended to go that route. I've used threaded inserts on guitar and electric bass before ... but this is a magnitude bigger enginearing. I'm deffo open to looking mind. 🙂

Started to shape the neck heel to the same size as the original - lots of rasp work needed. Huge amounts of maple biting the dust! I've drilled the neck bolt holes too ... well the 6mm pilot holes at least 🙂

That's fascinating ... interesting to see the single neck bolt too. My plan is two bolts - to my mind it makes it easier to shim the pocket securely if there is a need at a later date. I quite like that circular access panel - it looks way better than the square ones I've seen - and the neodymium button closing magnets are easy - I always have hundreds of those lying about the workshop - bears thinking about.

I was resisting sticking even low tack tape down the front of the bass to establish a centreline as the finish comes off on masking tape as easily as the finish comes off a Murphy Labs Les paul neck! And that's bloody easily. I could 'Chinagraph' pencil or wax marking crayon a centre line - but there are so many check lines that go all the way to the wood I'd probably be left with a permanent 'ghost line' - unless of course I strip the whole finish - sigh, that's looking more and more likely. But with a wayward floor to the neck pocket I will have to be a bit more proactive in lining stuff up, so I think the tape is the way to go. The plan is for the neck to be bolt on - and I'm already coming up with a jig to drill the neck bolt holes exactly in parallel with each other and with the neck. 130mm x M8 high tensile steel Allen key cap bolts (nickel or chrome plated if I can get them) with captive nuts inside the bass - these nuts have 'prongs' that are dragged into the wood when tightened and will be permanently fixed inside. I plan to mount the nuts on the cap bolts by way of a long rod (and some Blu Tack) through the end pin hole - probably with an auxiliary positioning arm through one of the F holes. Yes it's keyhole surgery (well F hole actually), but the alternative is to cut an access hatch - and I don't do bodges like that! Yes I could glue the neck joint - but I may well be doing some travelling, and a bolt on neck double bass is an attractive proposition. The cap bolts will be sunk into the neck heel so they won't be visible.

7.00am this morning - in the cool of the yard outside our Oil City workshop - I took off the extra unwanted neck heel - bringing the neck angle to 90 degrees. This was a bit of a 'brown trouser job' as a cock up here could ruin the whole neck. I am getting used to the Japanese saw ... it's very strange cutting on the draw stroke - but by the Lord Harry it razors through maple like soft wood! That's a huge slab of American oak everything is clamped to - somebody just fly-tipped down the road from my house a few weeks ago - amazing what some folks throw out! I got thing mostly bang on - with a bit of end grain No4 Stanley plane work which was pretty soon sorted. The only slight downer is that I now find out the base of the neck pocket itself is a tad out of true with the bass centre line - clearly their production tolerances were a bit iffy - so a little bit of extra plane work will be needed. The lower part of the heel also needs tapered down a lot ... but that's not so 'mission critical'.

So the neck pocket has gone from this: To this The shorter end to the left cheek of the neck socket is to allow for a piece of ply to be let in to repair the top. Looks a bit neater now

It's possible ... I may try some 99% acetone on an odd area to see if that gets it off.

With things progressing at a pace my mind is turning to the finish ... while the front doesn't look too bad in the pics the varnish on the back has split along the grain lines of the wood, and the external 'linings' all round the bass are mostly worn through the varnish to bare wood ... in fact to a point where in some areas one can collect a free splinter to an unwary finger. Re varnishing wouldn't be a huge deal - given the work I'm already doing - or even spraying a finish ... the big however is not knowing exactly what the existing finish is, stripping it will be a. difficult and b. a lottery. Alcohol seems to soften the finish as stands, so it could be some form of spirit varnish or even a nitro based lacquer. Sanding will be bloody difficult in the body cut-outs and I can't really see a power sander option for those areas. Chemical stripping with a dedicated paint stripper can attack glue so that's not really an option I fancy ... on the other hand ... ten years with a cork sanding block I'm also a bit wary of 🤣 Suggestions on a postcard please ...

First view of the neck offered up ... and yes there's a lot of that heel that needs to come off!!!

Yep I must get around to sorting those plugged screw holes properly - but it's my gigging bass 🙂 Anyway these are almost steampunk in their look, heavy and smooth operating. I have to say they look pretty much hand made. They are about £55 plus carriage on Aliexpress or there's an eBay seller with them for about eighty quid all up. Bear in mind they will add literally several pounds to your bass ... but I look at it this way ... if we worried about bulk and weight we'd be mandolin players!

Yep double bass necks are super short ... so unless you have a cutaway double bass ... it's thumb-over up the dusty end! Yep I was a bit amazed at the price of a nice ebony nut too!

And here are the the goodies 😃 The ebony has a couple of shiny spots from rubbing on the packaging, and needs a good oiling, but it's great quality. The neck needs it's gluing face with the fingerboard given a super light going over with a jointing plane as it's almost but not quite rough thicknessed/sawn. The bridge is okay for 'setting up' but is a bit thin and weedy for a rockabilly machine - still that's a simple fix. The tail-piece is actually carbon fibre, as is the end pin and assembly - a but modern for what I'm doing, but again, okay to set the bass up with. The machines are 'okay' and may get replaced down the line. The nut wasn't in the kit strangely ... but cot me £8.00 from a specialist double bass supplier. An issue I can see is that the ends pin hole has been reamed out about 1/8th inch oversize - so one job will be to make a liner from mahogany or similar to tighten that up. The neck heel is nearly twice as thick as it needs to be, and is designed for a bass without sloping 'shoulders' like my Stentor - so it has a neck set angle cut in. That can be sawn down to 90 degrees as this bass has the neck set angle baked into the body joint. My lunch hour today was devoted to cutting a new laminated mahogany filler strip (laminated using my new hide glue pot - more about that shortly) and cutting a maple neck joint cheek. This is a slow and careful process with lots of checking along the way. So it was like this ... All that crap was cleaned out and a mahogany filler and maple cheek fabricated Trial fit ... to be glued up tomorrow and the other side prepped - yummy .... So hide glue - why on earth have i never used it before????? It's so easy once you have a heated pot - it just sits there till you need it smelling faintly of doggy chews - thin it with hot water if it starts getting too thick - wop it on and clamp quickly - it's reversable, organic, sets up WAY hard and is proper innit. Warm both bits to be glued with a hair dryer if you want more clamping time ... I will never go back to Titebond I swear. More soon ...

Quite excited ... a big package arrived from China 8.00 this evening. ... neck, fingerboard, bridge, end spike, tuners, the whole lot to do the bass all in one. What was I expecting? Well £200 spent on the whole shebang - what was advertised as 'ebony fingerboard' and 'nice maple neck'. I was dubious. What did I get ... well amazingly ... a bloody great chunk of what appears to be rather nice ebony. Sure there are some slightly lighter streaks - but really, barely visible. The neck is indeed maple, and even has very faint flaming. Sure it's fairly roughly finished and needs a fair bit of sanding all over, but it's really not bad at all. They have left so much spare wood on the neck heel that it's going to be a fair old job trimming it all down accurately - but better too much than too little I suppose Photos tomorrow.

I tried 'bass tape' when I first started. Let me say firstly I'm an aggressive rockabilly/psychobilly slap player and also occasional eczema sufferer since childhood. Firstly the bass tape that I bought from http://www.doublebassfingertape.com/ seems to be identical to medical 'strapping tape' or 'zinc tape' you can buy for less than half the price from eBay/Amazon etc. It's super sticky (both the stuff from Basstape and the medical stuff) and if you have sensitive skin it's quite painful to remove. I also found it utterly ruined my slapping technique ... it was too slippery and I couldn't get a proper grip on the string with my finger pads. My own solution was two fold: firstly I went for Rotosound 4000 strings which have a fairly low tension - then I bumped the set. This gives me the softest and easiest action possible - and as I'm only ever amplified except for home practise - the lack of volume is actually a plus point. Then I simply let my fingers toughen up - I actually think the chemicals in tape 'glue' can be worse for skin conditions than just developing thicker skin naturally.

I second that 'this'

A challenge would be building a double bass from scratch ... someone has already done the hard work here 😁

Excellent 😁

Think of it as the smell of proper repairs - and it'll soon smell like Chanel No 5

Uh yep ... my Shadow Rockabilly pro preamp causes the odd rattle too ... mostly leads slapping on the belly.

My rattles on my Stentor rockabilly 1950 can all be traced to the Noddy in Toytown end pin assembly - made pf plastic and Chinesium alloy (Chinesium being that fascinating metal produced only in China that seems to have the tensile properties of Emmental cheese) which I must get around to replacing at some point. I found gaffer tape to be my friend till I get round to it.

I think the secret is breaking things down into manageable chunks. 'Today I'll get the neck heel cleaned up' for example ... that means you don't overload yourself. I'm learning tons of stuff for this project. In the past for guitar and electric bass building I've always used urea formaldehyde resin glues like Cascamite (or the two pack version Cascaphen) or Aliphatic resin: the good old standby Titebond. For this project I will be using proper hide glue ... the learning curve may be steep. This sub £30 Amazon wax pot however makes a great glue kettle ... I've been lucky with this one ... the thermostat and the scale around the temperature knob actually agree, and 62c is actually 62c - or about 145 degrees F - the perfect heat for hide glue.

Looks like our basses had the attention of similar 'repairers'. I think someone has stacked up your neck heel to try and increase the overstand but that looks like a different evolutionary stage to the 'bodger with a bottle' and an unhealthy liking for the white stuff! I discovered from a luthier friend of mine that Isopropyl alcohol has a de-polymerising effect on PVA adhesive and returns it to semi gloopy white bogey state that is pretty easy to just scrape off. It also has an effect on hide glue and shellac varnish, so care needs to be taken you don't get it were it orta not be got 😁 I had to accept that there might be a tiny bit of delamination in the extreme ends of the plywood sides where they meet the neck pocket as I had to use a fair bit of alcohol to get under the joint- actually the damage was miniscule (considering I probably used a half a teacup full of Isopropyl), and a bit of hot hide glue rubbed in there when I re line the cheeks of the neck pocket will sort that fine. Good luck with yours ... any technical help I can provide just hit me up. 😄