We have in our neighbourhood these shared spaces for hobbies, a gym, garage, etc things that typically you do not have in multi-family housing. For a small fee, you get access. One of these spaces is for handcrafts, mainly to do with wood. I had no specific idea what I'm going to do there, just enrolled out of curiosity. I've been somewhat good with my hands all my life, so I thought I'll eventually come up with interesting projects.
Some weeks go by and I start to notice these piles of misc wood pieces. Mostly scrap wood, knotty pine, the usual stuff. Then I notice this interesting piece of some hardwood with the words "free to use" written on it. I ask around and seems like no one is missing it so I just take it and immediatelty notice some potential for a bass guitar body.
I measure, look at the grains and start to feel all warm and giddly inside. Yes yes yessssss.. It barely has enough dimensions for a body blank, but it's doable. I cut it in two pieces and found this nice alignment with the grains to get a kind of bookmatched vibe going on.
At that time (it was like one year ago) I was super psyched about MM basses, so I then order a Stingray template set.
While I wait for the templates to arrive, I use my SUB to get some rough idea of the body area and start to work on the glue joint.
I clean the glue joint with some sanding blocks and razor blades, to get it to fit and not to have any gaps.
Time for some Tite-Bond.
The templates arrive, I make "backups" since the template material is kinda weak feeling. I use the "backups" to start the quality time with a router.
After some passes with the straight router bit and a curved bit for the edges.
Quite some time passes between the fotos, wasn't really thinking about documentation.
This block is HEAVY, therefore I decided to make it ligher by making a generous space for all kinds of potential electronics setups. Also decided to go without the plate in the front and do everything from behind.
The straight line was done using a guide, the rest is basically freehand. I also made a test cover from some other wood that was similar, but it actually came out so nice that I'll actually use it. I'm thinking of doing the attachment with some magnets, so that I can replace for example a battery without screws.
Oh, also worked on the belly cut and the cutaway in the front.
So here we are now, from this point forwards it gets expensive. I have always wanted to have one bass with a Status graphite neck, this most probably will be that one.
Also, I'm really going back & forth with finishing, hardware color, etc overall look & feel. Suggestions welcome
This list looks most probable at the moment:
- Status neck
- Chrome machine heads
- Black bridge
- Black pickguard or see-through or wood with hard finish
- Electronics cover black with grains a bit visible
- Soapbar style pickup (no magnets visible)
- The body will definetly be done so that grains are clearly visible, looks really nice