GarethFlatlands

At songofthewinds suggestion, I ordered a planer router bit which will hopefully arrive in the next few days. With the glue dried on the sled legs, I put it together and clamped it to my fold out workbench. I put my wooden workbench together myself, and frankly it's rubbish. I foresaw a lot of problems with trying to flatten on the body on a surface that was anything but flat, so went with clamping it to my fold out metal bench instead, which should be a much more even, stable surface. I also used my chopsaw to cut a wedge out of some scrap wood to stop the body slipping around while I was working. But I couldn't leave it there could I? So I did about 8 passes with the trusty top bearing router bit, just to check the proof of concept was good, and took 2mm off in strips around 12mm wide. It will take a looong time with this router bit, but the bearing is super useful. Seeing as I need to take around a full cm off, 2mm at a time will be approximately 225 individual passes! The planer bit is around twice as wide as my current one, but has no bearing so I'll have to consider modifying the sled if I want to use it, or seeing it the guides to the router will solve the problem. I'll weigh the options up when it arrives and I can test it out.

What an amazing looking bass! The attention to detail is mind-blowing. I keep considering an active pre in the Shuker build I did last year and this has just tempted me further.

I bottomed out the top-bearing router bit today, flipped the body over and... it's so thick that the bottom-bearing bit isn't long enough to complete the job. So it looks like I'll have to do some thicknessing before I can go any further. I already have a flat sled that I use as a circular saw guide so I cut two legs 5.5cm tall with my chop saw to support that from opposite ends of the workbench. The body will then slide under the sled and I can make straight passes over it with my top-bearing router bit (which has done 90% of the routing work so far on this project). The legs will be screwed into the workbench for extra stability, so there are some scrap pieces of plywood glued to the sides for this purpose. You can see them in the picture, clamped to the legs while the glue dries. Just for fun, I marked out a rough layout to try and picture how the whole thing will look when finished, but that was all I could do for today bar another coat of tru-oil on the neck. It was hard to picture what the end product might look like when the body arrived as 2 blocks of wood, but it's coming together slowly but surely.

Thanks, I was thinking of making a sled for the router to travel along with a top bearing bit to flatten the top/botton and take a couple of mm off per pass so sounds like I'm thinking along the right lines.

Thanks! I quickly went from "carefully does it" to "must remove more material faster!". The tight curves were hard without a rounded file but I got there in the end. Body is glued and rough cut, started routing it out with the template earlier but called it a day as the router had been going for a while on and off, and I didn't want to upset the neighbours any more than I already had done. It's a 2 piece body, tulipwood e-bay special. 5cm thick so I'm wondering what the best way of reducing the thickness to more like 4cm is.

So I have made a fair bit of progress with the build BUT I didn't take many photos. Sorry! Next step from the above point was to route a truss rod channel using a 6mm straight cut bit approx 9mm deep into the neck down the centre line. I used the guide that came with my router to keep it centred, and used a chisel to widen out a very small chunk of the channel as the rod was ever so slightly wider than 6mm where the adjustment nut was. Once done, I glued on a roughly cut fretboard blank and clamped it before leaving it to dry overnight. Once dried, I used the neck as a guide to route the edges of the fretboard nice and flush. The blank was very thick and I'm still sanding it down using a radiused sanding block weeks later with several mm left to go. There's got to be an easier way, so once I figure it out, I'll update the thread. Suggestions welcome! The headstock was thicknessed with multiple passes of a router using the same bit as you see in the picture above. Once done, I got to shaping the back of the neck. On the Shuker bass course, we used a roundover bit to take the majority of the material off before fine shaping with files and a saw rasp. In the absence of the correct bit, I went the tedious route and did the whole thing with just the saw rasp. It took a while and constant checking to make sure I was happy with the shape. It's quite a chunky neck compared to the average Jazz, I'd call it a phat C shape. But it feels fine to me! Shaping done, I sanded up through the grades, 80, 100, 120, 180, 240, then 320. After 320, I lightly wet the wood to raise the grain before a final sand with 400 grit paper. The stripes in the maple really started to pop at 180 grit. Once dry, I applied the first coat of Tru Oil and sanded it while still wet with 1000 grit paper to fill any small gaps. I then repeated this with subsequent coats, moving from 1000 grit up through 1200, 1500 and then 2000 before moving on to fine steel wool between each coat. I've lost count of how many coats have gone on there now, but I think we're up to 7? I'll do a few more and then finish it off with a matt furniture wax. Looking OK!

I find them a bit too woolly sometimes but tried that one in the shop and bought it on the spot. I'm not sure if it's the aftermarket bridge, pickups or something else but it sounded great to me.

There was a lot of good stuff over the 90's for me, although I can't say I showed the decade at its finest with my choices here.

And re-released in '92! A bit of a cheat I know, but it's a fun line and a reason to learn it in the correct key as I'd been playing it wrong for years.

It was a struggle not to just do a full video of grunge and Roadrunner records metal as that was all I listened to in the 90's.

Monday again, so time for a just-about-competently-played bass line quiz from me. This time it's 1990 to 1999, same format as last time in that there's one line per year. You'll need good speakers for 1998! Answers at the end of the video, hope you enjoy it. There's going to be a break for a week or so after this as I'm doing a David Bowie specific quiz along the same lines for one of my bands social media pages (the Bowie covers band oddly enough), and it's a big job including more than a few parts I don't know.

It was a child of the 80's take on the 70's, and I don't think I did a great job in terms of playing on that video so don't be too hard on yourself!

People above have already got them all, but here's the complete list. Beatles - Let It Be, Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?, Bowie - Suffragette City, Pink Floyd - Money, Herbie Hancock - Bring Down the Birds, Black Sabbath - Symptom of the Universe, Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop, Iggy Pop - Lust for Life, Blondie - Heart of Glass and The Clash - Guns of Brixton!

Thanks, my slap playing is bad (hence not bothering with the few notes of it on 1982), but the obvious song from that album kind of needs it. There wasn't really of a question of picking something from any other album for me so I went with that line as it's so fun to play.

Did anyone get 1986? I'm worried I may have dived too deep from that album for that one!

Following on from last weeks 1970's quiz, here's one for the 1980's. Same format, one line per year. The playing should be better as I didn't attempt it all in one take this time, but the volume dips for 1982 for some reason. And I got my fretless back from the practice room, so that gets a few lines. Answers at the end this time. Hope you enjoy it!

We have a full house! I hope it killed some time and mildly entertained people. I'm working on an 80's one and a Bowie one which I'll post when they're done.

It's a new-wave band, but not Talking Heads. It is, and not "Chameleon" as I originally thought which puts me out by 8 years

I got bored so I did a bass line quiz for my Facebook friends and I thought the good people of Basschat might enjoy it. One line from each year 1970 to 1979, a range of genres and plenty of minor flubs! I'm pretty sure I got 1973 and 1974 the wrong way round and the click for 1979 came in at the wrong tempo but I just went with it. It's a "how many do you recognise" type thing.

It was one of the first songs I learnt when I made my fretless, as well as several other Pino songs. Fantastic player.

He's said he lifted it from Stravinsky in this video Pino talks the intro the 'Wherever I Lay My Hat'

Ugh, so I need wood to build a couple of jigs but can't get any now for obvious reasons. So the build isn't dead for good, it's just resting.

Thanks, I think I'm going to build a simple jig as per this video. Looks pretty straightforward and should keep the cuts super straight. Straight Line Router Jig

Looking forward to the truss rod routing as that's where I hit a big of a snag on my neck build. The guide that came with my cheap (but good) router is a little flimsy and there was a bit of wander when I had a quick bash at it the other day.

Good to know, it was just one bit when I did the Shuker course last year but I wasn't sure if I was doing it right or bodging it. Anything that works I guess.