honza992

@Andyjr1515 Andy, having now done the routs for the blocks, I would strongly endorse what Christine says here. Trying to score round a wobbling piece of MOP on a radiused board would be a nightmare...

Now you have a router table, have you thought about using router bits? They're available in the UK and (reasonably) cheap... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yonico-13005-Radius-Guitar-Radiusing/dp/B06W2M7892/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536173060&sr=8-1&keywords=fretboard+radius+router+bit I've got a similar 12" one and it cuts scrap beautifully. I'm still trying to work out though how to fit it into my normal work flow ( I normally glue the board on first, which is problematic). I think you radius then glue? Supposedly that's more easy to do.

I've seen those and was tempted....the only issue I could see (other than the cost, clearly) is that the base of the radius jig itself aren't wide enough to take a 5 string bass fretboard. The max width is 70 mm (I checked with G&W) which isn't really wide enough. I can't understand why you would go to all that trouble to spec, design and produce (what I presume is) a top quality product, but not make it 10mm wider. What luthiers only make 6 string guitars? Surely a 5 string bass is the minimum you would design for. Very very odd. And a great shame, and opportunity wasted.

OK, nice tip about the acetone. I'll give it a go. Thanks!

Nothing constructive to contribute other than admiration. I hoestly believe that if you can craft an acoustic then you are a luthier. The rest of us are just builders. Great work. Carry on!

I've had exactly the same thing with bassdirect. Why have a website that says 'in stock' or 'out of stock' if that isn't accurate. Why not keep your customers updated? I really don't understand. Retailers operate on such a tiny margin, that customer service is the only thing that seperates them. And bassdirect are, I'm sorry to say it, rubbish. I've ordered from Bestbassgear in the US, and the service is outstanding. OK, you have the slight extra palaver of paying the VAT and duty, but at least I know what's in stock and how long it will take. And when I have contacted their customer service they are brilliant. Come on bassdirect, get it together.

OK, interesting. I've just tried bending a piece of pearloid binding and managed to bend it perfectly easily round the heel of the neck. Clearly not all binding is made out of the same material, and some bends a lot easier than others. I wonder if you can get a vintage white made out of the same stuff as the pearloid one I've just practised on....

Wow that looks great. Did you do a build thread? I'm trying to use white plastic binding. I've tried both hot water and a heat gun. I wonder if celluloid has a lower melting point? I'm not sure a hair dryer would be enough to soften the plastic binding enough. A hair dryer would solve the issue of the heat gun heating it too much and melting it though. I'll steal the wife's and give it a go. Or of course you may just be better at it than me!

Well the 1mm binding arrived from David Dyke and it's perfect. It would have matched the vintage white paint exactly. Unfortunately I still can't get it bent round the curve at the heel of the neck, it's just too tight a radius☹️. Sooo.....binding will have to wait till my next build. Had I thought of this before, I could have modified the shape of the neck (to incude the traditional Fender heel curve) and all would have been fine. Oh well. Next time. Thread title edited to reflect my failure😲😭

Andy I've reached the point of radiusing the Jazz bass I'm building at the moment and like you I just can't face doing it by hand. It's no fun. I think you've used this a few more times now. How has it worked out? Are there any adaptations you would make?

Thanks all for the input. I'm going to use the MOP. I spent most of today routing out the channels for the blocks. More or less I used @Christine's method, ie: 1. Masking tape on the back of the blocks, and the fretboard. Use centrelines to line them up. Thin superglue them in place. Score round the edge with a blade. Then VERY carefully prise them off. Very carefully. I had the corner of one break off because I went at it too quickly. 2. I found it useful to use masking tape to make clearer where the edge of the block is. Being a bit ditzy, I can very happily rout away, completely forgetting that I'm supposed to be stopping at the line. So the pink masking tape is there as a reminder! I then routed with my palm router (not a dremel) and a 3mm mill bit. I thought this stage was going to be the most difficult. Actually it wasn't. The router rode on two stacked pieces of 18mm mdf, either side of the neck and it went very smoothly. My palm router (a Dewalt, the best designed tool I own) has a light underneath so I was able to see pretty clearly. I hand routed to within 0.5 - 1mm or so. 3. Chisels to then cut up to the line. This was....less easy. Other than for prising templates off😲, I've never used a chisel in my life. I'm not even sure quite how to use them. Am I supposed to be hitting them with a malet? Just pushing then to sort of slice wood off? I used a combination of both techniques. I found that the most important thing was that they were sharp...(I'm a slow learner!).....I sharpened them before I started and half way through. Actually I think I should have sharpened them 3 or even 4 times. This was the end result... Not perfect, (and this is the best one) but I'm pretty happy. I'm hoping that epoxy and sanding dust will make up for my sloppy work....

Stupid question. When you say to flatten the rear face of the blade, do you mean the whole thing or just a few millimetres next to the cutting edge are flat?

Christine could I ask what glue (with sanding dust?) you used to glue in your blocks and how much pressure it needs? I would hate to have one crack. Thanks for your invaluable advice.

What do you think? The only mother of pearl inlay blocks I have been able to find are for guitars, so they're smaller than blocks would normally be for bass. I've cut the fret slots and just laid the MOP on top to see what you think... As opposed to normal jazz bass blocks which look like this... Alternatively, I could use a sheet of celluloid and cut it down down to size. Something like this.. Now I know this is well and truly a matter of little to no importance, but if anyone has an opinion, let me know. I'm leaning towards the celluloid. I'm just not sure I like the look of the smaller blocks, which are Les Paul size. Finally, here's some lovely contours!

Today was a day of experimenting, largely unsuccessful😮 First up, bindings. As I feared, bending 1.5mm plastic round a 6mm radius curve (on a scrap neck) is really hard..... I've tried both hot water and a heat gun, and while I can get pretty close, I just can't get it accurate enough so that I'm confident it will stay on long term. If you have gaps they act as a lever when you press on them, lifting up the binding elsewhere. Fender necks have a curved neck heel which increases the radius of the curve. So, I've ordered some 1mm binding which I'm pretty sure I'll be able to bend ok, but that's getting really thin. I'll see what it looks like. Binding may have to wait till the next one. Blocks. I tried @Christine's method on some scrap and it is great. What is less great is the condition of my chisels😲 If only there was a thread dedicated to sharpening......(he he thanks Christine!)

Being slightly obsessive about these things, I've been working on a new technique for getting the neck pocket and neck to fit together perfectly, which if anyone is interested I'll describe here. (I'm not suggesting anything here is new, it's all been well and truly stolen from elsewhere!) First I get some 18mm mdf and 3 straight edges. I clamp the neck down (which isn't shown here) and make sure it's immovable. I then use double sided tape to stick down the straight edges so that they are up against the side of the neck.... I then remove the clamp and the neck, and take the straight edges/mdf to the router table where I use a guided bit to rout out the template... The next stage is to use a 1/4" radius roundover bit to round the ends of the neck so that they fit (almost) exactly into the template. The key here is to make sure that the bearing you used to cut out the template was also a 1/4" radius bit. The neck is put on its side and I rout just the ends of the neck so they are rounded. Probably if you've never used a router table before, this isn't the first thing you want to do, it is a bit nerve-wracking. However, I've done this a few times now and never had any issues and I'm very cautious about routing. Obviously make sure you aren't holding the neck down with you fingers near the cutter (I always use plastic handle push stick type things). I take it very slow and take many passes. It's then just a matter of clearing up the corner a bit with sandpaper and you should find the neck fits perfectly into the template. One thing that takes a bit of playing around with is making sure that the template is cut slightly oversize, so that the neck falls in, but doesn't have any visual gaps. I use 3 layers of (pink TESA) sensitive masking tape around the sides of the neck. That's for a neck that will have a tru-oil (so very thin) finish. If I was going to spray polyurethane you'd probably want to have at least 2 more layers. Or one layer of thicker tape. The key though is that once the neck pocket is cut, the neck should fall into the hole with no resistance. Forums seem to be full of people bragging about how tight their neck pocket is, without realising that once finish is applied, the neck will be impossible to insert. Hopefully someone found that useful😀

Thanks for that, I thought that was probably the case. No curved bottoms. Understood! 😀

My normal technique is to shoehorn any joke in anywhere. Though I should disclose my 2 1/2 year old is already rolling her eyes at my 'sense of humour', so maybe you're right. My wife is always complaining at my 'timing'...

Actually I caught it before your delete and liked it! It's going to to be a PJ so it worked😁

I have a 34 and 35" template. Putting the nut at the first position of the 35" gives a 33.036" scale, or something like that. Similarly the first fret on the 34" gives approximately a 32" scale. Could I ask why you need exactly 800mm?

There's been a bit more progress over the last couple of days. A lot of the techniques I've covered in other threads so I'm not going into too much detail. But if anyone wants a bit more just let me know. First up, threaded inserts for the neck bolts: The neck pocket is cut, and very very nice it is too. Even if I do say so myself. The neck falls in with minimal pressure, but no visual gap at all. Happy days! I cut out the body and rout it to size with the template. Then time to stick it together to make sure everything is in approximately the right place. It is. Hurray 😀

Thanks @Andyjr1515 Yes that all makes perfect sense. I'm going to use pre-cut MOP inlays, so agreed, my instinct is also to steal take inspiration from Christine's thread. Like you my concern was using a router to put on the radius once the inlay channel had already been cut. I'd actually already posted this exact question on Christine's thread to see whether she found tearout was a problem. She hasn't replied yet but given she's got triplets that's hardly surprising😮 Can I just ask, when you cut the ...holes?...channels?...troughs?...on the LD build, you had already radiused, so presumably that meant the bottom of the channels were also radiused. Was the ebony thin enough that it could just bend for gluing? I've checked the supplier and he confirms that this is definitely not an option with MOP, (too brittle) as is routing it once the MOP is already installed. So, my normal build order is: Shape neck...Glue fretboard....rout fretboard flush...cut fret slots.....radius.....insert frets. Given I am both binding and bocking, I'm thinking of doing the following: 1. Shape neck 2. Glue on fretboard 3. Rout fretboard to shape 4. Rout binding channel (I realise this will mean the binding will taper slightly the further up the neck it goes, but given the radius is a pretty flat 12", I'm not too worried) 5. Cut fret and nut slots 6. Rout channels for block inlays 7. Radius fretboard 8. Glue in blocks 9. Hand sand blocks down so they are flush with fretboard. Luckily I've got some firewood a neck is shaped with fretboard already glued on. I'll do a complete trial run using that and see how it goes. Stay tuned.

No, 33". Why oh why, oh why, oh why do I always have to make things complicated!!

Thanks Jabba. Electronics make me go wobbly, so I've stuck to passive so far. Maybe next one.....

Thanks Andy. Your and Christine's blocks have forced me into attempting my own. And there was me hoping to put my feet up with a cup of tea and a biccy and watch re-runs of Countdown. Ho hum.... In your Len Derby build you down go into too much detail about how you cut the holes for the blocks themselves. If you had a few minutes would you be able to quickly run through how you did it?