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The Twins


Christine

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>You're a dream!!! Thank you :) How did you find that?

Their website pages are number sequentially, so it wasn't difficult.

I like the way you shield the cable rout - very slick. Do you get good electrical conductivity between the foil on the top and bottom?

 

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22 minutes ago, samhay said:

>You're a dream!!! Thank you :) How did you find that?

Their website pages are number sequentially, so it wasn't difficult.

I like the way you shield the cable rout - very slick. Do you get good electrical conductivity between the foil on the top and bottom?

 

Not yet I doubt but by the time it's done it will be good, if I don't from contact I' ll solder them to the cavity rout shields

Edited by Christine
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That abano stuff looked interesting. I thought I might get a ebano headstock plate to play around with as it was on £6, but it was £6 + £6.50 for shipping, so slightly more than getting an ebony one :D

Not that I would get ebony now, but maybe I will wait until I need a lot more from them

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Today I took the glued bodies out of clamps and trimmed the excess with the bandsaw. Then I flushed the tops on the router table, when I looked at them I had an "Oh heck!" moment as there was what appeared to be an open glue line all around the join but when I sanded a bit of the top op the disc sander it turned out to be just a little glue that had discoloured the back at the very corner and comes out with the slightest sanding, PHEW LOL; that had me going for a few seconds. You can see the line in the photographs, it looks just like an open glue line, in hindsight there was no way that I could have ended up with an open glue line but I still fell for it.

Next I scribed a line at 49mm all around which will be the line to carve the top to but also the line at which the bottom of the fretboard will sit at the neck body interface. I marked the position of the neck joint and pickup pocket routs and drilled out the waste to cut back on the amount of noise from the router. I fixed the routing jig to the body with a couple of screws, one through the point of the bridge and one near the edge where the wood will be carved away so no holes will be left after the body's done. I routed the neck joint on one body but then realised I had made the jig too shallow for the pickup pockets so I made a perspex spacer, I'll fit that and finish the routing tomorrow. The weather picked up so we went for a walk on the beach, it seemed a lot more fun than woodwork :)

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Had a difficult day today, will explain in a bit. Started off where I left off yesterday and finished routing the pickup pockets. Then I moved on to making a jig to rout the bridge pieces which is where I had bother, no idea why but could I get the shape of the tailpiece right?? Three goes it took me before I got there, after that it was just a simple rout and that was done. I drilled through from the bridge, bridge pickup and tail piece for wiring; the neck pickup I got very lucky in that the front of the rout (which was angled remember) just nicked the rout underneath for the switch wiring so I can feed the pickup wire straight through there. I'd had a belly full after all that so I went and sat in the garden and had a nice cup of tea :)

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Some shiny bits just for fun :)

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11 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Really liking this thread. Just out of interest, the bridge and tailpiece are closer to the neck than on other basses I’ve seen with Warwick parts. What scale are these basses?

Cheers

Jez

It's 34", it's based on the oversized Les Paul, yes the bridge does seem far forward on the body but that's also true on the Gibson too. I've based the tail piece position on the maximum distance I can get behind the bridge and still keep the silk wraps on the ends of the E string off the nut

 

 

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Edited by Christine
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13 minutes ago, Christine said:

It's 34", it's based on the oversized Les Paul, yes the bridge does seem far forward on the body but that's also true on the Gibson too. I've based the tail piece position on the maximum distance I can get behind the bridge and still keep the silk wraps on the ends of the E string off the nut

 

 

gibson-2013-les-paul-standard-bass-ebony-253229.jpg

Cheers for the details Christine. I know nothing about Gibson basses so always good to learn and that picture shows it all.

Jez

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Phew it's been a hot one today! Not happy I have a blister on my thumb! How you ask? I'll tell you how :roflmao:

Started off routing a shoulder at the level of the top of the binding to give myself a clean edge to work to while shaping the tops, yes shaping at last WOOHOO!! After that I drew a rough contour map of the general curves I expected to get, after that well it was shaping time. I used a thing called an Arbourtech, a rather nasty carving attachment that fits onto a grinder, this is a method I do not recommend, it can reduce your guitar body to firewood in less time than it takes to blink. So why am I using one, I've had a lot of practice with it but even then it's a worrying procedure.

After rough carving I used some small thumb planes (blister!! :( ) to just get it somewhere like a shape at the back, the front couldn't be done until the angle for the neck/fretboard had been cut. For that I just made a jig, basically a sloping bit of MDF at 4.5 degrees with a hole in it to access the top of the body. There was some spare wood the jig didn't reach so I whipped those off with a drawknife, a bit like a massive spokeshave then took a bench plane to flatten it. Finally I took the thumb planes and some tiny spokeshaves and tuned the shape to something that looked right, it's sort of an intuitive process, try it you'll see. After that I was tired so I still need to tune the shape on the second body but I'm happy with the first, that just needs the neck fitting and sorting any snags before sanding etc.

Oh and I also checked the neck blanks for any movement, admittedly they are still blanks and any movement would be unlikely but if there is any movement at this stage then the blank is firewood. There was none but some of you may be interested to know how I checked. To see if there is any twist on a narrow board you used a gadget called a pair of winding sticks, these are basically two parallel wooden straight edges with two inlays on each one with a pair of black (Ebony) and one with a pair of white (in my case Ivory veneers from a piano), as luck would have it I couldn't find them so I used a pair of 12" rules one balanced at either end from which you can sight down to see any twist (wind) exaggerated by the length of the winding sticks. Handy thing to know


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39 minutes ago, Norris said:

I do like thumb planes. Very handy. I've never used a (?) thumb shave before - that looks useful too

Nice work btw :)

Me too.  When you first see them they seem quite expensive for something so small - but they are truly quality bits of equipment and work so well.

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Yesterday I just finished the shaping of the second body and called it a day, hardly worth an update.

Today I played around with the neck joint, I made a quick MDF jig to cut the tenon on the router table and screwed it to the top of the neck along the centreline where the truss rod will be set in next week. I roughed out the tenon on the bandsaw and routed the neck. They turned out just a tad tight so a couple of wipes with a file saw them a perfect fit. Then I semi scribed them into the body but left the tenons needing to move forward by about 1mm when the neck has had some shape cut into it so by scribing the neck join this will pull in nicely. I did the rough scribing with a dovetail saw and then pared off anything that looked to be sticking out. The tops of the necks are still about 3mm proud of the surface of the body, I'll sort that out next week after thinning just to make 100% sure everything stays straight and flat

So for now we have two massive blanks for the necks waiting to be thinned and the scarf joints cut for the angled headstock will probably do that on Sunday, I have other things to do until then unfortunately

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And for those who have been wanting to see what I keep in my drawers

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54 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

I'm liking that last photo.

I'm assuming the chisels were longer when you lined the drawer?

LOL yes, spot my favourites and the ones that have never been used in 30 years. That 12mm chisel is really past it now

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1 hour ago, scojack said:

Brilliant stuff.....was wondering if you were going for the full Gibson Tenon Join.

Methinks there's more to you than just an amateur bodger Christine ( like Most of us in 'ere! ).

Ian 😊

Thank you, I'm a time served cabinet maker believe it or not

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I had a bit of spare time this morning so I pressed on. Ripped the neck blank down to slightly oversize and marked out the position of the scarf joint which worked out at 14 degrees with a 10mm (+ veneer 3mm later) at nut length minus 40mm. I made a jig for the table saw to cut the scarf but in hindsight I should have just bandsawn it and planed square and flat, not a jig I'll be keeping! Once planed I glued them together and now they can sit until Sunday when I'll get back to the workshop :)

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20 hours ago, Christine said:

Thank you, I'm a time served cabinet maker believe it or not

That explains a lot. I was thinking through the build photos just how professional it all looked and the machinery at your disposal.

Cheat  :crazy:

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On 07/06/2018 at 17:44, Christine said:

Thank you, I'm a time served cabinet maker believe it or not

That's no surprise to me - the only time I've seen a chisel that worn before was in the days that my father used to use his long-suffering Draper 1/2" to straighten up brickwork prior to plastering...

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