Westone "The Rail" Bass - DOA - Now a minimal bass

[JohnH89]

A choice between finishing the bass or a six string ? Oh come on Rob , this is BASSchat . 😁

[rwillett]

So started drilling this evening and broke my one and only 6mm metal drill, I had three holes to do and then I could do the M3 hole tapping. Somewhat annoying but two 6mm's on order for tomorrow delivery. That's half a day lost.

 

My issue now is time, I'm in London Tues and Weds, jam session Thursday and I may have family things at the weekend. I'll probably have to put the guitar on hold but I'm worried that any paint finish will not be dry, so suspect I may have to just prime it and bring as-is.

 

Ahhhh! This is annoying, work is definitely getting in the way of play now.

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

2 minutes ago, rwillett said:

So started drilling this evening and broke my one and only 6mm metal drill, I had three holes to do and then I could do the M3 hole tapping. Somewhat annoying but two 6mm's on order for tomorrow delivery. That's half a day lost.

 

My issue now is time, I'm in London Tues and Weds, jam session Thursday and I may have family things at the weekend. I'll probably have to put the guitar on hold but I'm worried that any paint finish will not be dry, so suspect I may have to just prime it and bring as-is.

 

Ahhhh! This is annoying, work is definitely getting in the way of play now.

 

Rob

 

Annoying maybe.  Despite that, it sounds like a good life/work balance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rwillett]

1 minute ago, SpondonBassed said:

 

Annoying maybe.  Despite that, it sounds like a good life/work balance.

 

It doesn;t feel balanced, I need 48 hours per day to do what I'd like to do

[Stub Mandrel]

21 minutes ago, rwillett said:

 

It doesn;t feel balanced, I need 48 hours per day to do what I'd like to do

 

You and the rest of us!

[rwillett]

I now have five days to complete the bass, I've had to go to London twice in the last seven days so progress was limited.

 

Today's activity is to file the aluminium backbone and floor to fit. I've cut it approximately down to around 2-3mm too big and now ill use the finger grinder and a file to make it better. The red parts below are all sacrificial and to make sure it all fits.

 

All the drilling (bar four countersunk holes for the neck bolts on the bottom) and tapping is done. The top aluminium still has it's protective cover on. 

 

 

Once shaped, I'll polish it to an inch (or 25.4mm) of its life. 

 

Body sides are more or less done but need some filling, sanding and then priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, more painting, yet more painting and then quick drying lacquer. That might be tight

 

Rob

[rwillett]

And it's all gone wrong. 😩

 

The primary aim of this build was to get a better finish on the body. As its 3d printed you get little layer lines and large join lines.

 

The layer lines are caused by building the body up in layers between 0.1mm and 0.2mm high. The thinner the line, the longer it takes. Currently all the bits take around 36 hours to print. 

 

As nobody makes a large enough decent printer to do a bass body in a single pass, it has to be made in sections and joined. If anybody thinks RatRig does one, they don't. Had a number of discussions with them and they were not hopeful. 

 

So the intention of this build was to focus on finishing quality. I've been experimenting with various finishes and one that I thought might work hasn't really and so the body I made looks bad so back to the drawing board.

 

I'll use the opportunity to try out a different build method so that if things do go wrong, I won't lose the whole body next time. 

 

One step forward, half a step back. 

 

Rob