Bass in Yo Face

[ScottR]

I was thinking more along the lines of dinging it with a hammer.

Something a bit more spontaneous that inspires a short burst of colorful language.

I wouldn't want Andrew to miss out on all the joyous experiences the rest of us endure.

SR

[curtisa]

8 hours ago, ScottR said:

Boy, you cannot deny the clean looking accuracy of the CNC milling. You need to add some sort of minor imperfection somewhere to lend it that personal touch.

SR

If you look closely at the second pic from the top, there's a chipout in the middle of the neck-side of the neck pickup where the wavy grain was a bit weak. I'll have to fill borrow some of your ninja grain matching skills and fill it to match as best I can.

[curtisa]

5 hours ago, ScottR said:

I was thinking more along the lines of dinging it with a hammer.

Something a bit more spontaneous that inspires a short burst of colorful language.

I wouldn't want Andrew to miss out on all the joyous experiences the rest of us endure.

SR

Never fear. I am perfectly capable of right-royally screwing this up by hand without the aid of some glorified, computerised sawdust emitter.

[Prostheta]

Don't do it because we want you to. Do it because you know that you must. It's an unspoken omission.

[ScottR]

17 hours ago, curtisa said:

If you look closely at the second pic from the top, there's a chipout in the middle of the neck-side of the neck pickup where the wavy grain was a bit weak. I'll have to fill borrow some of your ninja grain matching skills and fill it to match as best I can.

I saw that. I figured it would disappear with normal sanding.

SR

[Prostheta]

I think that it's best trying to patch it anyway. Bummer that it happened man. I had a similar thing happen on a body wing recently, however it's of no consequence really as it's under the thigh cut. Still, not an option on an "actual" build.

[Norris]

On 7/6/2018 at 11:01 PM, curtisa said:

If you look closely at the second pic from the top, there's a chipout in the middle of the neck-side of the neck pickup where the wavy grain was a bit weak. I'll have to fill borrow some of your ninja grain matching skills and fill it to match as best I can.

It's CNC Zen

[curtisa]

Finally. Some quality time in the workshop again. It  feels good to once again be able to emerge into the sunlight covered head to toe in woodchips after a few hours reducing some very expensive timber to a pile of sawdust.

While the CNC'ed body was still embedded into the surrounding timber, it made sense to use the rest of the wood as support for hogging out the remainder of the cavities. If I had removed the body from the slab first I would've had very little real estate left to keep the router from rolling over the edges when doing the control cavity or neck pocket. As it was, the neck pocket is so freaking large on this thing I had to do the last little square inch or so at the leading edge of the pocket by hand, as even my biggest Makita couldn't reach it without wobbling too much:

 

Once all the cavities are all routed out, the body can be extracted from the slab on the bandsaw, cutting through the thin layer of timber separating the front and dthe back of the CNC'ed outline:

 

The thin sliver of timber remaining just gets scraped/sanded away until both halves are clean and level. It's also possible at this stage to see how well the two machining operations lined up. There'd probably be less than 0.5mm alignment error here, so I'm pretty happy with how my guerrilla machining methods turned out:

 

Once all the edges are brought under control, the final task for the day is to add the rear belly contour. 5 minutes with the Turboplane (aka, the Toe Cutter) yields this:

 

10 minutes later using the Microplane we get to:

 

And a final 15 minutes with the scraper gets to here. Nice to see some fiddleback pattern starting to emerge too. Some minor refinement of the shape still to come, but it's probably about 90% there now:

 

[mistermikev]

wow... looking great!

[ScottR]

2 hours ago, curtisa said:

It  feels good to once again be able to emerge into the sunlight covered head to toe in woodchips after a few hours reducing some very expensive timber to a pile of sawdust.

That sounds so wrong...and yet we all do it enthusiastically! And the more exotically dear, the more our manic joy.

Those are some seriously wide cavities. I've heard of bathtub routes, but his will be the first time I've seen pickups set in olympic swimming pool routes.

It is good to see you grinding cellulose again. That top is going to be amazing when you get through with it!

SR

 

[curtisa]

Cheers, old bean. Lets hope I can keep the pace up a little better from this point onwards.

Yes, they are massive potholes I've put into that body to fit all the big bits. I'm a bit concerned I'm building a bit of a neck-diver though. I haven't weighed it yet, but the body doesn't feel all that heavy at the moment. At this rate I might have to add a few hidden fishing sinkers to balance it all out.

[Prostheta]

That IS a lot of void in there. The old Aria Pro II SB basses I dig so much have a taper to the body, making them thicker at the rear than at the horns. That made for a very balanced instrument, even though it's a bit late to be saying this now....being a 7-banger I guess a flatter neck profile will be in order rather than a "vintage D"? ha

[curtisa]

A bit of extra time spent in the workshop this weekend between other extracurricular duties. Body edges rounded over with a 1/4: radius:

Pickup cavities given the extra bit of step-down to provide clearance for the cables underneath each soapbar:

Plus the pickup wire channels drilled:

At first glance the neck pickup wire channel looks to be taking off at a strange angle. But, to quote Baldrick, I have a cunning plan. Because the pickups are so narrow I can't get the drill bit in at sufficiently shallow angle to aim it back towards the control cavity in a straight line without gouging the corner of the pickup route. And due to the narrow width of the route, the target to aim for if drilling from the control cavity back the other way makes me leary of being able to accurately come out in the right spot. So the way around it I've come up with is to take advantage of the battery compartment and make two short jumps instead of one:

Inside the battery chamber is a shallow undercut on the top edge which should give sufficient clearance for the pickup wire to snake around the outside of the battery box and into the control chamber. Once the battery box is installed it will be completely invisible.

And yes, I've got a honest-to-goodness router scrape on the left edge of the control cavity there. I hope @ScottR approves of my handmade error to bring the CNC'ed accuracy back down to earth.

Final trick is to try and repair that chipout on the pickup edge:

First I need to clean up the bottom edges of the chip so I have something flat and straight-ish to glue the chip to. This bit always makes me nervous, as it has to get worse before it gets better:

Then test fit some scraps to find the closest match. This one looks pretty close (ignore the shadow being cast around the edges due to the chip being slightly higher than the surrounding wood):

And finally devise some kind of method of clamping it in place while the glue sets. Due to the odd location the only thing I could think of was to stretch a piece of tape up and over the edges of the pickup cavity and neck pocket, and then clamp it into the corners to stretch the tape tight over the chip. Fingers crossed:

[Andyjr1515]

Wow - this is looking so good!

I know what you mean about hand made router scrapes, by the way.  I do something like this almost every time I use one of the flipping things.

Well impressed with your CNC work!  Oh and that dint rescue is looking pretty neat too.

If you keep practising like this, in time you're going to end up pretty good 

[bokchoi77]

Loving this, the idea of CNC appeals to me, being a software dev in my day job. 

How is the weather where you are? It's freaking cold down here, by our standards, I literally snapped in half when out in the workshop earlier!

[curtisa]

13 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Well impressed with your CNC work!  Oh and that dint rescue is looking pretty neat too.

Tankinyew, Andy.

It's good to know a confuser-controlled router can make a mess of a perfectly good slab of wood as much as muggins using the router by hand. I haven't been brave enough to remove the tape to see if it's worked yet.

 

13 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

If you keep practising like this, in time you're going to end up pretty good 

Eventually if I 'practise' enough, I'll learn to stop destroying fancy bits of wood in creative and expensive ways. Maybe I should just just switch to making wooden cheeseboards and drinks coasters?

[curtisa]

10 hours ago, bokchoi77 said:

How is the weather where you are? It's freaking cold down here, by our standards, I literally snapped in half when out in the workshop earlier!

Helluva contrast to the weekend. I'm in the Hobart area, so I assume I'm getting the same weather as you. @Prostheta will probably scoff at our balmy 10 degrees, moderate winds and drizzle and tell us to harden up a bit.

[mistermikev]

pretty impressive fix.  good on ya.

[bokchoi77]

8 hours ago, curtisa said:

Helluva contrast to the weekend. I'm in the Hobart area, so I assume I'm getting the same weather as you. @Prostheta will probably scoff at our balmy 10 degrees, moderate winds and drizzle and tell us to harden up a bit.

Ahh cool, Blackmans Bay myself so not far apart really! should definitely try to catch up one of these days!

Yeah I couldn't manage properly cold climates I don't think, I'd happily be on the Gold Coast right now!