Ford

Wow! It looks like some sort of poisonous plant! Like something you'd need to wash your hands after playing... Very cool man, I like the shapes on the headstock. -Ford

Stain it a purple/maroony! ...Or is that still blasphemy? -Ford

I sanded for like four hours today to get the other side of the head square so I could glue the walnut on. It was a pain in the butt and I got really mad at one point, but I got it done! Unfortunately, the maple on that side of the head is 1/8" smaller now. Its not terribly noticable, but you can tell its not straight. Someone remind me that its ok to make mistakes the first time... Tomorrow I'll cut as much of the extra walnut off with a handsaw as I can, and clean the rest up on my router table. Wish me luck! I made this little jig thing to get things sanded square. Lookie! For the bass, all I did today was get a drill out and CAREFULLY drill about a million holes in the center maple block. Tomorrow if I have time I'll go back and rout it clean. This way the top wood will be free to resonate. Lots of Holes! I had the idea of drilling progressively smaller holes in a spiral shape in the top as a sound hole. Could be cool. Maybe with a LED behind it? Eh? -Ford *Fixed links...

No, plyboard bad... maple good. -Ford

Eh.... Probably. The maple core has some weight to it. This was a real POS bass though, I have no idea what the neck is made out of, but it doesn't weigh anything. When I bought it like 8 years ago, the neck was badly warped. Origionally I thought I'd just steam the fretboard off and plane the neck flat and glue it back together. The body is literally plyboard. Its wonderful. Good stuff! -Ford

Has it really been 6 months?!? Right. --:Guitar #1:------------------------------------------------- For the guitar, I'm going back to my origional Fender Jaguar design, but with a PRS style head. I've been working on the neck recently. I did a scarf joint, getting an 13 degree angle on the head. The glue line came out pretty good for my first try dispite the ulser I developed trying to clamp the stupid thing, it kept slipping around. I got it all planed down, and went to route the truss rod chanel... heh... muh... The router bit worked its way loose (apparently you can't rout out 1/4" at a time, ya live ya learn) and tore really deep into the wood, almost all the way through the neck. Plus before I figured out what had happened, I started back in on the chanel with the bit way too high and took a bit of a nibble out of the face of the head. That was a little agrivating... I was able to sand some 1/4" wide bits of walnut to the shape of the two points where the router went deep and glued them in. Hopefully it'll work. Also, the route is like 1/8" off center, another agrivation, but between the fretboard and a trus rod cover it should be out of sight. Sigh. Pic 1: The route from hell Pt. 1 Also, my jig slipped at the heel of the neck, and the router routed where it wasnt suppose to... I'm thinking I can salvage that with, again, some cleverly sanded walnut (or spruce) Pic 2: The route from hell Pt. 2 Does anyone have any ideas of how I can fix this? I'm thinking about routing out 1/4" into the side of the ruined chanel and filling it back in with scrap maple. Today I CAREFULLY planed down some more walnut and glued it to the side of the head. I'm sortta going for a Rickenbacker Dakota look. Pic 3: Happy walnut for me. --:Bass #1:------------------------------------------------- The Bocote fretboard is attached and the fret marker slots are cut. That part was easy enough. I also filled the old screw holes in the heel with a dowel rod, sawdust and glue. I still need to sand off the rest of the old finish, as well as some nicks and dings. Pic 1: Neck #1 Pic 2: Neck #2 Pic 3: Holes Filled As for the body, I took it to the wood shop and they sent it through their giant thickness sander, so that worked out nicely. I got two spruce accoustic guitar tops to use as the top and bottom woods for this bass. I dont feel I did a good job glueing the bookmatched spruce halves. If I was thinking at the time I would have cut them back appart and tried again. Also, when I glued the back on the the body core, I must have used too much glue, there is a definate glue line, but again, there isnt much I can do at this point. The gap between the body core and the spruce bottom around the edges are from the origional bass's rounded body. I'll be rounding the edges again, so that should take care of that gap. Pic 4: Lots o' Glue Pic 5: Glue Line You can see a penciled in curved line towards the neck side of the center maple block. I'll rout out about a third or so of that maple from the curved line down to the horizontal line (where the wings meet the center block at the bottom). This way the entire top of the bass will be free to resonate with a 90% hollow body. I'm debating cutting a sound hole. Does anyone think this will add to the tone or would it just be a cosmetic thing? Thats if for now! -Ford

When I origionally started to lay out the electronics for my guitar I had like 4 two-way swiches, 2 three-ways, a tone, a push/pull volume and pup swich. What I did in the end though was to just figure out what settings I wanted, and wire one of those 6 way rotary swiches so I had 6 presets that I could flip through quickly. I still would only use 2/3rds of it, but hey, I saved on swiches and knobs!

Holy crap Setch!!! Who are you and where do you come from!?! That sounds like it will work great! Thanks! I tried a hand plane at one point (one some pine first of course), but I was so clumsy with it I was afraid to try on my nicer woods. I could never quiet get things straight and level with it. It was a 9.5" plane, and that might have something to do with it.

See, thing is that I'm not 100% sure I can find a straight edge that is straight enough that doesnt cost $60. Last weeks lesson was that aluminum "straight edges" from Home Depe arent neccessaily straight... I'm also suspicious of the sandpeper glued to glass method. It seems to me that the middle of the piece of wood I'm sanding gets sanded more, if thats possible, so there's this nice arch to everything... REALLY frusterating. Tonight though I grabbed a piece of wood that I KNOW has been through a joiner, and so far that works a little better. Tonights lesson is: "Watch the grain when routing maple." Stupid tearout...

Thanks so much!

What kind of jig would you reccomend, or can you think of a straight enough straight edge other than the $60 Stew-Mac one? Though... I wonder how hard it would be to make a simple jig. Maybe set the router up on two level peices of wood, fasten it down somehow, then slide the wood to be leveled under the router? Hrm.

Well... I know about joiners... But I need the poor-boy's method...

I've been having trouble recently getting my wood flat enough before glueing. It seems that no matter how many time I run it past the router or how much I sand I can alwayse see light though my joins.... Agrivating to say the least. Perhaps its just a lack of experience, but I've already sawed a laminated neck blank back appart once cause I wasnt happy with the join, and I'm not interested in doing it again. I have 80 grit sand paper glued to a mirror, doesnt seem to work that easily, unless it just takes hours of sanding for good reslult? I also have tried double sided taping a straight piece of anything and running past my router table (using a pattern bit), but I guess I cant seem to find anythign straight enough to use as a guide. Is there a more obvious answer to this problem? Cause I'm stumped... Thanks!

Alright, I'm having some trouble. I cut one side of that neck laminate back appart with no trouble, but now I'm back to the same problem I had when I started glueing. The woods arent square with each other, and it seems that no matter what I do they are still not flat against each other. I have a router/router table with pattern and flush trim bits. I had been trying to use a big old metal ruler as a straight edge, but I'm starting to wonder if its really all that straight... Help!!!

Fender, You may be right about the planer tearing up that body... I think he had a big sanding machine too... In my experience bass bodys are usually the dense harder woods. When I'm playing bass I like a good growing punchy tone with a good deal of hign end snap and pop. One thing I havent found a lot of information on the internet about is hollowbody/extreemly chanbered insturments, and what tops and bottoms do to sound...