Akula

In this day and age, you forget to H-flip one video.... Haha. Thanks guys. I am definitely a pick player, taking my lead from the greats such as Matt Freeman, and in the realm of Warwick bass guitars, Marco Hietala. I wish my playing were up to their standards, but it's not. Anyways, I'm satisfied with the aesthetics, ergonomics, and sound of this bass, and there shall be more photos to come - as long as tomorrow's a sunny day in sunny ol' Sydney.

Ok, my first of three builds that I finished but never had time to post about. Sorry y'all! By now the regulars will know that I work an insanely irregular job, and occasionally my brain gets turned off to the world around me for weeks or months on end. I finished this one shortly after my previous post. The electronics were easy - I'd taken the preamp, pickups and pots from another Warwick bass, so it was all plug and play. I did change from two pots (bass and treble EQ) to a single concentric pot, but that was about as straightforward as you'd imagine. I had a few issues with squeezing it all into an Infinity-sized body and cavity, but it's wedged in there and it works. Hardware was a dream. Warwick really nailed it with their 3D-intonation bridge, and the Adjust-A-Nut made the first setup quite breezy. As for the raised line between top and back, I ran it over with some finish-grade sandpaper and it disappeared, without even leaving a visible mark in the oil finish. Whatever it was, it wasn't much. Job done. I will get some better photos tomorrow, because this one shot doesn't do it justice, but there it is. Now this video poses the question to you - does it growl like a Warwick should?

Well done mate! Looks and sounds great, and it appears you had a great time finishing the thing off. If I see it around the pub rock scene here, I'll say a g'day!

Thanks mate. There's always room for improvement, which is why I keep doing it! Did the finish-sanding, which I view as a seperate step to shape-sanding, in an afternoon. Grit numbers are hardly applicable here, as even 400-grit can be "shaping" when used on something like this mahogany, whereas you'd need 240 to make such a difference in physical shape on hard maple. But after a few hours I'd gotten the bulk of the body up to 400 grit, and then I raised the end grain and went 400 again, then raised, then 600. An interesting note here: the neck heel carve is essentially end grain, although not as oblique an angle as the bottom of the body, so I made sure to raise grain here as well and sand back - nobody likes a "fluffy" neck heel. And then, when all was said and done, and I was happy with the smoothness all around, I applied the prooftint stain. And, of course, nothing ever goes to plan when using a new finishing product for the first time. I knew that bleed underneath the tape where I masked off the neck-body and neck-headstock transitions would be an issue, so I went crazy light and dabbed it on. That worked pretty well for the heel. Not so well for the headstock transition. I got that one fixed up by moving the tape-line a few mil further into the neck, and having another go. This photo shows some crazy difference in colour, but after some more blending an hour of drying, it's very hard to see the difference. Only other issue I had was at the end grain on the bottom of the body. Hanging a guitar from a 200cm ceiling can definitely make for some awkward angles, and I quite simply missed a bit. Or just didn't rub the stain into the end grain. Or perhaps I didn't get the sanding quite thorough enough and left some low spots. Fixed those bits up by dabbing more stain, then blending it in to avoid the two-layer colour. This is really easy to do with this particular product - I literally dab on the stain into the areas needed, then use a gloved finger to rub it in with the surrounding areas. Wish I'd gotten a photo of the result. One thing I'm concerned about is the maple on the back of the guitar, came out rather blotchy compared to the front. I'm reluctant to sand it back and start again, because I'm afraid I'll never tone-match the top, and it's only this one area highlighted in this cropped photo - but it's enough to piss me off. It's one of those things where you're sure it's fine, just a result of timber being an organic material, but knowing it's there... Well, we've all been there.

I can vouch for Danish Oil as well. Just finished a bass with walnut wings, I did a slurry finish applying the oil with sandpaper and it turned out pretty damn smooth.

Partly, yes. I also find it easier to tell when the sandpaper starts to clog, since I can't hear the sound change due to my blaring music. Another reason is that for a carved top I find it easier to follow contours. I can also move my fingers around on the piece of sandpaper, thus "using up" all of it. And finally, not to sound too artisan, but I feel like I'm more at one with the workpiece when I'm directly connected to it. This all applies to complex shapes such as guitars - I wouldn't exactly sand layers of paint off a cabinet without some help from blocks or power tools.

Drilled a lot of holes today. First up, let's attack the string-through ferrule holes. I marked out on both sides where the holes should be, and used a Drillmate to get the top holes drilled to the depth of the ferrules at 5mm with a brad point. Lacking a drill press, I invested fifty bucks in a Drillmate a while ago - for those unaware, this is a kind of portable drill press set on a base and two pillars, with it's own chuck and bearings. It's fantastic for places a drill press wouldn't reach, for instance, if you need to drill a straight perpendicular hole in a wall stud or a bench top. It's no replacement for a good solid press, of course, but I definitely lack the space for a press large enough for my needs - I've just about managed to squeeze a 10" bandsaw into my shop, and it's getting very cosy! Here's the Drillmate mounted to a jig: Let's take a closer look at that jig. It is a pretty standard thing used by a lot of people, albeit usually on a real drill press. The bottom layer has a "pinhole", in this case 5mm in diameter, through which I poke the shank of a drill bit and locate it inside one of the ferrule holes in the top of the guitar upside down. This should theoretically allow me to drill holes into the bottom of the guitar that line up perfectly with the ones on the top. Even looking at that last photo now, I can understand why this jig system didn't work as well as planned. Think about a big solid floor-standing press - it's solid and heavy, and should travel downwards in a smooth fashion. This Drillmate has just the slightest "wobble", to the point where it is felt more than seen. And the MDF jig just was not stable enough. The distance between the two inside faces is the same as the guitar body thickness, so it doesn't lean over in use, but in future I would consider making a similar thing out of steel. The bottom ferrule holes came out ever so slightly wonky. The strangest thing is that the 3mm holes going all the way through 45mm of rock maple to the other side, well they were fine! Dead straight and perfectly aligned when they popped through. But the 8mm holes that only travel ten mil deep? Nope, they wandered. The photo looks terrible. I measured the deflection, and we're talking about +/-0.25mm. But it only takes a tiny amount for the human eye to be drawn to it, and label it a mistake. So I enlarged the holes every so slightly, and will have to glue the ferrules in with dust and CA, using a jig to hold them in a straight line. Luckily, there's a good flange on the ferrules, which I'm hoping will hide the issue. Failing that, I'll route an opening and install a steel plate to hold the ferrules. We're doing an oval jack socket plate, which means it's an easy install - spade bit right through to the cavity. Had I the forethought, I would've done this before routing the electronics cavity. Not that there was much if any tear-out on the inside, but y'know, it can't hurt. Tuner holes, standard stuff - measured out the tuner size, spacing, and string paths, then went at it with a handheld drill with some sacrificial timber clamped to the back of the headstock. Knocked through some pot-holes, and set to it with low-grit sandpaper. As seen a few photos ago, the edges of the body are still marred with router scorch marks, the top carve has grinder scarring, and there are still tooth-marks on the neck from rasps and files. I purposefully leave all of this "shape-sanding" until the last step before finishing, because I have previously spent hours sanding guitars at every step of the way, just to accidentally slip while dressing the 24th fret, or something similar. So, thus begins the sanding mission. I do it all by hand, or shall I say, fingertips. There's always music and a few beers involved! I've packed it in for the night - tomorrow I'll take it all to a higher grit, struggle with end-grain for hours, and hopefully get some stain done.

I think it comes down to personal preference, and at the end of the day, common sense. I use a plunge router extensively, and my hands are on the opposite side of the machine to the bit - if something goes wrong enough for that bit to come into contact with my fingers, I doubt the gloves are going to help me out. But, heaps of people are more comfortable with them on. Side note: I regularly use chain hoists at work for flying truss, and while gloves help keep chain grease off my hands, I prefer going naked-handed. And my rings come off at the start of a shift, and whenever working with power tools. If you ever want a horror story about rings, send me a PM, I won't say it here... I made one of these too! Here's a tip - get your uneven hole saw plugs all rigged up in the drill press, then get a true and square piece of timber with some sandpaper attached, and move it into the spinning hole saw spindle sander bit. You'll sand down the spindle bit and end up with something true in rotation. Do one better than me, though, and smooth off the thread on the bolt to get a better grip and avoid damaging your chuck.

Just a few weeks ago, I installed electronics in my 5-string bass build, which I have yet to complete posting upon - I found that my electronics were so compact within a large hollow body space, that the input jack was actually fouling upon the tone potentiometer! How could I make such a mistake? Well, I did, and I've fixed it in a way, but I'll never have that issue again....

I always make my electronics cavities too small. Every single time, I end up trying to cram all the components and wiring in there, and this time I decided I'd had enough of it. So I turned a large part of the lower bout into swiss cheese with a drill bit. Not quite a "bathtub" route, but there's definitely ample room there for any future upgrades. Specifically, if we ever want to add another pickup bay, there be room for a third potentiometer or a switch. Or a battery, for active pickups. And a touch more shaping on the heel. Not quite there yet, not quite. But with a tool as aggressive as an angle grinder armed with a 120 flap disc, I find it's wiser to shut off for the day and have a feel tomorrow, instead of realising you'd gone a fraction too far.

I've been doing this too. MDF has always been a "cardboard" material in my eyes, but lately I've been soaking with superglue right before final shaping of my templates, taking advantage of the the fact that it soaks liquid up like a sponge. Really, and I mean this, really nice build so far.

I'll be paying the man good money for any more reclaimed timbers he can throw my way. Only problem is, being the kind hearted man he is, he thought it prudent to grind off all the nail heads sticking out of the timber, so I don't cut myself.... And now I can't remove the nails! Bless the man, but probably half of that chunk of wood can't be used, for fear of wrecking blades and bits. But still, that makes about half a dozen fretboards! Very little work lately. I've been downgraded from a covid "close contact" to a "casual contact", which means I have freedom to do grocery shopping again, but not much else. And the weather's been fairly crap, which has dissuaded me from venturing to the end of the garden. What a week. I did rout the pickup bay, though. Every time I make a new template, I eff it up and have to do it again. I'm aware of all the jigs that use a few pieces of factory-edge timber, but every single time I end up going: ah well I'll just make this one out of MDF with a jigsaw and files, then I'll do the rest properly. Never again. Route came out pretty good. Just need to chisel out the "ears" a touch to make this Duncan Distortion fit. Because we're all locked down, and the postal service here has quite literally fallen apart at the seams (along with public transport), I was getting quite worried about procuring the correct items for finishing this guitar. But then, I received two packages in the mail the other day - a can of oil, and two different flavours of "Prooftint" stain. Here be a test patch.

Loving the build so far! I built a few guitars on a tiny budget last year, and the idea of buying some solid hardwood furniture instead of pine shelves, well it just never occured to me. Ingenious. So good on ya, mate! The timber looks amazing, and your process and design tells me this will be a great one to follow. Also, sustainable timber is a big plus from me. I'm currently building two guitars for clients who've asked for Ebony fretboards - but if it were up to me, I would've used ebonised oak, or even richlite. I just found a possible source for Aussie reclaimed timber, and I'm all over it like a dog on peanut butter.

Got the frets flush by hand with a "flush file" - read: a half-round that I've snapped in half. It works, to an extent, but besides flushing the fret ends it gets too messy. After this I went to sandpaper wrapped around a steel object to get the frets nice and flush and bevelled to 45'. Bear in mind that the fret ends still need some fine tuning that won't happen until after proper levelling and dressing, and that's when I'll properly polish the sides of the fretboard. It's a game of do some now, some later. Carved the neck. Same way as I always do, rasps and files. Because of the uber-thin fretboard, I got to 20mm at the 3rd fret before starting the widen out the carve in a nice shallow shape. Honestly, the neck is still a whole mil thicker than spec, but it feels thin as hell due to the shape of carve. More material will come off during final sanding, which should hit the 19mm spec. Neck heel join feels huge at the moment. The neck is 20.5mm at F20, but 45mm at F24 - that's a hell of a radius! So I'm going to take this area of the join to a lesser thickness, using a combination of router and grinder. Besides neck shaping, I got the bridge recess done. I went to 9mm depth, which is insanely low for a T-O-M recess, but I figured it's better to have the adjustment room and not need it, instead of needing it and not having it. By my measurements, the bridge can now adjust to -1mm of zero-action. Worked on the top carve, made it a bit deeper and more concave to the clients request. Angle grinder is one hell of a tool for carving, so I purposefully left a good margin of safety to be completed by hand-sanding. Once material is gone, you can't put it back. Two words: gut carve. I'm stuck at home again for another few weeks - besides being in lockdown, I've also been identified as a "close contact" with covid, so I literally can't even go grocery shopping. As much as that sucks, it means I can pour some time into this build and others. So expect updates! In an unrelated note, my neighbour chucked me a decent-sized board of Ironbark over the fence the other day - reckon this will make some good fretboard timber for future builds? It's reclaimed, so who knows how old it is! Heavy as hell - I measured it at 1100kg/m3.

Why the rasp? I'm sure you have sound reason, but I've always trimmed fretboards to neck taper dimensions using a bottom-bearing flush router bit, the kind you can get from Bunnings for fairly cheap. I know there's more chance of a tear-out event with a router, but then I feel a rasp could be just as dangerous, and heaps more tedious with more clean-up. Just a question, mate! Looking to learn more than I'm intending to criticize. Loving the plant in that last shot. I live around where the old Cooper's factory used to be, and the tannins from the oak barrels have made my garden barren - nothing grows!

Well, I'm glad I'm on the right track. Sometimes things can make perfect logical and physical sense in the world of engineering and carpentry, yet totally miss the mark in the finely specific world of making fretted instruments. Tomorrow's all about the neck carve, and then getting those frets flush bevelled and nice.

The rest of the frets have been out away from their anguish. Trimmed these frets down to within 1mm of size before installing, which gave me a 0.5mm margin either end. I didn't want to end up with miles of wire to file through to get it flush with the board, but didn't want to come up short either. Worked well, except for one fret, which when I hammered down it came up 0.3mm short one end and 0.7mm proud the other end. To avoid chipping the ebony by pulling it out, I gently tapped it sideways in the slot to get it flush at one end. Can anyone see a problem with this? As far as I can see, this is merely an extension of the protocol of tapping over-bent wire in at the sides before hammering the middle - the tang has still moved sideways, allowing the barb to grab into fresh wood. It's been over a day, and I can't see any pop-up movement in that fret. Part of my fret install process, after hammering, is to flow some CA into the slot underneath the tang and gently clamp with a caul to make sure the ends sit down nicely, and I usually do this a day or two later.

Yep, you're right, these slots were done without this novel idea of beveling the knife-marks. That idea shall take it's root in another build at another time - but I am very happy with how these slots turned out. After beveling the slots themselves, and to clear up any confusion, I'm talking about beveling with a small triangle file *after* cutting the slots to proper depth after radius with a good saw, I installed one single fret. One. Then the neighbour reminded me of the time. Quite kindly, I must add! And, to be fair, it was just after sundown and they have a small child, so I said fair enough and packed down the tools for the day. One fret! I wouldn't want to be a fret in the block right now... They must be terrified right now! Haha.

I did the fretboard marking-up in my normal fashion - I mark two lines parallel to the centreline in pencil, then use a combination of a meter rule (with .5mm resolution) and digital callipers to mark out a "point" for each end of the fret line with a scalpel blade. Then, I line up my best and straightest 30cm steel ruler with those points by feel, and score a deep line into the board with the same scalpel. I end up with dead straight, dead perpendicular lines which are easy to follow with a saw. Of course, the saw has a kerf of .55mm, whereas the scalpel gives a much smaller width. I find the blade of the saw still always finds the path of least resistance, and I dig the scalpel in deep during the mark-up process. In future, I want to try out a new technique - I reckon taking a sharp triangle file and bevelling the edges of the scalpel cut will make the saw almost fall into a dead straight cut line. Time shall tell. Naturally, I glued it onto the guitar. Got out my bottom-bearing flush cut router bit and trimmed the ebony down to the same neck taper. It really surprised me how much tear-out I got on my first pass - I've never worked with ebony before, just so y'all know! I ended up taking much smaller passes, and had a grand clean cut in the end. Because the fretboard is sitting flush with the top plane of the body (for now), I had a conundrum on how to shape the part of the fretboard that sits on the body. Obviously my flush cutting bit just ends up riding around the horns, and I end up with a "lump". To remedy this, I got out my factory-straight edge of MDF. I've had this laying around for a while, and I check it periodically against a real straight edge, but since I coated the edge in CA it seems to be holding a decent true line. Laid this on the mostly tapered fretboard, and clamped it flush. Then I got my router set with a top-bearing bit at a depth of exactly 0.5mm above the body plane, by placing some measured layers of sandpaper on the body and setting the plunge depth, then taking the sandpaper away. After the cut, I literally took one good hard look at that 0.5mm piece of ebony hanging off the fretboard - with a chisel - and all was well and true. Radiused with a sanding block and some 60-grit. I got halfway there, and realised I wasn't wearing a dust mask - black nose for the rest of the day. Dammit, I'm better than this, and I'm aware that hardwood dust will kill me quick. Lesson learned, the mask now sits on top of my sandpaper drawer. Anyhoo, I got up to about 320 and took this shot: Got the saw out again, with a depth stop of plywood bolted through the blade at 2mm from tooth-tip, and re-cut the slots to a good depth over the new radius. Above about fret 18 this became quite worrying, as the blade tip was getting too close to the horns, so I covered them up with a sheet of carboard each. I guess I just have to be mindful of where the saw is, but the cardboard definitely gave me the confidence to get the slots down to a good depth. Then I went up to 2500 grit on the ebony. I may still give the surface a quick coat of oil before fretting, but in case I don't, I wanted to make sure the ebony was up to the quality it can be on it's own. Fret wire cutting. In the past, I have used flush cutters to slice off lengths of this irregularly-shaped extrusion, as have I used rotary tools. This time, I made a simple jig... Wait, no, this isn't worthy of the title "jig". I made two sides of a clamp, one of which holds the tang, and the other holds the crown of the fret wire. I lay the radiused fret wire over the fretboard, use a fine-line marker to mark out the length, then clamp the wire in my contraption with the mark laying flush with the perpendicular fret slot in the softwood caul. Then give it about two good pumps with a hacksaw, and you've got a fret - without the burnishing of a high-speed Dremel disc, and without the slight end crushing of flush cutters. Speaking of rotary tools, I did actually use mine. With a cutter disc. To nip the tangs of the frets. Ran out of time today to get them into the guitar - apparently hammering frets at midnight is anti-social. But, the frets themselves are done, and the timber's quaking at the knees ready for them!

I don't have any soda cans laying around.... Do you think beer cans will work?

Looking absolutely breathtaking, Scott. Every part of this has been great, but this finish leaves me wordless in awe. I like the hanging from the output jack idea. I had a guitar (the same finishing nightmare you previously mentioned) come crashing down when the coat-hanger through the tuner hole just snapped. Spontaneously. Terrifying. Never again, I'll rig something through the output hole. Or I'll levitate it like a Jedi, but no more plastic coat-hangers.

This is another perfect example of an idea I would never had had on my own. I probably would've just gone straight in with the heat gun and ripped the fretboard off. Thank you. Well, here's an embarrassing moment I will share with you all - I installed the truss rod upside down Going back through my photos, I've realised that I've got the nut of the rod on top. No biggie, like, it's just fine like that, it only works backwards. So I tried truss rod adjustments in reverse, and the problem of dead frets suddenly improved instead of getting worse. Nut files arrived in the mail, and I gave the low string a nice good channel to sit in, instead of a groove to sit on top of. Now it doesn't pop out when tuning up. Only fret buzz I get after a set up is on that low string, fret one. Of course, since this guitar was pretty much made for brutal G# death metal (I mean, who would've guessed from the shape?), that first fret is fairly integral to the instrument. The guitar is definitely half-way playable now, and I'm very happy for it. The next things on the list are to take the rest of the nut slots down to match the low string, then remove the nut entirely and place a shim underneath. Then I'll level all the frets down to fret 1's height - the difference is small, after I'd gotten the neck straight with the truss rod. Pickup height is actually pretty nominal, considering they're direct mounted with sponge underneath and some small-gauge wood screws through the eyelets into timber. If I ever feel the need to adjust height, I'll be trying my whack-ass idea with adjusting pickup height with threaded pickups without a mounting ring. Until then, I'll let it go. Electronics? One volume, one tone, three way toggle fits just fine. The guitar is tiny, so the cavity is also very limited, and I had a hard time fitting all the cables in around the battery and components. There will be no photos of the inside of that compartment! I've got a truss rod cover to create, and the locking tuners need a bit of editing to allow for the locking mechanism to actually work with such high gauge strings (14-68), but that's pretty much the thing done. I'd post a photo, but I'm holding out for my partner to take some cracking shots with her camera over the next few days.

Looking at it now, I'm pretty sure I cooked the scarf joint at the headstock. There's no other way that I can have a dead flat neck up to fret 6, which is incidentally where the scarf joint starts, and then dead notes. How this got past me, and how I'm only noticing this now, is beyond what I would call normal comprehension, and definitely wanders into the land of frustration. It might be a case of lifting the fretboard, planing the neck surface flat again at the loss of half a millimetre, and re-installing a new fretboard. I've tried the dual-action truss rod to no avail, and I think it's too severe for fret levelling to sort out. Right before I go buy some ebony - is there any other way I haven't thought of fixing this? Heat? Moisture and clamping? Raising the action higher than the Eiffel Tower?

I went for a 5mm thickness on the fretboard, in the end. Took me a damn age to get the router marks out - ebony is hard! Then I did a proper thickness on the neck with the router. Since the body and horns would be the greatest obstacle hitting the router base, I used some stock of the exact same thickness as rails - the offcuts I jigsawed off the body blank. Worked a treat, and the neck is now at 15mm thickness. Plus the fretboard, and minus maybe a mil or half during shaping, and that brings us to 19(+-0.5)mm. I also did some dough step-routing on the heel at this point, to save grinder dust later. Then I went in with the aforementioned grinder with a flap disc, and roughed in the top carve. Being influenced by th Soloist shape, we didn't want to take too much material away, so I took inspiration from some Ibanez photos and went lightly. I think the deepest this carve gets is about 5mm. There will be much more fine tuning once our lockdown is over and the client is legally allowed to visit my workshop. Next jobs will be to mark and cut the fret slots, then trim the fretboard to size and glue it down.

I'm back after a week. I put that last coat of oil on the thing, and, after letting my oil-stain mix dry for a week, I got pretty much no blotchiness at all. Great stuff. Then, in my pure wisdom, I decided to wipe on a quick coat of poly. Like, a butt-thin layer. Turned out badly. I rubbed on the poly using silk, I kid you not, silk, and made sure it was tidy and smooth, yet I still ended up with runs. So I sanded everything back with 400 grit. Wet sanding with a mix of turps and water was pretty nice though - I didn't touch the shaping of the object, and I could still feel that original layer of oil from weeks ago, let alone the deep grain filling effect the multiple layers of stain have had. Let that dry out for a day, and put one coat of Danish Oil and ebony stain mix onto it. Bingo. I'll have to get my better half to take some awesome photos at a later date, but the slight figure in the Qld maple all popped out, and it looks a different shade of black-to-brown depending on the angle of incidence. Love it. Finishing nightmare is finally over. Without even waiting for the oil to fully cure, I went ahead and did a test-fit of the hardware, electronics, and strings. My headstock design keeps popping the lowest string out of the nut. The nut itself needs some serious work, and my new set of files are in the mail. Worst of all? Back bow. Help.