Andyjr1515

Well, of course after all of the debate about fret then set or set then fret and having gone for the former....what have I actually done? Of course - I've gone for the other way - set then fret After making sure the top of the neck was properly flat, I chiselled out a recess in the top: I then remembered the mantra that you can't have too many clamps: ...and that has got me to here I'm quite pleased with the binding trick - it is certainly MUCH easier than full width, full length multiple veneers!: So next job is frets....

And...it's finished Magnetic catches fitted: And then the obligatory dark-background shots, starting with a 'before and after':

Thanks, @ScottR Somehow seem to have missed this post I've talked a little bit more about the Osmo trials on @Pariahrob 's excellent thread if it is of any interest And in the meantime....it's almost finished. Just got to put the magnetic catches on the hatches and we're done. This is how the front ended up looking: The five-way switch (with push pull) gives some very usable sounds. Still a bit of cable tidying to finish but it all fits

Hi, Rob In the UK, Wood Finishes Direct sell the complete range in 125ml tins making it pretty cheap to experiment (125ml is more than enough). There was a time when this was only available in large quantities.

OK - back on a proper keyboard! Back to Polyx if @Pariahrob is happy with the continued derailment There are the various gloss levels, including: 3065 half-matt; 3032 satin; 3011 full gloss and then there is the specialist 3044 RAW which is the one that has the whitener in. The others mentioned don't have any whiteners although they are all less tinted than Tru-oil. I found that all of them can be used in a 'slurry and buff' method and act as a same-colour grain fill in the same way that tru-oil can. They need an overnight drying period, so a bit longer than Tru-oil, but after fully drying over a week, they finish MUCH tougher than Tru-oil. For the Psilos, the 3044 RAW was perfect. Here's Tru-oil: And here's 3044 RAW: The ebony, being very tight grained was fine, provided I wiped ALL of it off and just left a wetted surface: The finish was pretty close to the 'standard' 3032 Satin. For the walnut and sapele re-body of the Fender Rascal, I tried the 3044 RAW on a darker wood - not what it was designed for but because the owner wanted to reduce the darkening of the walnut. This was Tru-oil: And this was 3044 RAW: You see the difference most on the upper horn. Although there are two different backgrounds, they were both taken with similar light and camera settings. So - success with this. The back sapele wasn't so good because the whitener pooled in the grain and left a slight milky look - similar to the very early acrylic varnishes: I finally finished this off with 3032 Satin after just a single application of the 3044 RAW and you can see how it's lessened the effect of the whitener a touch. But what a finish. Silky, silky smooth to the touch and tough as old boots. So if I was using Polyx on a wenge neck, @Pariahrob , I would personally use the 3032 satin, I would slurry and wipe the first couple of coats to fill some of the excessive pores in the wenge and then slurry and buff with 1000 grit with the polyx, then finish with wipe on /wipe off a couple to three coats to finish. Left a couple of weeks to fully harden, it will be able to be polished up with Meguiars Ultimate Compound (acts like a very very mild t-cut) and you will have a satin neck that is a joy to play and will keep that shredding sweat out of the wood

Hi all I talked a little about the polyx 3044 in my Psilos bass posts and the more recent walnut rebody of a Rascal. When I go back onto the desktop I'll post the A/B comparison. The 3044 has a whitener in it. Applied thinly ie wiped off after application, it doesn't whiten even ebony, but the slightest thickness it will. On the walnut, it has also worked well, even though it is specifically designed for light woods such as pine and maple. BUT on sapele, the pores collect the oil and so you get a slightly milky look. I think wenge will have the same issue. I'll post a bit more later this morning to illustrate.

Very - VERY - interesting

Well, for me it's simple. When you see a project on the go where the timescales are such that the builder plants the seed that grows into a sapling and ultimately into a magnificent maple tree, which is then felled and seasoned for decades to be used in a design that has matured in parallel timescales as with only the best of clarets.... ...sorry, but it had to be @Norris 's No contest

I just re-read these posts. These are your first builds??????? Then you are definitely one to watch in the future. They are all excellent, and by any standard, but that fretless bass is simply magnificent! Wow!

All looking good from here

I found the time to get fully up to date with this build - it is coming on really well Somehow I had missed the router cut-through in the control chamber - a masterful save demonstrated there! I get so close to similar slips so many times that seeing someone doing such a skillful and invisible mend gives me hope of not always having to put my failed efforts on the BBQ It's also why, like yourself Goran, I have started making concerted efforts to hone my planing, scraping and chiselling sharpening and using skills to reduce the times I use a router. It would be interesting to tot up what proportion of gaffes and disasters are router-related. In my case, it is well over 50% - and I only use a router for at tops 10% of the wood cutting and shaping ops.... I very much look forward to seeing this in its finished form - I think it's going to be top-drawer

Hi @mattijuntunen and a very warm welcome Beautiful build - I particularly like the carve at the back....just my kind of build. I can see you will fit in here very nicely

Many congratulations on your new arrival Best wishes to all of you.

Sorry - I confused the issue. Yes, an uncarved neck across the profile but it is roughly cut to shape from the side view. No...that's probably no clearer . I'll post a pic when I'm next on the desktop

OK - that's decided me

It's the difficulty of clamping the caul on the frets where the neck starts thickening towards the heel. Nowadays, I run a thin bead of titebond along the tang, lightly hammer to properly position and then clamp tightly using a radius block as a caul. Doing the latter would be a LOT easier on the bench rather than on a guitar... Ref positioning, I would leave, say fret 2 and fret 12 out until the fretboard is on (where I know I can clamp the caul easy enough) and use the normal panel pin positioning for gluing the board on.... What do you reckon?

And here it is, ready for fretting. And so comes the next possible departure from my norm: Fit then Fret (my normal way - mixed results) or Fret then Fit (could this be my gateway to happiness....or simply more misery)? What do you reckon?

Bit more progress. Having been quite pleased with the retro-fitting of binding on the fretboard of the Alembic-esque build, I've decided to go completely radical and bind it BEFORE I fit it to the neck and body and fret it! For the binding, I've used some acoustic body binding with a b/w/b feature strip: I'm going for dots with the 12th fret a couple of swifts again...might make this my standard look Epoxied mixed with snakewood dust (sounds like a Dr Feelgood remedy). I'm sure I'll get used to the lumps when I'm playing Note the router base rub mark at the 13th fret...it's swift-shaped

With the snakewood radiused, it was time to get the G&W mitre box out again: And, so much quicker and more accurate than before, I have my 25" fretboard ready for the next steps

Little by little, this project is coming back on the scene. The major step forward yesterday was trying out the fretboard radius rig for real. I had made a small improvement to the rig to allow me to index and secure the rig in 1/4 router bit width steps for when I wanted to use it lengthways. Just a few holes and a cocktail stick: With everything sorted for a 'live' trial, I double-side taped the snakewood on some straight timbers of the correct height clamped to the rig I figured that the most likely to be successful would be routing lengthways and indexing with the above mod. Actually, for some reasons I understand and some I don't, doing it this way wasn't very successful. First of all, even though the supporting timber was planed and flat - nevertheless over this length there was a tiny bow at the centre. Easy fix - simply do the radiusing in two passes and add a top clamp near the centre of the fretboard. The other problem I'm not entirely sure about, although will check a couple of things. I didn't think to take a photo, but depending where the rig was in the radius, the cutter seemed to cut differently and caused an uneven cut along the length. So I tried the other way - cutting transverse around the radius and then traversing lengthways in 1/4 router bit width steps. Much more successful. However, and maybe here's the clue to the previous issues - see the dig-in line for each pass over 2/3rds of the radius, and particularly at the top: Easily sanded out, as you will see, but what I think is that the two radius templates aren't quite matched. So what is happening is that the rig is slightly tilting through part of the sweep, making one side of the router dig in. This would explain the iffy result going lengthways where this effect would be greatly exacerbated. If so, easily fixed In the meantime, after less than 15 mins of finish sanding with a 10" sanding block, the snakewood looked like this (and snakewood is very hard stuff): And it's straight and it's accurate. So - pre-rig: 2 - 3 days of sanding (in elapsed time due to the effort and boredom) Result - radiused; sometimes dipping at the ends; sometimes thinner one side than the other; sometimes sanding created twist; sometimes OK Post rig - even with some adjustments to make to stop the dig-in: 1/2 hour set up; 20 mins doing it; 15 mins finish sanding Result - radiused; flat; straight; even I think that's a result Learning experience (apart from the need to make the jig a bit more accurately!): Don't get carried away with the speed and ease and forget this is a router. And routers love pinging off edges of wood along the grain. If I'd remembered that, I would have slowed my travel speed right down and preventing this on the very last pass: Luckily, the lost edge is well within the width requirement...but might not have been Rookie error!

Another couple of coats of Osmo has given me this: The hatches will be darkened and the edges have got to be tidied up, but this is how the Osmo has gone with the Sapele: In terms of the headstock plate, I drilled the hole to match up with the position of the string tree and added the thin double-sided tape: To give me this: So, the whole body is starting to look like this: That headstock no longer looks out of proportion...and it remains fully reversible

It's a beauty, @Norris

B***ery! Well that's my chances shot, then!

Oooh - that's a good tip! I'll just go and borrow MrsAndyjr1515's and see how well it does

Hi, William Someone will come along, I'm sure, with other tips and techniques, but the same thing happened with my acoustic build. With that, I started with a stiff vacuum cleaner brush attachment to get as much dislodgeable dust out (remember it is dust and not stain). I then ran over the top gently along the grain with a soft copper brush (a suede leather brush) and then re-vacuumed. I then used a 'one grade coarser than finish sand but finer than rough sand' paper stuck to a small block and gently sanded all over up to, but not beyond, the binding, again followed by vacuuming. The thing to avoid is being tempted to sand more at a darker patch...you will quickly create a dip in the soft wood. Anyone else pitch in? Andy