a2k

I got in the shop for one day last week and used the time to get my pick guard cut out. In my head it was a super simple task, but it ended up being very tricky. Thin wood (1/8" thick) + tricky lines = the router not being nice. I could see tear-out city happening so I ended up just getting things as close as I could with the band saw and then I rasped and sanded it to shape. Slow and steady, I eventually got there. At one point I'd mentally thrown in the towel on a wooden pick guard. We'll see. Action shots... I also finally copied my neck template. Compared to the pick guard, that was a breeze. I've spend a significant amount of brain power outside of the shop pondering stain colors. The original plan is to do a blue stain on the ash body, potentially with a darker blue stain in the filler, and either a honey or charcoal stain on the pick guard and neck. But now I'wondering if I should reverse the body and pick guard. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I've made a horrible set of photo shop mock ups to play with. Here's what I'm talking about (colors are exaggerated for concept only - hopefully real-life won't be as fugly!). I hope to do some playing with dye next week to get a sense of what my real colors will look like. In the meantime, this week's goals are to get the fretboard glued and the neck outlined to prep for carving.

Beautiful work! Lucky customer.

Life got in the way of shop time last week and yesterday (and likely will today too). That's okay - I don't want to ever feel rushed or distracted when in the shop. The new fretboard arrived warp free and with enough space behind the nut to work with. It doesn't have as interesting of wood grain as the first one, but it's still a nice piece of birdseye maple and it's flat. In the meantime I've had two additional weeks for my one-piece maple neck to settle. It did move ever-so-slightly after planing. It bowed just a tiny bit along the long axis, but hasn't twisted or warped on the short axis. My gut tells me it's okay, but I may be blinded by optimism. The safe bet is to put a laminate in the middle, but aesthetically I am really hoping to do a one-piece neck. I know there isn't an answer beyond deciding if I am comfortable with the risk of having to throw the neck out if it twists. I've got a week to decide (and watch for further movement while the local humidity goes up and down through the rainy season)... If I can get in the shop today, the plan is to make the pick guard.

I think that's a feasible approach. I used a scroll saw to cut out the control cavity before gluing the backplate on and it was a pain in the rear, but I haven't had any warping issues. I think your plan is better because it resolve the issue of getting a precise fit with a wonky scroll saw. The one concern I'd have is the thickness of the double-sided tape may mess up roundovers because the piece will sit flush once the tape is removed. But that can be cleaned up by hand. I'm enjoying following along with this build, by the way. It was interesting watching your carving video.

I got a few hours in the shop last week on Wednesday and Thursday. In that time I got the body pretty close to squared away (minus sanding, so that makes me about 25% done ). On Wednesday I routed the body outline to the template and got the electronics and pickup cavities routed out. On Thursday, I got the edges rounded over, the neck pocket routed out, and the tummy and forearm cuts done. This thing is coming together fast! Action shots... Hogging out material with the drill press: Routing pickup and electronics cavities: The body with a clean outline... Routing the neck pocket... ' The neck pocket... And the rough tummy cut (it's now finished, but I forgot to photograph it)... This is going so much faster than the last project! It's simpler build, but I'd like to say my skills are leveling up too. I'm spending much less time figuring out the basics and more time getting things done. I also cleaned up my maple for the neck to see what I am working with. I like the look of the wood but am a little concerned about the overall waviness of the grain. Here's what it looks like: Today I've got two questions: Q1 - Any expert opinions on the suitability of this wood for becoming a neck? Q2 - I'm waiting on my fingerboard replacement to arrive from LMII. In the meantime, this week I plan on making the pick guard. I'm planning on using some of the leftover quilted maple from my last project. I'd like to get it as thin as possible - I'm thinking 1/16". Will it be too fragile at that thickness? And should I be worried about a router tearing chunks out of a thin piece of wood like that? I would route it thicker and thin it out, but I don't have a thickness sander. Thanks for following along. Aaron

Just heard back from LMII and I thought I'd share their response about the fingerboard for those that are following along. I very much appreciate them responding quickly and "putting the customer first". I also appreciate they (as well as many of the other vendors that sell to us) have taken the time to create educational content on their site that covers things the wood storage. Thanks Luthier's Mercantile.

Cool! Ambitious! I like it! Tapering the neck width all the way through the body solves the problem of having to carefully clean up and level that portion of neck-through body next to the fingerboard that is at the wrong level. I think it also adds to the visual effect of having the strings and neck fan out together. Personally, having the neck/body join be at 90 degrees to the pickups but having the strings hit at a fanned angle is one of those little things that bothers me and screams "machine" instead of "hand-made". So, good choice. Plus the adventures with hand-tools is interesting to follow. I currently have access to a pretty nice shop, but that's going to end in 2017 and I'll be left with nothing except a few router bits and a set of cabinet scrapers to my name. I don't think I can hand-turn router bits, so I'll be making basses with just the cabinet scrapers. (I kid, but it is good to pick up a few tricks that don't require large fancy machines).

I like the idea, but the nut slot was cut so the line is at the edge of the saw kerf instead of the center, like the fret slots are.

I like this idea. Are they just glued on? Somewhere in my mind I recall seeing a thickness sander there, but I'm not 100% certain. They just got new sanding equipment installed so I'll take a look tomorrow. In the meantime, let's see what LMII has to say. I imagine they are sleeping right now...

I do have one of the Stew Mac 24" leveling beams. It's just long enough to go from nut to over the 21st fret. Maybe I could use it and take super ultra tiny baby sanding strokes.

Thanks Pros. I wasn't sure if this is normal or something to complain about. I shot LMI an email with the picture. We'll see what they say. I'm confident they act in good faith toward their customers. Anyway, too bad... it's an otherwise beautiful piece of wood. My big personal goal with this project is to really focus on the quality of my work and pay attention to the details, zeroing in on every cut, join, carve, etc. to make it the best possible. So I really don't like the idea of risking finding glue pockets under the fingerboard after I glue it on.

Fingerboard discussion time. Not gonna lie - cutting fingerboard slots was my #1 least favorite step in the last build. I figured I'd save myself the headache this time, so I ordered a pre-slotted birdseye maple fingerboard from Luthier's Mercantile. The wood is beautiful, but there are two small snags: 1. The first is when spec'ing out the slotting, I figured "space behind nut" was space behind the back of the nut, not the front. So a quarter inch behind the nut isn't going to leave much room after I cut the slot to 1/8". The typical P bass needs a little more wood behind the slot to transition down into the headstock. Any suggestions on how to work this without it looking clunky? Here's a pic of the top of the fingerboard with a red mark showing the room past the front of the nut. 2. The fingerboard is pretty warped. Not unusable, but not flat either. I will be radiusing the top so that will get worked out, but I still want the back flat so I can get a good seemless match with the neck. I don't think sending this through the planer is going to be wise. Sand it flat? Get it wet and use every clamp in the shop when I glue it to bend it back to flat? Here's a pic with a line drawn to show what straight looks like. Thanks, Aaron

Yikes! Routers scare the cr@p out of me! Glad it wasn't more serious.

After spending the bulk of the last project with "drill bride holes" on my todo list, I can't blame my wife for not getting excited when I show her pictures of my wood.

I'm glad I have a safe place to go to share my enthusiasm for ash*. I excitedly showed my wife pictures of the grain and just got that "you've got to be kidding" look. *my inner beavis & butthead want me to be very careful about using the words "enthusiasm" and "wood" in the same sentence.

Love the pic! As for the growth rings, I thought it looked cool so I went for it, but I hope I don't end up on the wrong side of the "form vs. function" equation.

Okay! Things go a lot faster when you have the wood in hand. Day 1: I got in the shop yesterday and today and made some good progress. I got my ash planed down to size, squared up, and glued. Day 2: Planed down to final thickness (going a little thin for weight reduction - 1.5") and rough cut. Lots of action shots! The planer doing it's thing. I love how it turns rough wood into beautiful material. I'd never really admired ash before - I always thought if it as a "lesser" wood meant to be hidden under finish. My opinion is totally changed. Fresh new saw blade, squared and ready (thanks to the shop staff!). Edges so crisp you could cut yourself on them (not kidding). Glue applied. Glue clamped. Given @Prostheta's ongoing reminders about using enough pressure, I cranked these things down tight. The result - the only way to find the seam is to follow the grain closely. I used the washer trick for outlining that I learned here (one of many many things I've learned here so far). Okay, here's the plan: stay OUTSIDE the red line and INSIDE the pencil line. Got it? Okay, let's go. I like how the end grain makes a sine wave. And finally, here's a self portrait all geared up. I got myself a fancy mask to keep all of these particles out of my lungs. This feels like a lot of progress for two shop sessions! Next week I'll get out the router and clean up against the template, get the pickup and control cavities cleared, and then MAYBE get the neck pocket routed. We'll see. Anyway, it's good to be back at it.

The ironic thing about all of these "future potential builds" is that one of the things I love most about being in the shop is that it forces me to completely clear my head and focus solely on the single task at hand. I was working at the router table last week when a little voice in my head popped up and said "I wonder what time it is", but I had to remind myself that I cannot take my eyes off that spinning router bit even for a second to look at the clock.

Wood delivery day! Christmas in May! I went ahead and picked up both pieces of the flame maple as well as the ash, and I also got some walnut because that extra piece of maple's gonna need a body someday (and planing walnut is one of my top 10 favorite things to do in my free time). The pieces are bigger than promised - body pieces came in at a little over 3"x9"x48". Could be enough for four bodies if I put tops on them, or maybe two without tops and two with. Gotta see how much needs to come off to clean up the wood. The maple neck pieces are 1 3/8" x 6 1/2" x 39". Probably a bad idea to try to squeeze more than 1 neck out of each piece, but I'll see. Maybe I can get enough scrap for a guitar. Anyway, the figure in the maple looks pretty nice. Hard to really tell given how rough it is right now, but I sanded down a bit to see what I can find. Here's what it looks like wet: Now that I've got them wet, they are tucked away in my office to dry while I focus on the body. In them meantime, I haven't been totally slacking. I've gotten about half of my templates copied, and I put my fret leveling tools to use on a friend's guitar. He'd worn channels in the frets to the point where it was more buzz than note. I had to take the frets down quite a bit, but I got the guitar playable again. The C on the A string still has a slight buzz, but I didn't want to go too far. Plus who needs a C. Action shots: It was good to get back in the shop last week, even if it was just to copy templates and file frets. It's sorta like meditation where I HAVE to keep my mind clear from distractions. Progress will pick up, as will the questions.

I've got 5 or 6 concurrent builds going on in my head at any given moment. Buying wood for one of these future potential builds is a new step for me, though.

I'll be following along! I just bought myself some walnut for the body of bass #3 (no need to hurry - I've barely started bass #2).

I bet they can make you some amazing guitar straps! The morning we got to Granada, we had our hotel arrange a mountain bike tour of the town. I highly recommend it if you can. It was my wife and I plus our tour guide, a young guy named Frank. It was a great way to see the city and the tour was more about the realities of life in Granada than just the tourist highlights. He showed us where people worked, told us how much the different factories paid, talked about the insides of houses, pointed out which houses were well prepared for "Rainy season", and much more. He was especially excited about a recent government program that backed banks so people could pay for their houses over 30 years instead of having to pay 100% up front (this was a totally new concept in Nicaragua and I guess without a stable currency and government, you really can't get a mortgage).

Okay, I've got some more detail from the wood guys. The maple followed me over from America. It was kiln dried there and currently shows moisture content of 13-14%. They say under 15% is good, though I had previously heard 10% is the target. Any insight here? Also, the ash is white ash, not swamp ash (I know... same species but lighter). It's dry at 10%, but also fairly heavy. They have some tamo ash from Russia that they say is lighter but significantly more expensive. I'm waiting on a price. In the meantime, I'm off to copy some templates.

The hits keep coming. I love how that last neck looks from the back.

Thanks guys. I'm seeing if I can get details on the moisture content and drying procedure of the maple. I'll probably end up buying both pieces, milling them down a little bit, and then letting them sit while I get the body squared away. The pieces are 160 x 33 x 1000 mm so there's a little wiggle room. Speaking of dimensions - anybody know where I can find a side view drawing of a P bass? I've got the outline covered with the template, but could use a little help fast-tracking the depths of things.