ADFinlayson

A beck that isn't oiled isn't a beck that's worth listening to frankly. The binding on my builds isn't think at all normally, I use the smallest rebate my router bits will do which is about 1,5mm, it just looks thicker because it's rounded over maybe? My rationale for thinner binding is that there is more fret with tang so it's easier to get the fret ends to stay down over the binding.

I've got the carved roughed in on the LP, the thickness at the first fret is currently 19.9mm which did make my heart skip a beat when I checked - it is in the ball park of where I wanted to be (he wanted a thin neck) and I'm not too worried because the fretboard is only 4.5mm so I still have a good 3-4mm under the truss rod. But it was scary just how quickly those microplanes remove material. I could do with making a carving jig that will allow me to get a measuring calliper around the neck without having to disassemble it every time I want to check thickness. I need to sort out the final headstock shape and thickness now before I can finish the carve. Also made a start on carving the bass neck. Very happy with how the veneer on the back fo the headstock came out but it needs a lot more sanding.

I'm going to be oiling the beck so I'm not too worried about damaging lacquer when I do the fret ends, although when I mentioned knocking off the sharp edges above, a rough dressing is essential what I meant.

I like em, if they're 2-3" thick you could make some nice bookmatched carve tops out of those. Mind sharing the source?

I bought it from WD Music UK on Amazon, the trem and bits came in a clear plastic bag with no markings, labels or spec sheet (everything else Gotoh that I've bought comes in a Gotoh box with a leaflet). When I queried it with the seller, they said that the product came in a clear plastic bag to reduce their/shipping storage costs because apparently they order so much from Gotoh... But the metal felt soft, saddles were flimsy, trem block wobbled when fully tight. It was clearly fake but fortunately they let me return it.

Got the other ones hammered in and bevelled over the weekend, The nickel wire was far more civilised I'm trying to pay special attention to rolling over the edge of the fretboards on these ones as I think it's something that's let me down in the passed, going to tidy the ends up with a levelling beam and knock off the sharp edges, then I'll probably leave the fretwork until after lacquer. On to carving the necks next, I've got a couple of new microplanes to play with

Indeed congrats, almost unanimous that, and rightly so but your fret ends alone were enough to sell it to me.

I bought the Gotoh vintage style trem and it was absolutely terrible, in fact I was convinced it was a fake and I sent it back for a refund, then got the Wilkinson one which is significantly better - it's a sturdy unit and I doubt you'd find much better at the price point. This is the one I'm referring to https://amzn.to/2sULja3

Impressive work you've done on that binding, it's turning into a seriously nice looking axe

@curtisa There's a rogue foot in nearly every photo and it wouldn't be xmas without a tiny of quality streets Frets are in the bass - I say frets, they're more like load-bearing steel girders, it's Sintoms 3mm stainless jumbo wire. Won't be in a rush to do these again for a while. They were a nightmare to get in. I bought pre radius (12") lengths so they didn't need bending (because my Crimson fretbender is shit and won't bend stainless) but I had to wick fine superglue into the ends and hold each one down for a min or so to keep the ends fully down. Got them all trimmed and bevelled this evening. I used my new Crimson end cutters as they were advertised as being able to to cut stainless frets. Happy to say they cut them with ease, in fact they were more efficient than trimming with the metal cutter on the dremel. Also made a start on the other one. Again using pre radiused lengths but this time it's Sintoms 18% nickel silver. I got them all cut to length and got the 24th fret in and glued, so I can leave it over night to dry so it doesn't work loose when I hammer the others in - this is the one where I was worried about the fret seating and staying in due to the inlay take up so much room. I flooded the slot with medium viscosity superglue before tapping it in. Happy to report it tapped in fine and stayed down, even in the middle where there isn't much to catch on to. More fretting tomorrow, I think I'm ahead of schedule

I'm no expert bass builder but I'm a good third of the way into my first bass build (also neck through) and I've built a fair few guitars and the principles are the same. Start off drawing a full scale plan, including drawing on the fret slots, bridge position, turner holes etc. That will give you all the information you need for the end of the fretboard and tell you how much space you have for the pickups. Also with any neck-through design, do as much as you possibly can on the neck before you glue the wings on. It's a very long piece of wood so drilling tuner holes in a drill press is awkward even without the body glued on. I've just finished inlaying my fretboard and I'll get it fretted and the neck at least rough carved before I glue the wings on. In terms of neck thickness, I was surprised that bass necks are actually often smaller than a lot of guitar necks. The one I'm working on has the taper of a musicman bongo 4, so it's only 41mm wide at the nut. A friend of mine as a 90s warrick which is even thinner at 39mm at the nut. So you can probably get away with as little as 43mm at the nut for a 5 string. If you want to reduce the thickness of the neck, you can always make the fretboard slightly thinner to allow you to keep more wood under the truss rod. But that is all stuff you can work out with a full scale plan.

Well I will forgive you, but only because it’s new year. Got the rest of the monkeys in, dots and filed everything down on the bass and also did the headstock logo. The ziricote fretboard still needs a fair bit of tidying up before I can start scratching in the details, but they’re both coming on nicely.

I've got a few titan tools and they're good. But I wouldn't buy that - reason being that all the titan tools I've seen have a really cheap base and fence, and the fence on a planer is crucial, if it's not square then it won't give you square joints. I've got the Triton thicknesser which I highly recommend, it's not a planer though so I do my right angles with a no7 plane or a router along a straight edge.

Got the pieces inlayed this evening. Started off by stick the pieces to another copy of the design to make sure they were in the right places. Then stuck that to fretboard so I could scalpel round it. Then use the dremel and plunger base to do the majority of the work. Took a couple of hours to get the pieces fitting nicely because I was fighting against the radius of the fretboard. Annoyingly I miscalculated the required thickness for the bone/knife handle and it was too thing at one end - The only way I could get it to go in properly was to snap it in the middle. I'll see what it looks like once it's all sanded flush and will maybe glue is some mop dust if needed. I filled in my hap hazard edges with ebony dust and super glue, but used some dust from ziricote sapwood on the lighter side (knowing that superglue tends to darken things up a bit). So we'll see what it looks like in the morning

Ah a graver, I knew what it was but wasn't sure what it's called. I don't have one but I've been using a scalpel to start off, then the corner of a small cabinet scraper to scratch in the details. I've been meaning to buy a couple of those wax sticks too but up until now I've just been using dust and super glue to fill in those areas. Thank you for the very kind offer but I won't blight you with the ballache of international shipping. I'll get some ordered as I could do with a few colours.

You can’t mix water based stains with lacquer to tint, you need alcohol based stains. Alcohol stains will also be better for producing the northern lights affect because they don’t mix as well with previous dry stain coats. In fact the best way I’ve found to achieve it is to use a waterbased stain for the base colour, let that dry fully over night, then stain with the contrasting alcohol stain because water based won’t mix with alcohol based. ive got all the crimson stains, the denim blue is so light that it really does very little when mixing. The pithos blue is quite green, very “Caribbean” looking, the royal blue is by far the best, and can be lightened up by diluting. the quilted semi hollow les Paul I’m working will be a northern lights (ish) purple. I’m going to do a base coat of water based royal blue, slightly diluted, sant it back a little, then use crimson red alcohol based stain for the top layer. Red will contrast much better with the blue, then if it needs it I might give it a small amount of purple, possibly in the middle or as a burst.

digression inception

There is a difference IMO between bartering for an off the shelf item that anyone can buy and bartering for a commissioned piece built to someones requirements. Anyway, this has gone way off topic, sorry @mistermikev

Yeah I think any kind of art/craft/woodworking project where you’re charging for a finished piece, if someone wants to drill you down on price, they should be told where to go.

Mike, what you describe there about friends asking is precisely how I got into building for others. The good thing about them being friends is that I was able to say very clearly that “it will cost £n for parts and consumables which you must pay up front and it will take as long as it takes.” I’ve adopted the same approach for friends of friends and customers I don’t know at all but with a bit more tact, and the £n for parts is now labelled “deposit” with the addition of £y for labour on collection. That approach has served me quite well so far, but I do get the odd enquiry that requires an hour long conversation on messenger before they disappear into the ether. That being said, one of those conversations turned into an unexpected deposit 6 months later. The trouble with relying almost completely on the internet for new business is that a lot of “enquiries” are a waste of time. All that being said, if I could do it for a living, I’d give up tech in a heartbeat

@Andyjr1515 I wanted to say thanks for the tips on the inlay saw. I followed your recommendation on the axminster blades and got a decent adjustable saw to go with it. It's made a huge difference to my capabilities. Had a first go with the new saw this morning and cut out my logo, much closer to the line than I have before, you can see the corners that I cut in the offucts, I wouldn't have dreamt of cutting that with my coping saw. Then tonight and with a bit more confidence, I finally made a start on Snuffy's skull inlay, I was amazed at just how quickly those tiny blades cut through mop and how easy it is to cut around tight corners. About 2 ours of progress this evening. I'm now drinking a medicinal JD to cure my neck-ache

looking flippin awesome @komodo What's the rationale behind spraying prior to glueing the neck in? I've never seen that done before.

Hello mate, hope you had a good Xmas. That is a fair and reasonable question, I expect the only one that will be a problem will be the 24th and will probably end up using superglue, tapping the ends in and clamping in for a few hours with a fret caul. I’m not using stainless frets so I don’t foresee any serious pains in the arse

Been a bit quiet on my builds lately. Haven't done a huge amount other than tidying up the workshop and having a bit of a change around. I've now got 2 work benches that I can actually use I got this record extractor a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed at just how much it's improved the efficiency of drum sander - the makeshift vacuum attachement just wasn't efficient enough at removing the dust so it would clog up the paper and burn. I now get better results with fewer passes and the paper seems to last longer. I got a new workmate from my dad for xmas (he clearly want's his black and decker workmate back This one is bigger, yet folds up smaller and less wobbly so a definite improvement. I'm planning to put a router table insert in there, There is room where the Bosh logo is. Had some time today to finish shaping the inlay pieces and get them in - first time using a Dremel and plunge router bass instead of doing it by hand, Much faster than doing it all with modelling chisels. I did have a couple of slight wobbles with the dremel, but ziricote dust and super glue did a much better job of hiding mistakes than I thought it would.

Chances are the slot was too shallow in one spot, or there was some dust in there that compressed under the fret creating a shallow spot, the other thing that happens, if you don't get the edges of the fret seated prior to hammering the middle, the fret flattens out and its harder to the edges down, especially with stainless steel frets. You could try the steam/soldering iron trick, but my experience with wenge is that it's very hard and quite brittle, so it will be less affective as it is with other woods.