Let me begin with this: I don't know anything about basses, I'm a sax player, but I've always wanted to learn. And I've been itching for a while to build one because it looks like fun. The plan is to build this one and then learn how to play it. I'm a moderately capable woodworker with a decent collection of tools and have watched a ton of videos about guitar building in general.
I've always loved the classic look of the Fender Jazz Bass, so that's what I'm working on for my first project. I plan to go with a natural finish and no pickguard. I found full-scale technical drawings of the J Bass somewhere online and have already prepared an MDF template to use for routing the shape of the body.
I purchased a rough cut ash slab in August, and it finally got dry enough to work with last month. It's 56" long, 1 3/4" thick, and averages 14" wide, I'm hoping to be able to cut two bodies out of this in case I have problems. The width is just barely enough for a single-piece body. You'd think there would be plenty of length for two bodies, but now that it has dried, it has a few issues.
It's bowed on both length (about 3/8" gap at the middle) and width (about 1/8" gap at the middle. I should be able to correct this in the flattening process, but it means losing some thickness. It also has a bad check (crack) at one end about 12" long, a bad knot and additional checking at the other end, and some smart imperfections in the middle.
I figure I have two options:
1) Cut out two single-piece bodies as originally planned, cutting around the worst cracks and filling in the knots and other lesser cracks with epoxy as needed.
2) Cut the board lengthwise and get several smaller pieces (probably three each) to glue up into the two bodes, allowing me to not have to work with any of the imperfections.
So that's my first question: which of these options would be recommended by those who have done this before?
I'm documenting progress on my Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/sethgali/) if you'd like to see examples of the issues with the slab. I'm not fishing for followers, I've just already started the process there.
I'm open to any and all advice on this project, so please fire away. Thanks in advance for your help.
Seth