Nicco

Pickup cavities routed. 2 steps forward and one backward, have a couple of little whoops to tidy up. Bridge location locked in and holes for the pins drilled. Need to drill holes for the volume and tone pots, drill the tuner holes in the headstock, then I can join the neck to the body. I want to glue, but reserve the right to bolt it on. Ha ha

Thanks mate. Yeah, there is a little crack in it that's opened up. I'll have to work out what to do with it during finishing

And it's surprisingly quick to do that way too. It was only half to maybe an hour to get the thing almost done. I definitely spent a lot longer than that sharpening the spoke shave! Ha ha

Neck pocket now cut - that's seriously the most pucker factor in the whole build! I really need to learn how to do it in a better way! I've started shaping the neck now too. I got a spoke shave ages ago for the job, spent way too much time sharpening it and then still couldn't get it to stop chattering. Grr! It's a convex bottom one, which at the time I bought it was A) the only one available from the hardware, and I didn't know about flat bottom vs convex. I think it was mostly an operator error type issue with the angle of attack changing throughout the cut. Ended up resorting to a rasp and just faceted it in to shape.

Frets in! Excuse the mess!

That is going to look sensational!!

Phew! Good to know, Scott. I read as much as I could find about it, but it's still a bit nervey buying something that big. Ha ha So, I spose the next question about the fretboard is what should I put on it to protect it? I oiled the last one, but I'm not sure if this one needs the same? I'm doubting it?

Story of my life.

Today I got the fretboard sanded up to 1200 grit. Very lurvely! You can also see the new band saw which finally turned up in the background, just a week after the last cut on this guitar with the jigsaw. Oh well, I'll just have to make another one after this then.

Hrmm, yep, very good point. Having said that, it doesn't look like it's cupped in the long axis (the off cuts have cupped that way as well) so seemingly you're on the money. The temps here have backed off a bit, and with cool changed the cupping has also settled a smidge. I'll keep thinning the face down and see where we end up. Worst comes to worst I'll try again. Thanks again for the help

Hi Biz, thanks for the response, mate. True, that makes a bit of sense about the ply directions in the plywood - I'm 90% sure it's 3 ply, with the two face plys being the same grain direction as the qld maple piece I've stuck it to. The middle layer would be cross grain. I would have been better cutting the ply piece 90 degrees out from what I've done. The ply is 2.3mm thick, so not super thick. Ultimately I was hoping to get the thickness of the qld maple down such that the ratio of ply to maple thickness is about 2:1. My original thought (hope) being that the thin maple section would be able to apply less bending force than the relatively thicker ply could withstand. Potentially by thinning the qld maple now I could reduce some of the tension that's happening in the piece. Problem is that's harder to do now that the piece is cupped. Hrmm.

I need a little advice here please, team. I popped out to the shed yesterday and noticed the main control cover of the bass not sitting right. I picked it up and it seems it's pretty badly cupped. The cap timber I've used for it is pretty keen to cup anyway, the off cuts I've got are all warped to buggery. I hoped by veneering it by vacuum pressing onto the laser cut, plywood substrate that it would hold flat, but seemingly not. I also thinned it from the original 5mm thick down to about 3mm as soon as I took it from the vac bag, but the final thickness of the veneer will need to be down around 1mm. To aid with wood stability () we've also had a week of 40+ degree days which probably puts the shed temps up over 50 deg c My thoughts from here were to possibly damp the timber and put it back in the vac bag until I'm ready to bring it down to final thickness? Maybe even chock the edges a smidge to give it a "back bend" of sorts?

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

This post is going to be pic heavy (yay, progres! Ha ha) Got a few milestones ticked over on the weekend. For the body; cavity covers laser cut. The inner cover on the main cavity is to hide the electronics, that one is screwed in place because, hopefully, it'll almost never need to be removed. The main cover, which had the battery box accessible, plus the little central one for the jack adaptor are held on with magnets as they will be accessed more regularly. I struggled with the magnets last time, so I allowed enough spaces for about 20 magnets per cover and just added them one or two at a time until they held on properly. Being through holes, it made drilling the locations a breeze. I only needed 3 magnets in the central cover and 4 in the main one in the end, so good result. I then veneered the faces. Main cover is Queensland maple from the face, the central cover is bunya pine, same as the body blank, but it does look a little pale in comparison. I'll see how it looks with finish, but I may need to remake it. On the neck: truss rod channel cut, fretboard glued down, headstock thicknessed and shaped, neck sides cut and flushed to the fretboard, then the fretboard radiused. My band saw still hasn't turned up, so I had to trim it with the jigsaw. The blade always swings to the right so I kept that away from the cut... except this time it swung left and took off the corner of the neck blank that'll be in the neck pocket. Grrr! Managed a sneaky repair by glittering back on the off cut. Also, I had quite a bit of tear out on the fret board from hitting it with a plane that probably needed to be a touch sharper. I only planned it for about 30 seconds, but yeah, the damage was deep in a few spots. Managed to sand most of it out, had a couple of spots to fill with super glue and dust and they've disappeared nicely. Going to be a busy few weeks of family commitments coming up, so that's probably all I'm going to have done until well into February.

Hell end of the fret board is now shaped and bound. Next step is to trim all the gidgee binding down to final thickness, it'll be about 1mm wide in the end. I have actually filled the little gap that was left by doing the bunya pine strip in the gidgee outer, but because of the glue and not having sanded it all to final shape it looks like a gap in this photo. I realised after I finished the binding the other day, I should have done the heel first, but oh well! Ha ha

I got a good run at the fretboard yesterday. Managed to finish the fret slots, cut the fret markers, bind the fretboard with 0.6mm bunya pine veneer (same as the body blank) and then line the outside edge with more gidgee. Will make sense in the photos. Ha ha. I've got stone shaping and binding to do still on the heel end of the board, plus final trimming to width, but it's all coming together. I'm not keen to try this kind of fret marker again though. My bandsaw hasn't turned up yet, so I had to cut it all with a handsaw. Trying to keep everything straight and perpendicular to the centre line was and absolute pain, and all the little fiddly bits to inlay were a trouble too. Definitely doing something easier next time. Ha ha

It's definitely pretty, I'm chuffed with it. I'm also pretty sure gidgee loosely translates to "hard as f..." Lol

Firstly, merry Christmas to everyone. Things are progressing very slowly at the moment, between fighting off killer daycare bugs that the little fella brought home with him, and with temperatures being up over 40 deg C lately. Urgh!! I have managed to mostly cut the fret slots using my little mitre box jig again. This gidgee is much much harder than the timber I used on the first guitar, the little saw is getting a proper workout now! Ha ha

This is absolutely sensational. The engineer in me is loving the attention to detail and how meticulous your work is. It's a pleasure to follow along.

Wow! That looks absolutely sensational! Nicely done

Congratulations Mike on the win!

And yes, I realise the bridge is upside down in that photo. My brain thinks this way up looks more correct and keeps putting it that way. Better make sure I'm being super careful with that when I'm fitting it. Ha ha ha

Ha ha ha, see how it looks when it comes out of the oven, hey? Thanks again fellas. Very happy with how it's coming along so far. Snuck half an hour in while the little fella had his arvo nap. Still refining, but had to throw the bridge and pickups in place to see how it looks.

The carving continues. Still more to go, but starting to hone in on it

Top tip there, Biz! Something easy to gloss over if you're not thinking about it.