Andyjr1515

I do the neck carve over two or three days. I do the carve with a combination of templates - based on profile drawings I got the prospective owner to take off his favourite playing bass - and feel. The bit that takes the longest, usually, is the heel where the feel of the transition is what matters most. However, when you do things by feel, I find it helps if you come back to it from time to time when your hand has forgotten the shape and is re-sensitised. I’m pleased, though, with the first day’s progress. First, I cut a stiff plasticard template from the measurements sent. It's based on a Lakland 44-64 and it's interesting that it's very subtly asymmetric. The closest equivalent I can think of is a Stevie Ray Vaughan 6 string electric : As with @eude's, I use a spokeshave for the very early bulk removal: But quickly move over to microplane and cabinet scrapers to give me a much more controllable cut: This is the result of the first stage: It’s getting relatively close to the template shapes but, more to the point, it is starting to feel right. You can see why I leave the back carve to late in the process. If I get it right, the neck radius will smoothly disappear as the player progresses into the full body thickness at the upper frets. This is the demarcation you get from doing that slightly odd back-to front-binding. It looks great when you add luminlay black-surround side dots in the middle

Great - that's what I hoped to hear. Thanks I've used mahogany for necks in the past, but non as soft as this. I does seem pretty strong, though, as you say. Thanks for the confirmation Andy

Well that was worth doing. Absolutely rock solid! Phew... Still quite a bit to do, but I think we're on the home straight

And next the headstock. I don't know about other builders, but I find the headstocks are often one of the 'make or break' aspects of the build. Basically, you want to keep the string runs as straight as possible - and certainly avoid two strings touching, while preserving the overall shape that you are aiming for. To do this, I personally always draw things out full size, and with the actual hardware I'm going to use. This is again one of those 'check three times, drill once' jobs. @eude sent me his preferred tuners and I'd already got hold of the correct sized nut so I had those to hand. Here's the template after some careful measuring : I can't achieve fully straight string runs with this headstock shape, but, with some careful positioning of the tuners, can get close. Basically the only strings at any angle are the two middle ones, and they are only angles very slightly. Note also - seems obvious but trust me, it's a tip learned from bitter experience - that the layout is always with the tuner knobs flat on. For those who are not sure why, I won't spoil the satisfaction of realising EXACTLY why that is So out with a 15mm forstner and we have a trial fit: Soon I am going to do a trial stringing - and for a specific reason. Something I've discussed with @eude has been just how soft the mahogany has turned out to be now I've started carving it. It's beautifully even grained quarter-sawn and it's from a top supplier...but it is very soft. Happily, the neck itself feels as solid as a rock. The volute is substantial. It has carbon reinforcement. It is a wide neck which gives disproportionately more strength than the extra string tension. It has a solid central walnut splice. It should be absolutely fine. But I'd like to make sure sooner rather than later @Christine , @Jimothey - in your professional careers, have you come across this? Is it likely to affect the bending strength? In terms of long stop - whether now or in its playing future - I have the advantage that it is a bolt-on neck and so it would not be the end of the world if I needed to build another neck. But I'll have a much better feel for it once I see how it fares with full string tension on it. Well - you can never say that my builds aren't exciting!

Love it

I've obviously led a sheltered life

Bit more progress on this. Tapered the neck to a touch oversize against the fretboard, installed the trussrod and glued on the fretboard: I also took a couple of slices off some poplar offcut for the headstock plate and the control chamber cover. Starting to look like a bass now

Still creeping up on the final neck and heel carve. Starting to get there but still a way to go: Once the carve is broadly right, I'm going to do an early string up and finalise the profile while I have some strings on so I can really feel whether the shape works or needs some slight adjustment. Still a bit more to come off the heel, but the transition is starting to look a little more elegant from the side: Oh - and just to get a view of how wide a sixer neck is, look at @eude 's next to the Swift Lite build: I'm really enjoying both of these builds - SO different to each other but both are very satisfying in a scary sort of a way

Probably not going to be able to get much done tomorrow so, just to make sure @eude doesn't have some sort of seizure, I thought I'd better do a bit more this evening. One fitted katalox chamber cover ready for the magnets to be fitted

touché! (sorry - don't know the dutch for that) Yes - most of my builds are neck through also. In fact, thinking about it, all of my own builds are - not only for this reason, but so I can go super slim and reduce the weight accordingly Beautiful build, by the way

One of the things I will do, having done a bit of air-bass playing - and having already checked first with @eude - is to scoop the back of the lower cutaway here to give some knuckle clearance for reaching the 24th frets: The treble side of the heel will also be slimmed as far as the security of the joint will allow. It won't change the front view at all, but will make the playing experience much better up at the dusty end.

And while I'm pondering on the carve, the glue on the headstock plate may as well be setting. Don't panic, by the way - the two G clamps are clamping onto a katalox offcut caul, not the headstock plate itself

It's been a while since I did a mahogany neck - and I'd forgotten JUST how easily it carves. Thank goodness for the carbon rods! The spokeshave took around 30minutes to sharpen and about 7 minutes to get to the stage where I needed to stop using it lest I took too much off! Then onto the micro plane to get the rough carve of the volute and heel transition. This took a further 10 minutes: I don't use a handle on the micro-planes. I just wear gloves and sometimes use it on pull and sometimes on push, then for the join up of heel to nut I just lightly drag it along a bit like a gentle spokeshave. All the time, of course, I am going nowhere near the spine, which is already at final thickness. Another 15 minutes or so with cabinet scrapers and some basic sanding and it's at the stage to stop and assess the feel and look, both for the main part of the neck and also consider how deep to scoop at the body transition. I find it a lot easier to assess this in 'air bass' style to actually feel where it works and where it doesn't. As a number of you know, I'm a bit quirky in that actually finalise the neck scrape and finish once the bass is fully strung and playable. Anyway, this is how it is at the end of stage 1. I will now leave it a while and come back to it to work out where to carve, and how much to carve, next. But, in the meantime, it's definitely starting to look like a bass now :

So far - although there's always room for the 'whoopsie' - so good. In fact, my very last job before lunch break is sharpening the tools for the neck carve Having checked the position that many times until I was bored with it, the fretboard got glued: Note the useful squeeze-out covering the wretchedly hazardous carbon fibre cut faces While that was drying, I put an ebony demarcation veneer on the back of the headstock plate: And while THAT was drying, cut the rebate for the control panel cover, hiding all of the previous screwholes (the new cover will have magnetic catches) I managed to get a 4mm slice off an offcut of the katalox (my bottom-end Axminster bandsaw, though slow, is proving to be quite capable!), which will sand down to 3mm to sit flush: So, while this looks the same as before, the difference is the fretboard it is now firmly glued: ...and the headstock plate firmly demarcate-able : And the neck and heel and volute are ready to carve

Yes - the arbortech heads are very good. I have a friend who uses them for carving wood sculptures. I suppose that I've had and seen so many instances where 'one slip spells disaster' - routers are a prime example - I tend to favour the methods where you creep up on the final shape. Having discovered the joys of working with wood only in the last 5 years or so, it's also part of the enjoyment. Clearly, I can only do that because it's essentially a hobby and therefore my time isn't costed into the equation.

Yes - a grinder in my hands would probably take ALL the remaining years off my life I start with a spokeshave to just get rid of the corners, then move onto micro-planes and then onto cabinet scrapers. With mahogany, this is usually a surprisingly quick process but even with rock maple it's pretty quick. Often, sharpening the blades and re-burring the scrapers takes longer than the initial carve! Actually, the volute and heel transitions take me the longest because those are more dependant on the other factors of body shape and headstock shape.

It's beautiful, @Bridgehouse

I love neck carving. Best bit of a build...

Only if I get it wrong

Dank u wel And...back to the project While the neck was still flat and unencumbered by fretboards and headstock plates, I popped it on my router thicknessing rig - with the nut end packed up by 1mm - to get the spine of the neck at the right thickness to end up with a 22.5mm - 23.5mm thickness across the whole length - matching @eude 's favourite playing neck for this kind of bass. And so tomorrow is a big day - if all is well once I've checked and double checked and triple checked everything, the fretboard will get glued to the neck and the headstock plate may well get glued to the headstock!

Merci beaucoup! (Just getting all the non-english words I know out before the rest of the EU casts us out into the North Sea and stop talking to us!)

@eude and I had a discussion about the swifts logos. Yes, they could be the normal Mother of Pearl - but I floated whether it was worth me trying ebony for a change. We both decided that it could look really cool to have the coordinated contrast - and that, if it proved just too difficult, we could always revert to MoP. Was cutting the ebony easier than MoP? Actually no - MoP doesn't have grain so small features are never going to be 'cross grain' and snap (they do snap, but not that often). But, after 2-3 fails, I ended up with 3 that were good enough to scribe around before routing: Then mixed some katalox dust with epoxy to glue them and gap fill at the same time. Sanded and a quick coat of tru-oil gave me this: Well, I think that adds a certain je ne sais quoi, don't you?

I think the binding is going to work well. Once the fingerboard has been scraped and finished and the binding corner rounded off, it should look pretty integral and - more to the point - it should work well from a playing perspective. I think this may well become my preferred method: Next task will be to cut the pickup chambers but that will probably be at the weekend earliest

The katalox headstock halves are now thicknessed and joined. I will leave the overhang until it's ready to fit - overhangs are useful for clamping, etc! It will be tomorrow before I get to it, but for the swifts logo I'm going to try something a little bit different. No matter if it ends up as a fail - it will be fully reversible My plan is to get this and the fretboard fitted and the neck carve started before the weekend...then I reckon we are getting close to the 'final furlong' Fingers crossed.

Yes - I'm afraid so. Mind you, it's a clone, bar some small tweaks, of @Len_derby 's so hopefully you'll be able to see that one