Andyjr1515

Reference the sequence of glue / carve, I've decided to trust arithmetic and scale drawings Basically, as long as I carve the curves to this full-size template, I shouldn't break through. Here's hoping! And so out came the router. I've left extra thickness where I'm going to do any carving through the layers, scoops or strap button points: And then - an essential step for the final carve - a template of exactly where those chambers are. Like when I'm veneering, I just make an impression on sheets of paper. It does fine. And finally - what was that mantra about how many clamps you need, again?

From the look of the weather forecast, I'll have plenty of time over the next few days for guitar building! Just as well, really, because the next part is probably going to take the longest - carving the oak. I need to get all of the weight I'm intending to remove out of the oak before I put the top on. One of those tasks is easy - I must have been daydreaming when I cut the 'LP-Junior' style control chamber hole: Clearly, regardless of how little is going to fit into this chamber, the larger it is, the more weight will come out. So I will first cut the largest chamber cover I can from the amboyna (or maybe from the neck laminations) offcuts, and that will be the guide to the largest chamber hole I can cut. In the meantime, I will start on the concave carve at the back and the hidden lightening chambers in the oak . The finished cross section will be broadly like this: There's no best sequence of doing this - if I carve the back first, then holding everything steady while I try and rout and carve the chambers is tricky. But if I rout and cave the chambers first, I have to absolutely know that I'm not going to break through when I start carving the concave... I'll have a ponder on that little conumdrum... In the meantime, I've tapered and bound the fretboard and also rough tapered the neck: For the binding, as mentioned above I've tried the technique I used on my own Swift Lite of using an acoustic guitar edge binding to make it easier to produce a neat and un-wavy feature line. It's certainly MUCH easier that trying to glue flat sheets of maple and ebony veneer to the back of the fretboard! :

I like that battery holder, Jez. It looks simple but effective. The commercial offerings are often neither.

With the control chamber cut out, it was time to glue the back panels: It will need a final flattening before the top is glued on, but is pretty flat as glued: The back will be concave curved as with my own Swift Lite build - you can see how much will be removed from the inner areas of the panels here: Also tapered the fretboard. I'm going to try the trick of using fretboard binding with a feature stripe again. Here's the binding being glued. The vertical lump of ply is to stop the two cauls from collapsing inwards:

I use a veritas sharpening jig on a diamond steel, then two grades of japanese waterstone. Whenever I try and do things like that freehand, I end up with curves instead of flat faces

And onto the oak. I blunted all of my tools and saw blades today getting the joint faces of the oak panels ready for attachment and cutting the oversize outline. Man, it's tough stuff. And to think they used to build ships out of the stuff! : Long, long way to go on this - but it IS already starting to look like a guitar...

Seemed to spend a lot of today down the cellar with routers, band saw, scroll saw, etc, etc but relatively little to show for it! Most of the work has been getting the neck ready for adding the oak back wings but it's been more about squaring up and getting things flat and parallel rather than anything special to see. While I was down there, though, I did push my hobby-grade bandsaw to its limit to cut a slice of amboyna offcut for the headstock plate: ...and then get it on the scroll saw to give me the plate ready to glue. Also added the two small wings on the headstock to give me the required width: The other thing I've done is drawn the body section full size to work out the convex / concave curves top and back so tomorrow, should be able to cut the two oak panels....

Yes - a piccolo bass is generally pitched one octave higher than a standard bass, same pitch as an electric guitar. However, depending on the strings, pickups, etc, they have their own sound...definitely not electric guitar sounding.

I got it at the Wood Veneer Hub here If you open the drop down box, the 1.5 and 2mm stuff is listed under 'Constructional Veneers' For most, you need to call to see what stocks of what sizes they have and for them to find out if it can be cut or not, ref the transport.

I'll dig out the specific supplier in the morning, but basically if you google 'constructional veneer' you should get some leads. The constructional veneer is usually 2mm.

Added the wenge constructional veneer (2mm) to the back of the Amboyna: And then got the fretboard radiusing jig out for its second blooding: It's not perfect, but nevertheless did get me to this stage in an hour or so rather than a day or so! : You can't really see it in this photo, but there's some lovely birdseye on this piece that will pop out when it's had the finish applied I'm sure I'll hit some sort of brick wall soon but, at the moment, it's buzzing along

Outstanding! Beautiful, beautiful job

Love the light demarcation stripes, @Bastav. Very classy.

Well that certainly makes more sense....

I agree with @Bassalarky that usually, the bridge pickup would be higher resistance than the neck. Interestingly, looking at the Fender website, for their modern 'Vintage Noiseless' Jazz sets, the bridge is, indeed, the higher value. But the 'Pure Vintage '74' has the neck higher than the bridge. I get the impression from the decriptions on their marketing blurb, that the Pure Vintage is specifically trying to get warm low end and high mid range, whereas the Vintage Noiseless is trying to tame that mid end a bit. All of the Seymour Duncan sets seem to have the bridge higher so, unless you are pitching for a very specific effect, then I would have thought the resistances you quote are very much in the 'normal' ranges and should sound fine.

Well, I've joined the same club with making a body out of oak in the present build. In luthier circles, that puts me into the category of plagues of locusts and generations of social exclusion Tom's African Build (there's a tortuously long thread in the archives) taught me that the body can pretty much be made out of anything, providing you've got a decent neck and anchorage We all look forward to seeing this one finished and the next one revealed

You'd see a great big hole. It's a Squier VM Jaguar under the veneer and originally had a full sized scratch plate. As such, the control chamber route carries onto a swimming pool for the P pickups. This was in the days before I started taking loads of in progress shots so I don't think I've got any shots of what's underneath it. Apologies @soopercrip for the thread de-rail. Let's get back to your project

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about. First - the reason I think Tru-oil is an excellent way of starting off on your first finishing project: Don't be confused with the term 'oil' It is the consistency of oil when you apply it, but it hardens to a hard, dry lacquer finish. It is NOT as tough by any stretch as a modern 'bullet-proof' poly finish but it is fit for purpose for normal guitar and bass wear and tear It is cheap - a small bottle is all you need for at least one bass or guitar and, other than is does start going off over a few months if it's in an opened bottle, often two or three It is very easy to apply. You basically wipe it on with a lint-free cloth or you can use a fine lacquer brush It is quick. You can do at least a couple of coats a day. The final hardening takes a little longer - a week or so for fully hard (but that's still a lot quicker than nitro!) It is very unreactive. It goes onto most things quite successfully - bare wood, spirit-based stained wood, water-based stained wood It is very easy to re-do You can buff it to satin or build it up to gloss It is very easy to repair - both at the time of application or even after years of use I have done a lot of projects using stain and tru-oil. Stains can be spirit stains (Chestnut do a good range of wood-coloured and a smaller 'poster colour' range - and you can get a couple of sample pack of the whole range of each where each small bottle is plenty for a bass) Crimson do a range of decent stains, although the quantity in each bottle would probably be enough for 20 basses! I use ink but you do have to choose carefully because some specific colours and types do fade. Anyway - two or three examples. This is what I mean about the grain showing through. This one has no grain fill, just stain, then a number of coats of tru-oil, wiped on: But with Tru-oil, you can also go for a sheen rather than a gloss. This one (same guitar - I was experimenting with different techniques) is stained, then the tru-oil applied, but wiped off and buffed with a cloth before it's dried: You can see on the cloth, some of the stain in the initial buffs does come off but, if you are gentle, it leaves enough not to show a light patch. Once each coat has dried, the subsequent coats of apply and buff fix the stain into the finish and you don't get this problem or any of the stain coming off on the players hands (I use this approach for most of my stained necks, even if the rest of the bass is gloss, and I haven't had anyone finish a gig with red hands, yet ) This one below is a crazily bobbly veneer (it's a type of Finnish birch) but, again, just stained and then multiple coats of Tru-oil (all from one small bottle) : This one is just Tru-oil applied to unstained wood: Here's the veneered front: ...and here's the sanded and tru-oiled basswood back (no grain fill): This one above is my own fretted bass, pics taken just after it was done and - other than it's dropped to a high sheen rather than true gloss - it still looks the same today, 7 years later. This is today (and to my knowledge, it's never been polished - just played): There are other products around - and some are excellent - but Tru-oil is by far the most forgiving I've ever used at the same time as producing a variety of excellent results that I'm still more than happy to use where appropriate on even high-value commissions. Hope this helps. If you do go that route, let us all know and we can give you no end of hints and tips of how to use it to get these types of results.

Sorry - I'm a bit late on this despite @Spondonbassed 's flattering words! I'll post a bit more tomorrow with some examples, but I wouldn't worry too much about 'traditional' grain fillers - they can be much more trouble than they are worth. If you are going for a trans dye finish, I would suggest that Tru-oil is the easiest way of obtaining a potentially excellent result. It is very un-reactive to dyes, easy to apply, easy to reapply, relatively quick to dry and can be used to produce a relatively glossy finish or a matt finish. Ref the grain fill, assuming that you are not aiming for hiding the wood grain, then you can use none at all - just seal it and fill with progressive coats of the Tru-oil, or you can use their own 'Sealer Filler' - this is smellier than truoil itself but seals quicker than just the oil and fills voids and porosity with a fully transparent fill. The two products are both completely compatible with each other. I'll post a few examples and threads in the morning that might help the decision.

With the two halves of amboyna fitted and glued, I ran it through the scroll saw this morning. So, definitely time for the first mock-up!

I'm sure not I think with my builds, fate has ample opportunity to do its worst whatever

Happily not

Soon time to draw the first blood and start cutting wood. I've sorted the join line of the amboyna and tweaked the shape a little - actually, this will probably be tweaked 0.5cm wider either side of the centre line and bring the upper waist down a bit steeper round the lower bout, but this is the kind of shape: This evening I will glue the two halves together and tomorrow, cut out the shape. Some of you will know that I use the fancy top as the routing template - absolutely not recommended by most builders so I don't encourage you to do likewise.

Never seen this before and can't quite get my head around how it's been done. Remarkable achievement, actually.

Oh - I will be chambering...and some...too