Andyjr1515

@Fishman asked me if I could do a quick mock-up to see how the rest of it looks with this stain. Seems mean to keep you all from a gratuitous mock-up Going to look alright, I reckon

Ref the smell, not obviously when I was sanding it (then again, I was wearing a mask), but it did have that sort of hint when I was heating it to remove it. Seems quite oily so could be...

A couple of hours sanding this morning and ready for the second reveal stain. The small dark patch is a stained fill of a small insect exit hole - the stain is sanded off before the full re-stain trial. Figuring-wise, there are allsorts going on with this timber. There have been a couple of times I have been convinced there's a dirt mark or old stain only to find, after rigorous further sanding, that it's in the timber! Here's pre-stain : And here it is with a first reveal coat of both the stain and tru-oil. Ignore the surface texture - that will be quite different once I've 'done the stuff' - but the colour is probably representative:

Clearly to check the effect of the angled pickup 'scientifically' you would need to do a V rout and an A / B comparison. But, on my less scientific measure of the sound of Jazz type basses with the angle and without, then yes - for the bridge pickup - it makes a tangible difference. To my ear, the top G on many basses is noticably more trebly than the other strings. With this change, that effect goes away and sounds much more balaced across the strings. On the other hand, the same angle on the neck pickup makes no tonal difference to my ear.

I think it's safe to say that Walnut was made for Tru-oil

Great job!

Beautiful job! Good fusion of designs too

You do have to be very careful with some of the inlays. The old pearloid Fender & Gibson blocks don't fare well at all But hmmm - in terms of a heated separator, it's actually difficult to do that. You have to get a lot of heat into the glue before you can even get a razor-blade in - this one was 15-20 minutes at full setting! Getting that much heat into something the thickness of a razor blade would be out of reach of most DIY technologies. Once you get it going, however, there is more chance - it is actually one of the reasons I use the acoustic guitar side bender protection sheet - it holds the heat while it's creeping forward. Nevertheless, even if you were wafting a gas burner onto the sheet steel, because it is so thin, I'm still doubtful that enough heat would be transferred to do the job. However - I have found that fretted boards are a lot easier. Luthier suppliers have heating blocks with grooves in so you can heat the wood and not the frets. But I use a standard iron, because I WANT to heat the frets - because the heat goes very quickly down the tangs to almost the glue line - as well as the wood, even though the iron is a frets depth clear of the surface.

With @Jus Lukin 's headless sitting for a week while the finish hardens, then @Fishman has unfettered Andyjr1515 time (other than the fettering that MrsAndyjr1515 imposes, of course ). During the afternoon, I've been finishing off any remaining rough sanding stuff and got to the first sanding stage down the grits. This is fist stage finer down to around 180 grit: At this stage, before I go any finer, I have to know that any 'greater than 180 grit scratches' are identified so that I can dispense with those with some fresh 180 paper - and then I can go finer to get rid of any 180 grit scratches, and so on. It is, however, almost impossible to see these kinds of scratches on bare sanded wood so I use a 'reveal' coat of whatever is my first finish - which in this case is the stain. So, knowing that all of this will be sanded off whatever, a coat of stain goes on: And, hey presto, I found one small area with some oscillating sander 'snail trails' I'd missed and then these cross-sanding marks near the bridge: So tomorrow, I will sand those two areas clear of the aberrations, then sand all of the stain off, and then do 'reveal coat 2' to make absolutely sure it's clear of unwanted sanding marks. If it is, I will then drop to 240 grit before starting the 'proper' staining coats.

Fretboard levelled and re-finished. Just the nut to cut - I'm using a Graphtech Tusq blank from my bits box and it will be slotted to just shy of the fretboard top.

And............STOP This is OK as the final coat of the top Any more and I will wreck it and have to start the process all over again (and ask me how I know that! ) So this will now sit somewhere safe for a week, to harden off enough for me to start installing the pickups and electrics. And then we just have to wait for lockdown to lift enough to be able to meet @Jus Lukin halfway to pass it across So, in the best broadcasting tradition, "This time next week, pop back to see the progress with another thrilling instalment of 'It's a bass, Jim'. And coming up over on our other channel, follow Andyjr1515's trials and tribulations in 'A Very Special Save..' where Andy is preparing to get his rags dirty!"

...and this is where many of the 'old hands' started. Certainly it is where I did. We are in a bit of a 'golden age' of guitars and basses where, often, the main functional differentiation between entry level instruments and many prop-quality ones are the hardware and electrics. The build and finish quality of the modern HB/ Epiphone / Squier /etc / etc basses and guitars is stunning at any level...but on an 'at the price' level, they are off the scale

OK - this looks a bit better than the 5mm gap in the middle that there was before The joints both sides are good with just a light run-down of the glue joint to do with a single-edged razor. Funnily enough, not to take any glue off, but to remove this teeny edge either side: Basically, fretboards shrink a touch when you iron them off...but actually often shrink over time in any case. Ever had fret ends get a bit sharp on a new bass after a year or so? That's the wood shrinking and leaving the fret ends exposed a teeny bit. With the heel end of the board flush, this looks at first glance like shrinkage of the length of the board but is actually just where sanding the neck surface flat prior to fixing the board has cut into the headstock / neck curve. This will have a touch of finish applied to colour match: The adjuster, although smaller than the original, remains in the right position for access for the allen key via the body recess: So a tidy up of the edges, a final levelling and re-treatment of the fretboard, cutting of a new nut (the original didn't like being removed) and we can get this back to @Raslee

Based on the number of scars on my fingers, I'm not sure I still do! This is great! I'm a big fan of Harley Bentons and you've done this one proud, @Mutley Splendid job.

Well, it seemed a waste of overnight glue curing time not to mask it, glue it and clamp it this evening: And yes - you can NEVER have too many clamps (or cauls, for that matter ) Fingers crossed!

Next steps were to put some packing strip in the bottom of the original trussrod slot to level it out from its original curved single-action rod rout, then put in the new two-way rod and finally fit and plane level a piece of binding strip to act as a truss-rod cap: ...and that means that the next job is re-fitting the fretboard Which, all being well with be tomorrow.

For polyurethane varnish finishes, nowadays, I use an artist's watercolour fan brush. In the case of Tru-oil, if I am going for gloss I wipe it on with a decent-quality lint-free cloth. In both cases, the final coat is determined by when 'that's it - STOP!' rather than the number of coats. And sometimes that's very quick and sometimes that is multiple 'flatten it, add a coat, add a final coat' cycles. I also tend to apply the finish 'back and sides' then, when it's dry, 'top and sides' And the second coat of 'back and sides' went on extremely well - and my experience says I should STOP on that before I try another coat...and wreck it Here it is: The top, on the other hand, is getting there but still needs a few more (or many more) cycles: But, overall, so far so good

Sounds OK to me. You say they are different inserts to your normal ones - it sounds like the threads were trying to push their way through the wood rather than cutting their way through?

Yes - that's going to work OK. Probably a couple more coats over the next day or two and then it will harden over the next couple of weeks. A few days after the final coat and it will be hard enough for me to start sorting out the installation of the electrics, etc..

The neck will stay satiny, organic, slurry and buffed for that playing feel that few other finishes quite achieve. But for the body, of the choice between the same, or a Tru-oil medium gloss, or a polyurethane full gloss, @Jus Lukin is opting for the tru-oil gloss. It's a nice finish - the gloss element brings out more of the wood figuring while retaining the 'real wood' look, but tru-oil done this way tends to settle down to a softer medium gloss after a few months - think 1960's Les Paul nitro. It is actually great for a shape like this with a passing nod to a 70's Alembic This is the first coat. See what I mean about it bringing out the beauty in the wood

The carbon rods arrived. 4mmx4mm box section - light as a feather and very strong! A bit of tidying up of the slots to make sure they fully seated: Then a liberal application of Z-poxy and a clamp to a flat surface, using wooden radius blocks to protect the neck from the clamps: And a quick check to make sure that both edges are fully flat with the tabletop (no - it's OK...it's not MrsAndyjr1515's favourite dining table . Mind you, it IS MrsAndyjr1515's clingfilm ) while the epoxy fully cures:

You could go one further and have two colours in EACH

Awe-inspiring

A bit like with finishing, ask 100 guitar or bass builders how they level frets and you'll get 100 different answers. For what it's worth, this is broadly how I do it. After checking that the neck itself is a flat as it can be, I level the frets with an aluminium beam with some fine emery cloth stuck to the back. And yes - I'm outside. And yes - it's SUNNY!!!! Yes - in the UK!!!!!!! : Basically, I'm taking the tops off any high frets so that the beam sits on the tops of all of the frets. I have to say, with this being a flat fretboard, it is easier to keep it all even across the width of the board than with a radiused board! But once this is done, the tops of a number of frets are now flat - and so have to be re-crowned so that you end up with the point contact with the string that you need for accurate fretting. You can see how wide this flat portion can be with my sharpie-mark: I tend to use a variety of crowning files - though generally I find the little Chris Alsop diamond ones with the wooden handles the best but the three-sided diamond one (I think Tonetech?) is also pretty good. The worst - ironically - are the most expensive...the Hoscoe non-diamond ones. Their nut files are expensive but great, but their crowning files IMHO are, well, just expensive . In this picture the frets been rough shaped and the above sharpie lines are now teeny thin lines along the top as the fret crowns have been re-established: So the frets are now back to the right shape - but they need the scratch marks taking out. Again, there are many ways of doing this but I generally take one of the Chris Alsop files and use them as a former for a series of progressively finer grit papers or cloths wrapped round, specifically 400 emery; 800 emery; 3600/6000/8000/12000 micro-mesh cloths : Which has done my poor old arthritic hands a power of no good...but it has done wonders for the frets. And I suppose they do say, 'Get rid of the old...make way for the young' The stain should be with me in the next couple of days so, soon, the final finishing process can start

Remember those shots of Saturn 5...