Andyjr1515

Like the sound of this Mad as a box of frogs - Love it!

It's @Fishman 's request but - with there being so much black on the pickguard pickups, etc - it looks right to me.

Ideally (if I get my drill holes the right size ), just an interference fit. You only really need them not to drop out when you are changing strings...

Most of the reveal coat of stain and tru-oil is off. One last job before the final hand sand and 'watching paint dry' stage is the string-through ferrule recesses. For this I use my Proxxon drill press for accuracy (it is small but it has very little runout - spindle wobble - that affects many drill presses) and then the old channel-tunnel trick of drilling from both sides and meeting in the middle to ensure that the entry holes and exit holes are individually lined up visually, but also actually meet in the middle to allow you to get the string through . The holes at the back are recessed to ensure that the tops of the ferrules are flush with the back. With ferrules, it's best not to 'try them and see if they fit' before you are ready to fit them permanently

Nope. No prize; no cigar

I haven't. I suspect that wooden binding would loosen in places and have to be reglued on reassembly and acrylic binding would distort and need to be replaced.

Just wipe on and buff off will certainly darken the exposed wood at the same time as removing any on the lacquer.

I'd like to take credit, but this was how the blank was delivered to me One of the best suppliers in the UK

No gloss on this one - we're going for the slurry and buff satin And yes, you can do slurry and buff with stained wood - but there is a very specific sequence you have to do which I'll cover when I do the reveal next week

So that's all the excitement over Now it's a case of stripping it all back to the wood and starting the full finish. As it won't look tangibly different to the mockup on the previous page for a few days I won't do a 'watching paint dry' step by step. Instead I'll just summarise once it's looking even and satiny.

Specifically here: ...so I think @durhamboy gets the prize... ...which is... ...a big cheesy grin from Andyjr1515 :

Pretty close. It's easy to see at the back: But quite skillfully matched by David Dyke's team at the front:

I woke up this morning and thought...what's better than Tusq XL for a nut. Another root around in my (chaotic) bits box and I found what was just one step better - a piece of bleached bone. Life's too short to work out the 'string thickness compensated' separations so I use a commercial plastic one as a guide where I can I ground it down to height and added the dropaway and with my trusty Hosco nut files got on with it. I don't use this vice very often but for this it is perfect: And done. Ready to box up over the weekend and ship back to @Raslee first thing Monday :

Nope.

It is actually a 2 piece - although from the front view I defy anyone to say where the join is... Swamp Ash one-piece blanks are like hens teeth at the moment - I understand from David Dyke that logging has stopped due to the impact of Ash die-back.

@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.