Christine

Thanks Andy

Well for north Wales the weather has been hot these last few weeks but the last two have been baking, I had the day off yesterday but decided to try working outside today and enjoy the sun. It started out lovely but eventually it got too hot and I ended up with a towel draped over my head trying to keep the sun off, I had a magnifying visor on so I couldn't wear a hat. I got some done and now I'm inside cooling off. I set up a makeshift bench outside, literally a saw horse and a metalworking vice clamped to it to hold my saw table. then I took my designs for the headstock inlays and, well confession first, I nearly flamingo'd up (like a pink torpedo up only bigger!) with the name as my written Welsh isn't that good but basically "the dragon" is "Y Ddraig" and plain "Dragon" is "Draig" so disaster averted. So I took my design and with a sharp scalpel cut out some of the sections and glued them with Titebond to a Mother of Pearl blank then cut them out, each time I cut a piece I turned it upside down and glued it to a mirror image of the design so it can then be transferred to the headstock. I'm sure you all get the drift and after 4 hours sawing and filing I ended up with one dragon ready for inlaying into a headstock. Not sure if I want to do the other tomorrow or do one of the Draig inlays for which I have some lovely dark green Abalone

I'll cut my own for the headstock, I find it therapeutic strangely but I bought the fretboard inlays as a set from Rothko and Frost. I had not heard of Small Wonder, looks very good, I have bookmarked them, it may be more cost effective to use them if I start making more as it isn't a quick process, thank you for that link

The design is staying as it is

So unlike me it's time for a preview of what's coming up, the headstock design. After some discussion with my friends we shortlisted down to two designs from which I chose the one below. I have always made my basses under the name "Dragon" because I'm Welsh but I was told it made them sound like a cheap Chinese copy of a BC Rich made for school kids to pretend to play metal in their bedrooms, so maybe a rebranding to the Welsh word for Dragon which is "Ddraig". Either that or at the American Luthier Bruce Johnson's suggestion I rename to "Daft Bat" which is a strong possibility. The design will be a Welsh dragon in white Mother of Pearl with the brand name Ddraig either in Paua or Abalone. I haven't got any Paua yet but I've ordered some and should be with me by the end of the week with luck.

I did consider it but it's not for me personally, I haven't seen the Aria but I did see another a while ago like that and it was an elegant solution

So today's thrilling update, I know you're not sleeping nights wondering what will happen next First job this morning was to drill the switch and control pot holes, I did this perpendicular to the surface rather than to the back so the knobs don't look pink torpedo eyed. I looked at some Les Paul guitars in PMT Cardiff last weekend to see how they were drilled, strangely some were vertical and some where in line with the contours, it was the ones high on the wall that were angled so in hindsight they would have been customs as they cost an arm and a leg.. Next was to sand the body contours and make them look less like I attacked them with an axe, after that I did the sides and the back but only to 80 grit until the binding is in and all other work done then I'll take it down to 240 or 320 grit depending on how it looks. No need to go further than that on wood, the marks will never show even at 240 with clear lacquer, the problem with going finer is that the grits start removing soft wood rather than the harder and ripples start to appear, it's quite hard to stop that and to be honest there isn't any real advantage to do so on your average timber like Oak, Mahogany, Ash etc. The last job of the day was to check the necks for flat and yes they were, excellent news so a couple of wipes with the plane and then I sanded the headstock and glued the headstock veneers on, after an hour in clamps I trimmed the veneer flush and being the daft bat I am I stuck the bits together to have a first look at what they were going to look like. I won't comment on that, make your own mind up. The top of the neck body isn't flush thith the top of the body yet, I need to trim the bottom of the tenon but I'm leaving that until shaping time

They have their place like everything else and each to their own after all we're all different thank God I wouldn't want them but I have wondered what LEDs would look like fitted behind Mother of Pearl block inlays to give a dim glow

Thank you, I'm really pleased with how they've turned out, if the rest of the build goes the same way I'll be quite relieved

Yesterday I worked on the Rosewood fretboard, got it inlaid. Turned out that the new binding cutter I bought wouldn't do the fretboard because the bearing was too far down from the cutters so today I just cut both on the router table and stuck the bindings on with CA. I started with a thick gel type with a slow setting time so I could get the inner edge of the mitre exactly in the right place then used a thin CA to do the rest, horrible stuff, gets everywhere, made a right mess of my finger nails After that I scraped the bindings flush and sanded the faces through to 3000 grit which looks very good. The Mother of Pearl is stunning and no filler used at all, feeling a little smug about that LOL I finished off the day by putting a thin coat of Lemon oil on the faces, will give a couple more before fretting them

On the occasions I've made a bolt on neck I use stainless tee nuts under the fretboard and then use Allen screws to tighten them

Nice day to be working on a roof in Penmon area Make a profile template of the back of the neck, at least 2 one for the nut and one near the top or beyond the 12th fret at least then just keep checking it constantly as you work and you won't go far wrong, it's not as difficult as it first seems

Sorry I must try and keep up instead of enjoying the sun I shape the necks by hand, drawknife, spokeshaves, rasps, files and planes. I'm really thinking about building a Pederson jig for shaping them, it's a job I'm not over keen on doing but for now I don't have the space to keep it

Today I screwed up again, nothing major but a silly mistake, I forgot to rout the neck binding rebate before radiusing ah well have to do it another way tomorrow, still not the end of the world just a waste of time So as you may have guessed I radiused the Ebano fretboard, first though I shaped the neck using a jig that fits into the truss rod slot, then in my hurry to radius the fretboard I did that and then shaped it instead of shaping, routing then radiusing. After all that i glued in the Mother of Pearl and sanded them down to 320 grit for now until I fir the binding and clean it up then I can sand down to 3000 grit and see how we look after that; any finer and I'm off shopping again! The inlays were a good fit, I needed to press them in using a vice (linoleum jaw linings) but the fit was good, just that tiny nick to fill, I'm very pleased with that job, lets see how I get on with the headstock inlays hopefully next week. The inlays for the other neck arrived today, so I will get them sorted tomorrow with luck.

Yes sorry your quite right, I'm more of a set or through neck person LOL

The only real problem with bolt on or more accurately screw on necks regardless of how many screws it has is removing them and putting them back on again. I don't care what anyone says it will always stretch the wood fibres where the screw bites some more every time. The Fender 3 point does seem a little odd in that there is a single screw at the back which is the one that gets the most tension put on it by the pull of the strings. Real world though as long as the wood in the neck screw holes is still sound you should have no problem with 3 or 4

Yes, just routed close to the lines then a very sharp chisel (the very worn down 12mm) clicked into the scribe line and pared down. Nice and easy on straight stock, the bad language starts when I get onto the headstock! Plenty of complex inlay on that to keep the air blue for a week LOL. Happy to start a Rocklite topic here but I'm no expert on the stuff but I am very impressed with the stuff. Where would one start it, in this section?

24 frets look spot on, a wise choice aesthetically , I do like the demarcation veneer too, very classy on an all Maple neck

Due to a muck up ordering the Mother of Pearl inlays I'm still short a set so I can't proceed with the Rosewood board until they come but I did a bit of routing on the Ebony one. For my inlays I routed close to the line and then pared to the line with a sharp chisel, apart from one little bit shown below where I made a slight wonder over the line with the router. My excuse is there was too much dust around the cutter LOL. After that I put a bit of masking tape on the cutter to blow it away and it never happened again. Chiselling was the first time I really found a difference to real wood, I don't really know how to describe it but paring Ebony, it's a clean forceful sort of cut, the Ebano felt more like paring balsa but harder, that said it cut very cleanly, certainly good enough for me. Anyway, the inlays fitted a treat with no stress at all other than that one little incident of my own doing. It cut so cleanly I'm thinking I may get away with no real need for edge filling with glue and dust (apart from that one bit shown again with the inlay). The good news of the day was I got my sander back from being repaired at Festool, the switch broke and it needed a new set of gears but bare in mind it is 25 years old and has had a very hard life and this is it's first repair

Sorry, the Rocklite thread is on TalkBass, an American maker Bruce Johnson started it and I've been updating it with my own experiences. Worth a read

That's good news, those are really grubby looking, let's hope the replacements are new

Today I cut the fret slots into the fretboards and scribed one of the neck joints to the body. I also played around with the Rocklite to see how it worked compared to real wood, in short, easier but I'll update the Rocklite thread with that The fretslots look as if they don't line up in this photo but they do (honest ) Marked out one of the fretboards for the Mother of Pearl markers. Here's what I did: Stuck a bit of masking tape over each fret gap to be inlayed. Marked the centre line of the board, marked the centre line of each fret gap. Marked the fret number on each inlay and the centre lines of each. Stuck masking tape to the bottom of each inlay and cut off the waste with a scalpel. Marked the position with a pencil of each inlay on the fretboard. Put a blob of superglue on the masking tape and put the inlay masking tape down on the fretboard and squared it off with a set square. Marked the fretboard with a scalpel very carefully. Peeled off the masking tape, the inlay and removed the masking tape from the bottom and put t hem carefully to one side. Tomorrow I'll rout out the inlay holes, I ran out of time today

You lot leave toys and plunging out of my thread!!

Oh no! I loved his work