Rexel Matador Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 I can't stand the Foo Fighters but it seemed apt. Apparently I'm addicted to building basses. I started this one while waiting for the finish to dry on the last one! It's semi hollow - maybe a little less than semi - I've left quite a lot of wood in place, it seems. It's 30" scale, and it's going to have a big MM style humbucker on it. I've also decided it's going to have flat wound strings on it, which wouldn't really be worth noting at this stage except that I read somewhere that through-body stringing is not ideal for flat strings, so I'm avoiding that this time. Basically it's everything I don't look for in a bass, just to see what happens. I'm excited! So far we have... A template A rough body - I'm waiting for a piece of maple to arrive for the top. It's going to have F -holes! And a scarf joint currently drying (the joint isn't as bad as it looks. That black line isn't a gap, it's just the shadow where one piece is hanging over a bit. It'll all be chopped off in the end anyway) I have a sort of slotted headstock type of thing in mind. Should be good if it works! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 26, 2019 Author Share Posted October 26, 2019 Magnetized control cover. I did this in the last one too but it wasn't great. It was very nice to learn from my mistakes and have another go. It fits together perfectly this time 😀 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
durhamboy Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 "Addicted to building basses", well join the club. Isn't it great? I recon that the wonderful thing about building your own is it's only cost time and the price of the wood, if it doesn't work out. (Well, builds that don't work out might not be all fun, but at least there are lessons learnt, so all good really, or so I tell myself....) This build sounds interesting, I'll be watching with interest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted October 26, 2019 Share Posted October 26, 2019 Excellent! Can't wait Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 29, 2019 Author Share Posted October 29, 2019 Magnetized control cover. I did this in the last one too but it wasn't great. It was very nice to learn from my mistakes and have another go. It fits together perfectly this time 😀 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 29, 2019 Author Share Posted October 29, 2019 Tonight, jointing the top and trying to learn how to wire a push pull pot I thought about adding a second pickup, but have now decided to experiment with a series/parallel switch instead. Onwards and upwards 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unknown_User Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 18 hours ago, Rexel Matador said: Tonight, jointing the top and trying to learn how to wire a push pull pot I thought about adding a second pickup, but have now decided to experiment with a series/parallel switch instead. Onwards and upwards Can I ask, what's the best way to get those bookmatched tops lined up? I have found scant information about it on the Internet and the one I'm currently grappling with, using sandpaper taped to a spirit level, is causing me absolute murder. I seem to be constantly making it worse! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 30, 2019 Author Share Posted October 30, 2019 (edited) 44 minutes ago, Unknown_User said: Can I ask, what's the best way to get those bookmatched tops lined up? I have found scant information about it on the Internet and the one I'm currently grappling with, using sandpaper taped to a spirit level, is causing me absolute murder. I seem to be constantly making it worse! You need a plane (ideally a long jointer plane, I think, but I used the one that you see in the picture because it's the only one I have) and a shooting board, which is a simple jig that holds the pieces in place, raised a little off the surface, so you can run the plane along on its side and shave the edges of both pieces at once. There are plenty of demonstrations of the shooting board technique on YouTube which can probably explain it better than I can. If the plain is sharp it should be pretty straightforward. Edit: I should add, as a caveat, that I am far from an expert. I am relatively new to this so you're only getting the benefit of my somewhat limited experience and what I have gleaned from watching many hours of guitar building videos online. If anyone else has any pertinent advice on this matter, feel free to jump in! Edited October 30, 2019 by Rexel Matador PS 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unknown_User Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Thanks. I've just bought an ancient 17" wooden jointer plane off eBay for about £15. It needs some care to get the sole true again I think. I've so far managed to clean most of the rust off the iron and tried sharpening it on some wet and dry paper. After some effort I got it from being sharp enough to cut warm butter to it being sharp enough to just about slice into the side of some paper. Tried it on a scrap of wood and with some force it cut about 1mm in and then got stuck. I spent a portion of yesterday going through the "How to sharpen your blades" sticky and the linked "How to set up your plane" thread, with my head in my hands realising I knew even less about it all than when I started! I'll keep going with it though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 30, 2019 Author Share Posted October 30, 2019 3 minutes ago, Unknown_User said: Thanks. I've just bought an ancient 17" wooden jointer plane off eBay for about £15. It needs some care to get the sole true again I think. I've so far managed to clean most of the rust off the iron and tried sharpening it on some wet and dry paper. After some effort I got it from being sharp enough to cut warm butter to it being sharp enough to just about slice into the side of some paper. Tried it on a scrap of wood and with some force it cut about 1mm in and then got stuck. I spent a portion of yesterday going through the "How to sharpen your blades" sticky and the linked "How to set up your plane" thread, with my head in my hands realising I knew even less about it all than when I started! I'll keep going with it though. I know this is blasphemy to a lot of serious woodworkers, but I have been using the "scary sharp" method, ie progressive grades of sandpaper on a flat piece of glass (again, plenty of tutorials online) and it seems to work pretty well. I keep meaning to get around to buying some decent sharpening stones and putting some more effort into learning the technique, but it's working well enough for me at the moment. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unknown_User Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Cheers! I'll look up the scary sharp thing and the shooting board jig. Gives me a place to start from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 30, 2019 Author Share Posted October 30, 2019 Incidentally, I had just had a look at a video from Ben Crowe at Crimson Guitars (an absolute goldmine of luthiery advice) and he recommended planing the two halves of the top one at a time, instead of together, as I suggested above, the reason being that if you make a slight error vis a vis straightness, you're not doubling it up. Makes sense, I guess! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unknown_User Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 13 minutes ago, Rexel Matador said: Incidentally, I had just had a look at a video from Ben Crowe at Crimson Guitars (an absolute goldmine of luthiery advice) and he recommended planing the two halves of the top one at a time, instead of together, as I suggested above, the reason being that if you make a slight error vis a vis straightness, you're not doubling it up. Makes sense, I guess! I saw someone doing it with a router, and he did them both together but turned one upside down and wrong way round. That way if there was a slight error the other side would compensate for it. I haven't had the cojones to try doing it with a router. He did make it look sickeningly easy though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 30, 2019 Author Share Posted October 30, 2019 Amen - routers are the ultimate necessary evil. They can do amazing things but they're utterly terrifying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
honza992 Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Ha Ha @Rexel Matador welcome to the wonderful world of building. Nice to have you. It is, as you rightly point out, addictive. Joining....is something I have been battling with from the beginning. In order to join two pieces of wood together invisibly you need to have a joint that is more or less perfect. In my experience, pressure during gluing won't help hide a bad joint. I've torn my hair out over years trying to get a good glue joint both for bodies and tops. I think the problem is that to make a surface of a piece of wood flat (or straight) you need something that is flat (or straight). So if you want to use the shooting board method you need both a shooting board that is flat, and a plane that is flat. So to make a shooting board that is flat you need straight pieces of wood. But where do I get straight pieces of wood? Back to square one. And even getting a plane flat sounds easy, but in my experience isn't. Because you need a flat surface. And the Scary glass I have just isn't flat. Not even close. So I've ended up using the router table and straight edge method. Even this isn't that straightforward (sorry for pun). Obviously you need to have a router table for one, and secondly your straight edge needs to be straight. I have 3 straightedges from Stewmac. Only one is straight enough to give a reasonable joint. I have (had) two straight edges from Axminster. Both were almost comically lacking in the single most important feature of a straightedge. At the end of it all of that though, if you can find a straight edge that is straight then the router table method is reliable and very quick. As you say, joint one at a time to avoid amplifying gaps. @Unknown_User The method you mention of putting the two pieces of the top in different orientations is if you are doing it on a jointer (or shooting board) and the fence (or plane) is not exactly 90 degrees. It means that if one is jointed at 89 degrees the other will be at 91 degrees and you still end up with a good join. That's a different problem to the one I've mentioned above. But will still give you sleepless nights just the same! Rexel, welcome! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
honza992 Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 4 hours ago, Rexel Matador said: Amen - routers are the ultimate necessary evil. They can do amazing things but they're utterly terrifying. I do almost everything with a router. I have a table mounted monster, and a hand held one. In my opinion, safe and successful routing can be boiled down to two key rules: 1. Always rout into the wood (so you are feeding wood into the cutter). 2. Take multiple passes to take off tiny amounts of wood. When I am routing bodies I take off an aboslute maximum of 0.5mm at a time. A sturdy guided router bit (mine has 4 blades and is a monster), a slow feed rate and a very very shallow cut and you will rout successfully and safely. If I can have only one power tool, it would be the router. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 30, 2019 Author Share Posted October 30, 2019 Thanks for the advice and encouragement everyone, it's much appreciated! Tonight I cut out the top and glued it on, but I forgot to take pictures and now it just looks like a big clamp family reunion. I'll take a picture tomorrow though, unless of course the dreaded glue joint wasn't up to scratch in which case I'll just hide away in shame 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted October 31, 2019 Author Share Posted October 31, 2019 Here's the body all glued up. I'm pretty happy with it so far. The glue joint between the top and sides: it turned out ok. It's not perfect, but I'm confident it'll stay together just fine. This is my third build and each is a little more ambitious than the last. I have to keep reminding myself of that! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted November 1, 2019 Author Share Posted November 1, 2019 I'm toying with the idea of binding. I assume a single plastic strip, Les Paul style would be the easiest option for a first timer. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted November 2, 2019 Author Share Posted November 2, 2019 First ever attempt at an inlay seems to be going ok And the headstock cap is under the clamps. This headstock is a bit if an experiment. We'll see what happens... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted November 3, 2019 Author Share Posted November 3, 2019 Made a fair bit of progress this weekend. The line on the fretboard is from where I realised I'd made a slot in slightly the wrong place. I filled it with a piece of veneer and recut it. The fret itself will cover the off-colour veneer so it should look fine. Though as I write this I'm realising it will be visible from the side 🤣 You'd have to really be looking for it to notice though. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pea Turgh Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 I like the shapes there - very different! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
honza992 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 On 01/11/2019 at 09:33, Rexel Matador said: I'm toying with the idea of binding. I assume a single plastic strip, Les Paul style would be the easiest option for a first timer. Any thoughts? Yes, plastic is probably the easiest. R&K have what they call celluloid binding which bends more easily that most of the cheap plastic stuff out there. Or if you want an ivoroid style then I recommend the one from David Dyke, it's more attractive than the one R&K sell. For plastic binding your basic choices are either to glue using pure acetone (I buy it in small bottles from Sainsbury), which is probably the easiest method, or with a glue like Uhu Hart, which is what I now use for plastic. There's a good video here: The advantage of using acetone is that you can get the binding stuck down with tape first, and get your mitres and curves sorted before doing any gluing. The disadvantage is that acetone may not be that good for you, and also you can find that slightly discoloured acetone (from the binding) can run down the side of the guitar and into the end grain. The other option may be to use thin CA glue I guess, though I haven't used it with plastic binding, so test on scrap first. I've used CA with wood binding, and it worked great. Uhu Hart glue is acetone based, I believe, but because it's thick you don't have the issue of it running down the side. I still tape off though down the side to ease clean-up. If you haven't done binding before, it's definitely a step up in terms of building difficulty. Rout the channel in several passes. Oh, and I don't know how Fletcher gets away with using so little tape. For a Tele size body I cut 60 (yes 60) 3 inch strips and they all get used. You;ve got some pretty tight curves so that will be pretty much solid tape. Get them all cut first before you start gluing and do the whole body in one go. You don't want to get half way and run out of pre-cut strips. If you do use acetone, resist the temptation to take the tape off too soon. I used to take it off the day after doing it and occassionally in places I would find the binding was still a bit soft, particularly parts that were under tape. So be strong and wait another night! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexel Matador Posted November 4, 2019 Author Share Posted November 4, 2019 @honza992 Thanks! That's all really helpful. That said, I've gone for a round over type thing this time around, but my next build is already forming in my mind and it will definitely have binding, so I'll be returning to this advice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
honza992 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 No problem. As you've discovered there is always a next one! And actually I think round overs on your design is better. It has almost a Carl Thompson feel to it. It's great that you're doing your own thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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