Finished! Tom's African Build 2

[Andyjr1515]

Anyone remember Tom's ( our very own @wwcringe ) African Build?

Turning a wavy, cracking, variable hardness, unknown species and less than an inch thick body, presented to him by African drum-maker contacts of his in (I think) The Gambia:

 

Into this fretless through-neck:

 

Which he played later that year at the Mayor of London's Show in Trafalgar Square?:

 

 

Well - they've presented him with another one:

 

And before you ask....of course I said yes

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Andyjr1515

[Daz39]

Awesome!

[TheGreek]

Looks stunning already...

Can we deal with the anticipation??

[Jimothey]

Oooohh can’t wait!! Your African build is my favourite one out of all the basses you’ve done...........😀

[SpondonBassed]

Cool!

[Andyjr1515]

It's early days, and there are some aspects I'm not completely decided yet, but these are the early thoughts.  I had most of the day without electricity today, so spent quite a bit of time at the table next to a large window with paper, pencil and set-square.

On of the challenges is that - although this wood seems much more homogenous than the previous one, at 25mm, it is quite thin.  But, I MIGHT go bolt-on all the same. 

Using the body as my full-size template, this is where I got to during the day:

 

Those of you who remember @eude 's 6 stringer last year might recognise this flush-heel joint I developed for that one:

 

And those who remember the Tom's African Bass I might remember the headstock.  Volute especially for you-know-who:

 

Tom generally prefers smaller scale - originally pitching for 32"

But...hmmm...not drawn up yet...but what about multiscale?  

And Tom says "YES"    So I'll be drawing a 33" - 31" multi-scale tweak in the next couple of days...

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Andyjr1515

[SpondonBassed]

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Volute especially for you-know-who

That must mean I get a go on it when it's finished!

[durhamboy]

I'm sure this is going to be interesting.

[eude]

11 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Those of you who remember @eude 's 6 stringer last year might recognise this flush-heel joint I developed for that one

It's a fantastic neck joint too, feels like a through neck, sounds more like a bolt-on, win win!

Looking forward to watching this one progress @Andyjr1515

Eude

[ezbass]

Ooh, here we go! (Pulls up chair and gets comfy)

[TheGreek]

Daft question but....

If the body is "quite thin" couldn't you add a top to it thus making it thicker???

I'm sure there is a good reason which I've missed.

[Andyjr1515]

5 hours ago, TheGreek said:

Daft question but....

If the body is "quite thin" couldn't you add a top to it thus making it thicker???

I'm sure there is a good reason which I've missed.

Decent question, Mick, but because it's been carved specially for Tom by his African drum-maker contacts, I wanted to use it as made if at all possible.

[Stub Mandrel]

23 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

But, I MIGHT go bolt-on all the same. 

Can I suggest rounding the internal corner to avoid creating a stress raiser, even a 3-4mmm radius will make a significant increase in resistance to a split starting at this point if it fall backwards and the headstock hits something.

[GarethFlatlands]

I have 5 panga panga (similar to wenge) fingerboards if you want one. It's an African hardwood so would keep it continent correct!

[Andyjr1515]

In terms of the neck joint, this was the one I did for @eude 's 6-stringer.

I cut a fairly standard neck-pocket in the top (underneath in this shot, then an 'L' shaped cut for a half-tenon in the neck:

Note also the little feature added - an ebony biscuit joint in the middle.  This was actually my safety feature for similar issues that @Stub Mandrel refers too - although in this case it was to prevent the joint failing through the additional tension of a 6 string bass rather than a knock.  The idea is that the biscuit takes the force and doesn't allow the joint itself to be strained.  I'll probably do both in Tom's - the radius that @Stub Mandrel suggests and a similar biscuit to this.

Back to @eude 's, the neck then was attached with machine screws and inserts and the heel sanded flush with the body:

 

 

As @eude says, it worked quite well - giving the advantages of both through and bolt-on necks without - pretty much - any of the disadvantages of either

Anyways, spurred on by beiginners luck, I'm going to try it again

 

 

 

[Andyjr1515]

6 minutes ago, GarethFlatlands said:

I have 5 panga panga (similar to wenge) fingerboards if you want one. It's an African hardwood so would keep it continent correct!

Hmmm...I was going to go for a totally different look (see next post) but it's tempting.  I'll drop you a PM

 

[SpondonBassed]

21 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

see next post

[mixingwithtom]

I’m excited! Thanks for the thread and your amazing work @Andyjr1515

I haven’t owned a multi-scale before and have only played one briefly but when Andy asked I was very up for the idea!

Re scale length, I like all flavours - the previous “African fretless” build we actually went 34.5” and I do think small differences affect the tone, not better or worse exactly just a difference of “vibe” that I enjoy

Both of these bodies I had carved for me in Gambia on trips there where I was playing with musicians from the area

@GarethFlatlands thanks for kind offer re fingerboard, let’s see what the boss has to say

Thanks everyone for the enthusiasm, I will go back to lurking and excitedly waiting for updates from the mad scientist!!!!!!!!!

Tom

[Richard R]

Question from the slow kid at the back: why does that joint combine the best of a neck through and a bolt on? Apart from the biscuit it just looks like a bolt on to me.

Can we have diagrams comparing the two please Sir? And which internal radius is being referrred to?

[Andyjr1515]

46 minutes ago, Richard R said:

Question from the slow kid at the back: why does that joint combine the best of a neck through and a bolt on? Apart from the biscuit it just looks like a bolt on to me.

Can we have diagrams comparing the two please Sir? And which internal radius is being referrred to?

Yes you can

I'm  battling with trying to insulate a 120 year old loft space at the moment, but when I've done for the day, I'll draw you a comparison.   If you think of a heel of, say, a P bass, basically this gets rid of the 3/4" lump of wood your thumb would normally hit where the neck meets the body. And that means you can take at least 3/4" off the thickness of the body.

I'll draw you a pic as requested.

[Richard R]

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Yes you can

I'm  battling with trying to insulate a 120 year old loft space at the moment, but when I've done for the day, I'll draw you a comparison. 

Thank you. And please remember that when you joined BassChat you didn't sign up to a contract with an SLA you have to achieve for replies.  There's absolutely no urgency and that there "real world" is more important than some bloke you met once in a church hall and who asks lots of questions. 

[Andyjr1515]

3 hours ago, Richard R said:

Thank you. And please remember that when you joined BassChat you didn't sign up to a contract with an SLA you have to achieve for replies.  There's absolutely no urgency and that there "real world" is more important than some bloke you met once in a church hall and who asks lots of questions. 

Ah, but there are Standards to keep up, my boy.  Standards!  

Anyway, thankfully insulating is done for the day - and don't you just love the glass fibre prickles of the 'low irritation' modern insulation rolls

 

OK - hopefully this below illustrates where I'm coming from.  Both are drawn to the same scale.  The top one is an example of the hybrid approach and the bottom one is a typical bolt-on design:

 

The advantage is that, theoretically, the body can be as thin as the neck itself.  This is the great advantage of a through-neck too, where you can achieve this or just a much smoother transition at the upper frets.

 

BUT, as you can see, the disadvantage is that there is a shorter length of neck in the pocket itself, and the thickness of the neck at the pocket is much reduced.

- To compensate for the shorter pocket, my solution is to use machine screws and inserts - allowing much tighter clamping forces than the normal woodscrews

- To compensate for the thinness of the neck at the pocket - and the risk of it breaking - there are two approaches discussed above:

*  Adding the biscuit joint to limit any bending movement putting stress on the corner circled

* @Stub Mandrel 's good engineering approach which recognises that sharp corners promote splits when put under force (the original De Havilland Comet had just this problem with square windows leading to a number of catastrophic crashes) and the solution, which is to add a radius which spreads the stress and reduces the propensity to crack.

In the case of the DH Comet, they changed to round windows.  In the case of @Stub Mandrel 's suggestion, it is to add a small radius here:

 

Hope the above makes some sense! 

[Si600]

Mmm, biscuits.

[Richard R]

41 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

 

Got it! Thank you 🙂. Clearly I don't actually look at my bass from the back often enough to recognize the profile. Too busy looking at the frets with a furrowed brow.

I suppose you could make the tongue on the neck as long as you wanted, up to the point you were trying to bolt through the pickups. Or if the body hadn't been carved, extend that wood forwards into the neck? Or are those both obviously bad ideas?

[Andyjr1515]

1 hour ago, Richard R said:

I suppose you could make the tongue on the neck as long as you wanted, up to the point you were trying to bolt through the pickups. Or if the body hadn't been carved, extend that wood forwards into the neck? Or are those both obviously bad ideas?

Not at all - they are perfectly decent ideas. 

Trouble is with making it longer is that it would show beyond the end of the fretboard but yes, you could extend the lower part of the body pocket.  I personally would still tend to use machine screws as the thinness of the neck in the pocket area means that wood screws would need to be much shorter than normal, thus using significantly less threads to take the force.  Machine screw inserts typically have external threads much wider than wood screws and therefore can create the same load spread over a much shorter length.

But that's the great thing about this as a hobby - there are a huge number of different ways of solving the same problem