So .... I'm building a bass

[Angel]

here I am reducing the wood depth with a Forstner bit. The body is too thick for my dad's bandsaw, and it doesn't have the best blade, so I have to help it a bit

 

Then I flattened both sides and got to the desired depth.

Body shape sorted with template. Half done here. 

 

[Angel]

Neck pocket template sorted

 

... and routed. It will probably end up deeper but I don't want to remove too much wood before the neck is sorted.

 

 

 

 

[Angel]

Holes drilled for J-retro

 

And routing done. I had to make two templates for this, one for the cavity and one for the cover. The wood is pretty thin to allow the micro switches to pass through. Not ideal! 

 

 

[AndyTravis]

This looks ace. Absolutely lovely looking bass

[Angel]

My simple set up for fret slotting

 

All slots done

[Angel]

Planning out markers. 

I painted the fretboard white and drew around the markers. Current job is marking the edges with a chisel. Doing the cutouts is going to be ... tricky. I have a plan, untested so far ...

 

 

[PaulThePlug]

Pickguard in the same material as the markers?

[Pea Turgh]

I’m loving all the planning visualisations here - looks ace!

[Angel]

1 hour ago, PaulThePlug said:

Pickguard in the same material as the markers?

Nope. I'm making a single ply white one. As I've mentioned before, I don't think that the final look I am going for is going to be popular. I may not even post the final bass pic!

[SpondonBassed]

It would be an anti-climax if you didn't.

I'm trying to visualise how your tenon saw is held in line.  Have you a better image of your jig?

[Geek99]

And the saw, put them together ... jigsaw 

 

 

making a bass from parts is like doing an eBay jigsaw without the box picture 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Geek99

[songofthewind]

Wow, you’re roaring through this build! Really enjoying this. 

[SpondonBassed]

10 hours ago, SpondonBassed said:

Have you a better image of your jig?

That sounded ambiguous.  Sorry.

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by SpondonBassed

[Angel]

Basic routing of the inlay holes

and some fine tuning with the dremel

 

[Angel]

Yay! all fitted and glued

 

Carefully re-did the slots to depth having radiused the fretboard. That was lots of tedious sanding, forgot to take a pic!

[Angel]

Drilling holes for neck screws

 

 

All done. A also clamped the neck in place so that it aligned properly and drilled some pilot holes to sort later.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Angel

[Angel]

Last of the recent jobs, shaping the end of the fretboard. A bit chipped away which was a bit annoying. I may fix it up or I may just leave it. My instruments are always to just be played rather than be perfect so I'm not massively bothered.

[Fishman]

ace work all round - the j retro is the business!

[Angel]

I've been a bit lazy with updates, and I forget to take pix at times, but there has been progress ...

Basic neck shaping:

A bit of a jump as I forgot to take pix, but it's shaped, varnished and tuners added:

Headstock - router split a bit off at the top early on! Oh well, I ain't a pro and I ain't that fussy!

[TheGreek]

Looking good - can't wait to see the finished item.

[Angel]

I spent ages checking and double checking bridge placement and here I am drilling the holes. After all that I wasn't happy with the placement so I filled these and re-drilled new ones! bl**dy amateur!

This is the pickguard paper template stuck onto the plastic. Took a lot of faffing getting the shape how I wanted.

And this is the basic cutout, done with jigsaw, files, sanding etc. I have now worked out and marked pickup placement.

 

[Angel]

Pickup holes sorted. I also used this as a template to mark the routes on the body.

As the Precision pickup is under the pickguard I just routed it out freehand. I made a template for the Jazz pickup though. I actually made two, the first one wasn't good enough. The second one wasn't great, but good enough for me.

And here's them both done. Hopefully to the correct depth! you can also see where I moved the bridge back on this one.

 

[Angel]

I've actually had the bass assembled a few times to try out around the house with no sound. I'm loving it! It's actually quite a wrench to pull it apart again and sort the next stage out. Dare I say that it is turning out better than I expected.

[BassTool]

Amazing work so far 👍🏼

[songofthewind]

Nice work! I was just wondering what had happened to this build.