Building a Wal....ish

[velvetkevorkian]

This one if I'm not mistaken.

[TrevorR]

27 minutes ago, velvetkevorkian said:

This one if I'm not mistaken.

Ooooooh, I managed to miss that thread somehow! Some happy reading ahead!

[Kev]

1 hour ago, TrevorR said:

You know, they say that great minds think alike. This Zoot Basses custom build just popped up on the Zoot Facebook page…

 

Keen to hear that one!

 

Interesting design, terrible choice of bridge/bridge colour for me, otherwise quite like they've not attempted to copy the Wal shape. 

[funkle]

8 hours ago, TrevorR said:

You know, they say that great minds think alike. This Zoot Basses custom build just popped up on the Zoot Facebook page…

 

Yes, I’ve been following that thread since it’s inception! Great build, can’t wait to hear audio of the Rautia pickups with the Lusithand. 

[Andyjr1515]

OK - the rosewood is here.  Lovely piece of AAA grade from David Dyke:

 

And @funkle and I have decided to go for wheel adjustment trussrod cut into the neck heel itself so that he doesn't have to modify bodies or pickguards if he moves the neck to other bass bodies:

 

And most importantly, @fleabag's neck is at the 'coat and wait to dry' stage; an exciting potential project for @Happy Jack is still at the early 'sketches and thinking' stages - and so there should be nothing stopping me from getting my lazy a*** (***=ndy) off the sofa and back down into the cellar.  Which is also an idea that MrsAndyjr1515 fully supports. 

 

Next jobs, radiusing the board and cutting the fret slots 

 

 

 

[Happy Jack]

Nowt "potential" about it, Andy! 😂

[Bass Culture]

On 12/05/2022 at 00:48, Kev said:

Interesting design, terrible choice of bridge/bridge colour for me, otherwise quite like they've not attempted to copy the Wal shape. 

 

Gee, thanks Kev - you really must invite me round to share your thoughts on home decor some day!  😉  BC (or Mark Newman to his friends - owner of new Zoot Wal-a-like...)

[Andyjr1515]

Fretboard blank is now radiused.  It gets 90% there using the G&W router jig (this is after I'd hoovered up the sahara's worth of dust  )   :

 

Then some sanding with a standard radius block to remove the router lines:

 

Note the all important collection of sanding dust!

 

This is going to make a nice fretboard:

 

 

[Kev]

5 hours ago, Bass Culture said:

 

Gee, thanks Kev - you really must invite me round to share your thoughts on home decor some day!  😉  BC (or Mark Newman to his friends - owner of new Zoot Wal-a-like...)

Haha sorry!  T'was a bit blunt.  Really love the bass, but what made you opt for the the single string bridge design, and the gold vs black hardware? 

[Bass Culture]

13 hours ago, Kev said:

Haha sorry!  T'was a bit blunt.  Really love the bass, but what made you opt for the the single string bridge design, and the gold vs black hardware? 

 

Hee-hee - sorry, I was being a bit mischievous there. 😄  It's just personal taste at the end of the day, isn't it?  Weirdly, there's not been one comment on Mike's Facebook post about the hardware, they've all been on the build thread on here.  To be completely honest, I had the gold monorails already, so thought I may as well get some use out of them.  They're some cheapy ones from a European supplier but are surprisingly decent quality, with brass saddles.  Now they're on, I'm thinking of buying a set of back ones and doing a mix of black bases and gold saddles, which is the same as I've had on my other Zoots (I'm addicted - this is the fifth bass Mike has made for me now!).  But I don't pick the bass up until next Friday so may well feel differently when I see it in the flesh.  Anyway - apologies to @funklefor the derail.

[Andyjr1515]

I'd forgotten how much easier it is to cut fret slots in rosewood than ebony!  The latter is more like a workout.  This was a simple pleasure

 

 

All 20 done.  And yes - sunny in Derbyshire...who'd have thought...

 

[Andyjr1515]

And heel fit done.

 

It's actually one of the more challenging things.  The pocket is a very specific shape, it is tapered and the neck needs to be straight to the body.  Getting two of those three right is somewhat of a challenge.  Getting all three right takes faith, hope and the charity of the gods.  It pays to pray to all denominations, modern and ancient, religious and pagan while measuring and checking everything 100-200 times.  Because if all three don't come right first time, there will be a gap.

 

And so, two out of three OK - shape is right and taper is right:

 

 

And it's straight!!!!    Three out of three!!!!

 

 

Starting to look more like a neck now:

[funkle]

I love seeing this process. Thanks @Andyjr1515.

 

I'm already getting ideas for other projects. But I must stick to this one first, lol 

[Kiwi]

7 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

And heel fit done.

 

It's actually one of the more challenging things.  The pocket is a very specific shape, it is tapered and the neck needs to be straight to the body.  Getting two of those three right is somewhat of a challenge.  Getting all three right takes faith, hope and the charity of the gods.  It pays to pray to all denominations, modern and ancient, religious and pagan while measuring and checking everything 100-200 times.  Because if all three don't come right first time, there will be a gap.

 

And so, two out of three OK - shape is right and taper is right:

 

 

And it's straight!!!!    Three out of three!!!!

 

 

Starting to look more like a neck now:

I'm doing exactly this with a strat this weekend.  57mm wide neck pocket in the aftermarket body which I've only just confirmed is slightly off centre. It's solvable with some fervent sanding on the longer edge of the pocket and maybe the opposite side on the heel but I risk losing that tight fit. 

[Andyjr1515]

There are some jobs that folks think must take a long time - say, carving a neck - and that are actually very quick.

 

Then there are others.... 

 

And so, a happy full afternoon just fitting the trussrod - and, if you remember the slot was already routed!  But this has to have a recess for the spoke-wheel chiselled and, as with all truss rods, it is aiming for a good tight fit where no part of the rod is above the top surface that the fretboard will be glued to.

 

Anyway, it's done:

 

The slot in the rosewood will be opened up properly to look like it's meant to be there and to allow full swing of the adjusting rod once the board has been glued on, but it's easier to remove some of the bulk before that happens:

 

Final job before the board gets glued on is routing the neck blank to final thickness, including the taper from nut to heel.  All being well, that will be tomorrow's job

 

And also soonish, I need to be ordering the fretwire.  The plan is to match, as best as can be done, the material and size/shape of the fretwire used in a Wal.  Which means that I have to first find out what those details might be  

 

[funkle]

Wow. That is very fine work @Andyjr1515 .

[Owen]

2 hours ago, funkle said:

Wow. That is very fine work @Andyjr1515 .

Again. 

[Andyjr1515]

Next job on the neck is thicknessing the back which will form the spine that the profile will be carved up to.  After double-checking that there would be enough wood left under the truss rod slot, I temporarily stuck on a 2mm spacer at the nut to give me the 2mm taper of thickness from the nut to the heel:

 

 

Then set up my home-made router thicknesser jig:

 

And there we have the tapered thickness:

 

And so time for a cup of coffee while I think through the sequence to make sure there's nothing else I need to do before I glue on the fretboard.  And while that is gluing this afternoon, it's probably time I got my a**e brain into gear to give @Happy Jack 's new challenge some serious thought, scribbling and sketching

 

[Andyjr1515]

Well, coffee drunk, thinking thunk...

 

Time to remember to re-insert the truss rod and glue on the neck.  A couple of panel-pin holes drilled in one of fret slots either end, fretboard carefully positioned and pins tapped in gives me the location points to get the glued board back in the right place and the ability to stop the board floating out of position under clamping:

 

And absolutely...you can never have too many clamps:

 

That'll be left until the morning when I can unclamp it and see that all of the joints are (hopefully) completely gap-free

 

[Kiwi]

Pinning the fingerboard was a good idea, I've entertained doing something similar for body wings when I get around to repurposing an abortive through neck build I commissioned.  Ken Smith basses have locator dowels on the wings for the same reasons.  With the fingerboard though, was there a reason for pinning in a fretslot rather than under a proposed fingerboard inlay?

[Andyjr1515]

7 hours ago, Kiwi said:

Pinning the fingerboard was a good idea, I've entertained doing something similar for body wings when I get around to repurposing an abortive through neck build I commissioned.  Ken Smith basses have locator dowels on the wings for the same reasons.  With the fingerboard though, was there a reason for pinning in a fretslot rather than under a proposed fingerboard inlay?

Yes - glued surfaces really do float about so if there is any danger of that happening then pinning or dowelling can be a effective way of sorting it.

 

If it's just dots, they are mostly down the middle where the truss rod is.  The fret width fully covers the holes as long as panel pins or similar are used.

[Andyjr1515]

Fitted and gap-free

 

Anyone know what width of fretwire is generally fitted on Wals?

[NickA]

On 21/05/2022 at 15:25, Andyjr1515 said:

Fitted and gap-free

 

Anyone know what width of fretwire is generally fitted on Wals?

I'd tell you, but don't know what to measure.  Pop across to my house and you can measure mine yourself. Only across Derby. 🙂

Edited May 23, 2022 by NickA

[Andyjr1515]

10 minutes ago, NickA said:

I'd tell you, but don't know what to measure.  Pop across to my house and you can measure mine yourself. Only across Derby. 🙂

Pm'd 

[Andyjr1515]

17 hours ago, NickA said:

I'd tell you, but don't know what to measure.  Pop across to my house and you can measure mine yourself. Only across Derby. 🙂

I'd taken a punt and ordered some fretwire based on looking closely at stock photos of various Wals but the timing of @NickA 's post was spot on.  I can always use fretwire and so if what I'd ordered wasn't right, there was still time to order the right stuff.  And so popped over to Nick's this afternoon and...what I've ordered is actually right!    

 

Many thanks to @NickA for stepping in