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Built a router jig for cutting binding channels. Tried it out on my LP and it works great. I know this is turning into a 2 axe post. I wait on something on one, so I work on the other. Waiting on payday (Had to get a hot water tank, told the wife not to spend any money, so I gotta follow suit) to buy a drill bit to drill the side markers on the fretboard then I can glue it down. So I'm fiddling with the LP. Also ran the top of the neck thru the joiner to bring it down a bit for carving the top. I'm finding that jigs help incredibly well as I can attest to with my freehand flops.
Binding channel jig

Beginning to look like a Paul


LP fretboard Jig.

Back at it again. Glued the fretboard onto the bass. Spent all day working on the fret ends. Dinged up my fretboard with the fret hammer.
So I built a fret press out of a craftsman drill press thingy I found along the road a few years back. Took all the excess stuff off of it and carved a piece of Ipe for the jig. It's set for 16" radius. Have to make some more for different radiuses. A po' boy fret press!

While the glue was drying on the bass, I set forth to fiddle with the neck on the LP. Got it pretty well shaped. Clamped the body wings on to start getting everything lined up. Took a chisel and a dremel sander drum to even it up where the binding will go. Looks like I could put the binding ends under the neck. Now to start carving the body. Not sure how I'm gonna pull this off. Rout the edges to get them even? Then start sanding with a drum sander maybe. Also have a sanding pad for my angle grinder that will hog off wood in a hurry. It's an adventure!

Been sanding my brains out. Hot out in the shop so I had to get a drink and cool off. In the 90's here in Georgia. Picked up a small plane (6.5") to smooth out the rough places on the neck. Set it so it barely cuts and ran it over a bunch of times to take out the high places. Used my 4 way rasp on the neck joint to even it up too. When I glued the fretboard on and sanded the sides I tended to flatten out the fretwork I had done, so I had to go over the frets again. I'm beginning to think I would have been better off installing the frets after glueing on the fretboard and getting it the way I want it. But that's what these early builds are for, for me to learn on.

I'm trying out a symetrical neck design on the back side. Really feels good, I think I'm gonna like it.

Next is the purpleheart nut. I've cut two so far, but came up with another idea to have it longer and contour with the neck.

Playing with the idea of a wood bridge as well. Got plenty of Ipe and purpleheart to fool with. Was going to use single string bridges as I made it with the strings closer together than my P Bass. Standard bridges are too wide for it. That's how I made my fretless and I love it.

I don't know if anyone picked up on my thumb slap on the fretboard. On my fretless I made the wave design, but it gets in the way of plucking with my fingers when I slap, so I turned it around to the bass side to give plenty of room for going nuts with it.

On my fretless I made it with the fretboard even with the body. It actually works pretty well except I had to lower the wood around the bridge. This one I raised it a bit make it even with the bridge.

That's all for now. Got to go back out there and see what I can tear up.

Got busy this evening after chowing down on tacos w/ jalapeno's.
Fiddled around with a new design for a nut. Hard to keep from burning the purpleheart on the sander. Looks pretty cool up next to the stealth coverplate I made earlier.

Sanded the snot out of it w/ 100 grit, then 220 grit. Starting to look like something.

My wife caught me trying it out. She grabbed the camera and took a quick pic of me, then laughed saying I didn't even need strings.



Rubbed it down with alchohol to see how it was coming along. I think I like it w/ an amber color to it. Got some scraps to test out the dyes and see which I'll use.

Gonna be real pretty when it's done!

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Done with my daughter's wedding. I'm broke but everything is paid for. Very nice ceremony, and good time with the kids and g'kids. Now I can get back to building, Thank Goodness! Been honeydooing and everything else for the last month getting ready. So expect some new posts on this and other builds I have planned.

Bring 'em on! Beautiful work so far. Can't wait to see it under finish.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Very cool, Jim!
I missed a bunch of your posts,
because I was MOVING at that time.
Lookin' good!

JimO,
It's a great pleasure to view your projects. Thank you for sharing.

I have a question and hope you don't mind.

It appears to me you sized the body wings before you tapered the neck block.
If that is correct, did you then re-cut the body?

Regards,
Michael

Nope. Just lined up the neck and the body and cut the end to match. I did take a router to thin down the neck to match the body.

Now for the shocker! I ripped out the neck, and building a new one.

I had some problems that I thought I could get by on, but NO! No cure, just start over.

One problem is I was trusting double stick tape to hold the fingerboard to the neck while I routed the sides.
Last part near the nut it slipped, just a hair, but enough to screw up the width of the neck. I thought it would be alright, but decided against it. I now made a fretboard template with holes drilled in it to nail down the fretboard with brads.

Next screwup: I was digging through my stack of wood and what do my wondering eyes should appear. A beautiful chunk of ROSEWOOD! OOPS! I used the wrong stuff for the fretboard. No wonder it was so easy to work with.

Did I say I'm still learning to do this? So off comes the neck. Ripped out the frets. Cut off the fretboard to get the truss rod out. I had already built another neck blank just the same way, so off to the races again. This time I was just repeating everything I had already done, so the measurements are the same. In one day I have the neck cut out and ready to start rounding off the back of the neck. New fretboards cut and this one has the slots ready to go.

I also got busy in my shop fixin and adjusting. Added lights so I could better see (as I get older I need to be able to see what I'm destroying), fixed the wiggle in my thickness sander table, built a new resaw fence out of maple, and adjusted the bandsaw to resaw perfectly.

Now for some pix:
Let there be light. Nothing like free reflectors and 5 bucks for a set of light fittings from the local resale shop.

Maple resaw fence. The particle board one got wet. Not good.

The victim:

Cut off the headstock to use as a template.

Nailed it!

Now that's Rosewood! Smells nice too. Bugger to slot though.


Not too bad. Did in 1 day what took me a week. Good practice. Also have neckwoods cut for 4 more axes.
Making a few changes in it. The freboard will lay right on the body. Not raised like a Fender. I'll recess the bridge and lower the pup.
Going with 1 9/16" nut width, in between a Jazz and P bass. Same as Ken Smith Basses.

I hope to have it up and thumping by October 28th. We are having a festival at church which we will be playing at, so I gotta show off my handywork.

That's some great work, Jim, and you've given me some ideas on how to do certain tasks on my build. Keep it up, man

Got the neck roughed out. Used a sureform, a drum sander (80 grit) on a drill, and 80 grit gold sticky sandpaper on a block. Didn't take as long as I thought it might. Also glued some scrap to the headstock to widen it. Took a piece of purpleheart that had been calling me, resawed it in half, thicknessed it on the drum sander and glued to the body. I decided the bass needed a stripe between the neck and the wings.

Got it going on on my bass and LP. The necks are on with control cavities and routes on the inside to run wiring. Added some purpleheart stripes between the neck and the wings on the bass. Carved the top on the LP. Also made a compound radius jig for routing fingerboards which works nicely.

Compound radius jig? you ask. Here it is. Simple enough to build. The base is 36" long. Long enough to park a running router beyond the ends of a bass fingerboard. Consists of a flat platform for the fingerboard, two radiused boards on the ends (I used 9.5" and 16", you can use what ever you like and interchange them), two pipes (3/4" conduit) about 6" apart with ends to hold them in place, and a sled to hold your router and slide back and forth on the pipes. One trick is to raise the smaller radius end about 1/16" to compensate for it's drop. Double sided tape for the fingerboard and your off and routing.

Word of caution: Do not slot or trim the sides on your board before you radius it due to chipout on the sides. Maybe it's my cheap router bit, LOL! I was able to sand out the chips on my bass fingerboard, but heed my warning.

Once set up it only takes a couple of minutes to radius. You will need to sand it afterwards, but it beats the snot out of radius sanding blocks.







Cost was about $4.14 for the pipe. I already had the wood.

i LOVE the way it looks with that stripe between the wings and neckthru! Its a shame about all the wasted work though eh? I'm sure that this will happen to me sometime not looking forward to it.

Yes, each time I flub up I learn to do it better. LOL!
Guess I need to slow down carving the neck until I have the fingerboard in place.

At least this stuff is coming easier. Radiused, slotted and trimmed the fingerboard last night in no time.

My camera's toast. My oldest daughter dropped it at the wedding. She's too old to be mad at her and a mom herself. Life of Dad!

Anyhoo, Got the fingerboard slotted, glued up, and fretted on the LP. Took about 3 tries to get the fret ends nice and smooth.

A few bills left over from the wedding have me behind on getting any hardware, Shucky Darn! Once I get those out of the way I will be able to get back to business.

I originally told my daughter I'l bring a 12 pack and a pack of hot dogs for the reception. Can't understand why they didn't like my idea? Shoulda stuck to that plan, instead of listening to those darn women. Steer me wrong every time.

Fixed the camera. Thank goodness for luthier tools! Dremel, superglue and mini files!

Had some fretwire so I got busy with it. Took three tries to get the ends nice and smooth. Also made walnut laminates for the headstock.







Just love the carved top on this. Just too cool.


Thinking about making a wood bridge for the bass. Have purpleheart and ipe and mabe I can scrounge up some brass for saddles.

Tried working with some raw shells to make inlays. What a mess. Not thick enough to do anything and I really don't have the tools to fool with it. So no inlays for now.

Found an old chunk of brass that my grandfather used to use to beat on things. His motto: If it won't move, hit it. If it still won't move, get a bigger hammer and hit it again. He used this to keep from buggering up stuff with a hammer or sledge. I used it many a time to do the same.

Anywho, I got to fooling around with it and remembered a bridge I saw online. Full contact or something like that. Got out the box my bandsaw blade came in and sure nuff, it'll cut metal. So between my grinder, belt sander and bandsaw I was able to fashion a respectable chunk of brass to build a bridge out of.

What I want to do is cut it at an angle so the top will slide up and down to adjust the height. Then drill a hole inbetween them and thread it so a setscrew will move the top up and down at an angle. And hold the top of it in place. It'll get cut down quite a bit, just wanted to be sure I had plenty of brass to cover any screwups.

Kinds rough from years of abuse, grease, oil, dirt and beating the crap out of it.


Brass bridge stock.


Here's my fav beat the crap outa something hammer. Back on the farm, about 40 years ago, I found the head in a drawer full of junk. Found the handle, and put the two together. Have used it many times with that chunk of brass.

Messed around with Paint to design a bridge for the saddles I'm making using purpleheart.

The bridge is starting to take shape. A lot of handwork with purpleheart. It like to turn black on power tools so I'll have to shape it by hand.





Still have to finish removing the scratches and finish polishing the saddles.

Got the purpleheart shaped up. Will have to finish the height and intonation once the fingerboard and nut is in place. I want to get a longer truss rod, so that will have to wait. In the mean time cut up some more brass for the nuts.

Did I miss where you plan on putting the tailpiece?
Or will this be string through the body?

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince