Concept #1
Concept #2
Concept #3
Concept #4
Concept #5
Final body shape - Combination of Rickenbacker and Fender Jazz
Shown with J style pickups - not sure if that will be the final pickup configuration, however.
Conceptual wood selection - African Blackwood, Maple, Paduak.
I like this color combo although this is not going to be the final color scheme.
This is a cool design and color scheme! I may revisit it on my neck build.
Children's initials inlays at 12 fret position
"Z" laminated onto headstock
Full-size paper model
It helps to make a paper model to get a more real representation of the final design.
It was easy to know this shape would work well after doing the paper model.
The "Z" headstock - soon to be famous! Look out Leo...
Body design evolving on paper...
Some other full-scale paper models were toyed with. I wanted to be sure of the design before cutting wood.
This is a cool shape, but the lower horn was just too small and I was afraid it would slide off my leg when played sitting.
Dad's workshop! Looks crowded, but there's plenty of room for what we're doing. You can see the neck blank hanging from the ceiling on the left.
Another angle of the shop. You can see "Making your own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock - a must have book for beginning builders.
Cutting the body wings using a scroll saw.
Body wings (hard maple)
Body wings placed next to the woods that will be used in the neck. Hard maple and andiroba.
Body Wings - Maple || Neck woods - hard maple and andiroba
Dad getting ready to cut the hard maple for the neck blank.
Making the neck blank.
After ripping on the table say, the maple needed a little cleaning before it could be glued.
Making sure we have a flat, square surface.
Maple divided.
Needs some clean up. Scraping and sanding does the trick quickly.
Scraping with a putty knife that had it's edge 'squared'.
cutting the andiroba that will be laminated between two pieces of the hard maple to make up the neck blank.
Andiroba getting squared.
Andiroba sandwiched between the two pieces of maple.
A preview of the finished product - sort of...
Apply glue to the entire surface making sure it is completely covered.
...more glue...
...still more glue...
Add lots of clamps and let cure for at least 24 hours under high pressure.
It's important to use lots of clamps to make sure the entire neck blank is thoroughly glued and solid.
Clamps removed and blank cleaned up.
Very straight - Very square - Just how it should be!
...uh, really straight...
...and square...
I'll be able to get two complete necks out of this blank.
Another preview of the final product.
...preview...
OK - you do this a lot when you are building your first instrument. It's a thrill to see it start to come together!
This body wing ended up cracking in transit. But I have more maple, so I am not worried.
The crack.
Crack kills!
Seriously... don't do crack...
OK... enough about crack...
More maple - no worries.
More preview - remember, I said you do this a lot...
...preview with bridge - this bridge with no be used on this build. I am waiting for my Schaller 496 Roller bridge from a fellow Talkbass.com forum member.
...preview with "not this time" bridge...
...preview with "not this time" bridge, Hot Rod, dual action truss rod with spoked wheel adjuster nut and two carbon fiber reinforcement rods (ordered from Steward Macdonald - www.stewmac.com).
Hot Rod, dual action truss rod with spoked wheel adjuster nut and two carbon fiber reinforcement rods.
Plotting the truss channel.
Starting to plot the neck profile. This part of the process evolved a lot over time.
At this point I didn't realize I was able to get two necks out of this blank so I was plotting it as if I was only cutting one neck.
...more plotting...
Nut location and width of neck at nut.
Bridge location.
Starting to figure out how to get two necks. This shows the scarf joint under the fingerboard starting at around the first fret.
Cutting some padauk to be laminated between my maple body wings and the quilted maple top.
Gluing the maple and padauk...
Lot of clamps - lots of pressure - cure for at least 24 hours...
Maple, padauk and quilted maple wings.
A view of the book-matched quilted maple top.
You can see how rough the wings were prior to sanding.
Very rough...
Yep... still rough...
Did I mention that they were rough?
A cool tool for this sort of project - a "Flex Drum" sander that consists of a 1.5 hp Dayton Electric motor...
...bolted to a board and clamped to a table...
...add the spindle attachment...
...some foam cylinders with various grits of sandpaper...
and viola'! A Flex Drum Sander!
Makes quick work of cleaning up rough stuff...
Like burn marks from a scroll saw...
All gone!
Really - they're gone...
See?
In action.
More burn marks...
Gone.
In order to refine the surface of the wings that will be glued to the neck, I tacked some 80 grit sandpaper to a flat surface and sanded them by hand.
Forth...
...and back...
Here are the laminated body wings with their edge surfaces nicely cleaned up!
Very easy to do with the Flex Drum Sander...
...and very gratifying!
This part of the build process is very cool because you are able to start to see the finished product much more clearly.
The quilted maple top will look really good when finished.
The color combination of the maple and padauk is very nice.
This area will be where the forearm ease happens by sanding down the quilted maple top at an angle. The padauk will get revealed a lot more here and will look stunning!
A shot looking down the upper horn.
You can see how the forearm easing is revealing the padauk here.
Very elegant, if I do say so myself!
A side view of the forearm ease and the belly cut. These moves were directly stolen from Leo Fender since I love how my Jazz bass fits me.
More views of the forearm ease and belly cut.
OK - I admit it... I can't get enough of that forearm ease!
It looks so sweet!
Another view from the upper horn.
Another preview of the finished product.
The neck blank next to the padauk fingerboard.
The fingerboard has the fret positions marked. I am planning for this to be a lined fretless but that can be decided later.
More "finished product" previews...
Clamping the body wing laminates.
My first time using a band saw. Cutting the neck blank in half...
It seemed like it took forever!
You have to move very slowly and keep the blade on the line. "Take the line" as my dad was telling me...
Almost through...
You can see both neck profiles marked up here...
...still "taking the line"...
Done! Two necks! Well, they will be two necks soon enough!
Mr. Dimmit, my dad's neighbor, planing the freshly cut neck blanks. Mr. D has the most incredible wood shop in his basement!
I am very luck to have my dad and Mr. D in on this project! There's easily over 100 years of wood working experience between the two of them! You'd have to pay a fortune to buy that kind of experience!
One of the necks cut to be joined using a "luthier's joint" where the end of the neck is cut off at about a 13º angle then glued onto the back of the original neck to create an angled headstock like those commonly found on Gibson guitars and basses. (Sorry, Leo...)
More of the "luthier's joint"
Here's how they'll be glued...
Dad cleaning up the surface of the headstock that will be glued.
Using a belt sander to clean up the gluing surface.
Prior to gluing...
Glue added and smeared on each surface...
Then clamped within an inch of their lives!
They will sit and cure under pressure...
...for at least 24 hours.
And after the clamps are removed...
They'll continue to cure for another 3 or 4 days.
They may look ugly now, but when they get cleaned up, they'll look phenomenal!
The two, luthier jointed neck blanks, body wings and fingerboard.
Another preview... Remember what I said about previews?
I meant it!
My morning friend!
Some of Bod Dimmit's handiwork! He is a real wood working artist!
This is a piece he did on his lathe. There was a small hiccup in the process...
A lazy Susan, by Bob Dimmit.
Another lathe turned piece. Yes, that's wood, folks...
Thanks, Bob! I couldn't have done this without your help!
Putting the Flex Drum Sander attachment onto my hand drill makes shaping and refining very easy.
The trick is to make sure you are sanding evenly.
The Flex Drum Sander kit came with a 4" shaft that I used to stabilize the end of the drum using a clamp to hold the shaft.
I use a pencil to mark up the area to be sanded so I can see where wood is being removed.
Now I can hold both ends of the sander and get a more even plane.
Headstock join - still needs 'flattening', but all in all a good join.
OK - I HAD two necks. Since I needed to add wood to the body end and adding a piece that didn't match the 3-piece neck looked bad, I decided to sacrifice the second neck and use it to beef up the body end of the first. Sad, but necessary.
Yes, it was not an easy cut to make. Not because the wood was so hard. It was because it was very much like sawing through a perfectly good neck.
End of neck that needs more wood so the body wings can be attached.
Gluing the section I cut from the other neck to the body end. I used lots of these "clamps" that you repeatedly squeeze to tighten - but they really don't get tight enough, in my opinion. Using a lot of them helps. The fact that this area will also be reinforced by the gluing of the body wings makes me unconcerned about the integrity of this area.
I added more maple to provide enough wood to the complete the headstock. Since I didn't have any clamps big enough for this I improvised using heavy twine and bamboo to fashion a sort of tourniquet clamp. It seems to have worked quite well.
More of the tourniquet clamping thing.
The wood on top of the headstock was to help make the added wood glue flush.
The back will be cut away anyhow, so keeping it flush was not an issue.
The SHOP! Since starting this build I've acquired: 1) Drill Press 2) Belt/Disc Sander 3) Flex Drum Sander 4) Router and table. I already had the chop saw and have still not used it.
From left to right: Flex drum sander, srill press, chop saw, belt/sisc sander, router table. A band saw would pretty much complete this beginner instrument building shop - well, a band saw and a planer... OK, a band saw, planer and a jointer... Well...
Another preview featuring the recently received Schaller 496 roller bridge. I am much happier with this bridge.
More preview.
The headstock area after removing the tourniquet clamps and a little sanding. More sanding is needed, but it's in good shape.
Raw headstock.
OK - I messed up here. When I added the extra wood to the sides for the headstock, I added them too far from the nut.
Too far... I tried to see if I could live with it...
I really, really tried to convince myself that it was OK...
Nope... Do it right, damn it!!
So off with the bad...
Do it again - get it right this time. That's the beauty of making it yourself - you can unmake and remake it as much as you need.
Post-hack. A little sanding and it'll be ready to do over.
I was able to use the very same wood I hack off by just flipping it and using the cleaner side of each piece.
Gluing - in the RIGHT spot now.
Here's hope it's supposed to look. You can see how much longer it would have been had I not decided to do it over.
New headstock 'wing' in place - channel for the truss rod routed.
Shaping the neck. I used an electric hand jig saw for this operation.
Here's the neck - roughly shaped.
This pic shows the neck with the truss rod and carbon fiber reinforcement rods in place.
The truss rod is similar to the ones used in MusicMan basses. I also have a StingRay 5 and fell in love with this type of 'spoked wheel' adjuster nut. it's far easier to adjust than the typical hex/allen head nuts.
Closer look at the headstock. I am very glad I oped to fix it! You can see the seam of the scarf joint. That will be covered with a quilted maple laminate and my soon to be famous, "Z" inlay.
This is how the body wings will be joined to the neck.
Flipped - there's still a lot of neck shaping to be done.
The "heel" - The seam you see is where I glued the other neck to this one to provide the thickness needed for the body-end of the neck.
the fingerboard - marked for fret position markers. The was going to be a 'lined' fretless. My plans were thwarted, however...
I used a miter saw to cut the slots for the fret position markers.
The neck after more shaping.
How's that for a clamp tangle? Note to self - shape body wings AFTER they're glued to the neck. Trying to clamp curvy, rounded pieces of wood with bar clamps and no clamping cauls is a nightmare!
When I tried to sand the fingerboard with the fret position markers, they stared ripping out. I then decided to sand down the fingerboard and go unlined. OK, now my fingerboard is too low... jeez...
Yep - no matter how you look at it, it's too low...
Yes, still too low.
But it still looks pretty!
To rectify the 'too low' situation, I decided to sand the remaining fingerboard flat and laminate another one on top of it.
The second fingerboard, pre-lam...
Laminating. Lots of clamps - lots of pressure.
There ya go! laminated! The pic is blurry, but you can see that it added back the height I needed.
A routing jig to guide the recess for my bridges.
The area where my bridges will reside. I'll be using individual string bridges instead on a single bridge.
Here they are.
I couldn't resist stringing it up to see what it might be like when it's done.
The quilted maple headstock laminate with the "Z" cut out.
I decided to try to make a nut from the padauk. I ended up making two. The first one just wasn't right and the second was perfect - but it broke... boo! I ended up using a nut I purchased online.
Zoe - our cat... Has no sense of modesty or self-preservation. She'll lay motionless even if you are about to step right on her head. Good thing she's an indoor kitty...
