Having just routed the edges ''ON THE SIDE THAT I DID NOT INTEND TO'':hmm: I'm wondering what mistakes others have made ??

:bawl:

third time it's happened to me. I start feeding the stock to the router on a table too slowly and lightly and the router grabs it and yanks a piece of wood with it. I always manage to fix it and it's hardly been a problem. This latest time it was so bad that it literally took about 1/2" into the body from the upper horn. Thank goodness for epoxy and wood dust! Lucky for me this bass was to be painted black and was not a comissioned instrument. I wonder what that'll do to that ol' MH (mid-hump, for the uninitiated).

Ok, sometimes I use a tape measure. When I do, I don't believe the little wiggly tab at the end is accurate so I start measuring at the 1" mark and add an inch at the other end. So once I forgot to add the inch at the other end and ended up routing for a whammy bar in the wrong place :crying:

Having just routed the edges ''ON THE SIDE THAT I DID NOT INTEND TO'':hmm: I'm wondering what mistakes others have made ??

I know how that feels!!! When I was about to finally round the wings for may project and then glue them to the neck i thought start routing from the easiest side so I look to the low side wing and thought well that easy!!! the easiest side is the ones with no curves. Route and when I was looking how nice it was I realize that side with no curves was the one to be glued to the neck!!!! :(

Aw jeez, it's hard to pick just one...ok, I drilled and mounted a bridge by centering it on the seam of the bookmatched top without checking how it matched up with the neck. It didn't, quite. Screwholes, holes for string through mounting, the whole shot, so rather than plug the holes and redrill, I "custom fabricated" a G string bridge saddle that keeps the string on the fingerboard. That took an afternoon, and I only show the bass off in dimly lit bars, at a distance.

yea it is hard to pick just one, not too long ago I had some weird things going on while trying to glue a Cocobolo fingerboard, the glue didnt hold at first, so then I wiped it with Acetone and glued the fb back on, with about 20 clamps, everything was going wonderfully until i saw a truss rod on the corner of the workbench...

Another time I had glued the rod in the channel and accidently glued the threads too, snapped the rod nut trying to get it to move... Im starting to get quite comfortable with an iron and a hot knife.

and just a last one, while tapering my board the other day (attached to the neck) I continued with the router and took off a good piece of the 'ear' on the headstock.

There are a bunch of other ones.... including using Liquid Hide, I think that is THE biggest mistake I have ever done.

I let a guit**rist/singer use my shop for a first time build...

:scowl:

Forgive me. I have sinned.

I let a guit**rist/singer use my shop for a first time build...

:scowl:

Forgive me. I have sinned.

c'mon, pics!

On my last build...a multi-scale 8-string g*itar, in CAD I drew out the neck-body joint at the 15th-fret bass side, after going back & forth for a long time trying to decide between 15th and 16th.

I then made the whole neck (set neck, Gibson style mortise & tenon) and routed for the pickups assuming a 16th fret join. Imagine my surprise when I measured from the nut to the saddle witness points....:mad: :scowl: :bawl:

I couldn't move the bridge, it would hang over into the bridge pickup rout...the neck tenon was finished and the fretboard was already glued onto the neck. The only thing to do was to shorten the heel and tenon an amount equivalent to the distance between #15 and #16 on the bass side...shorten it by hand with a razor knife. Thank God it was black limba instead of rock maple...

Took an entire day, but actually came out fine in the end. It has a truss rod access from the neck pickup rout too...another 1/4" and I would have had to remove the fretboard.

On my first bass, I did the fiber-optic side markers and forgot to include one for the third fret. Not a big deal with normal markers, but with fibers sheesh. I gig and play that thing practically every day because it’s my first and it’s sentimental to me, so I'm reminded of that particular mistake. SOOOO need less to say it'll never happen again. :hmm:

My whole second build was a major mistake, neck heavy, ungodly shape and headstock and uncomfortable to play, this came from rushing and a lack of planning mostly. :crying:

Once I was routing a control cavity and didn’t realize that the bit had worked its way out of the collet until I picked up the body and shockingly saw thin wood and some daylight shining through.The body was scrapped. That was the worst mistake ever!!!:eek: :mad: :hiding:

Since then I've made many more mistakes but most are easily fixed, but never forgotten :D

No pics = no build mistakes... And we know nobody it's perfect...

:D

On my first bass, I did the fiber-optic side markers and forgot to include one for the third fret. Not a big deal with normal markers, but with fibers sheesh. I gig and play that thing practically every day because it’s my first and it’s sentimental to me, so I'm reminded of that particular mistake. SOOOO need less to say it'll never happen again. :hmm:


Being a guy with the skills to build and repair basses, would you not of fixed it. I know its a big job taking off the fret board and redoing the work but still if you use it a lot...

:bawl:

third time it's happened to me. I start feeding the stock to the router on a table too slowly and lightly and the router grabs it and yanks a piece of wood with it. I always manage to fix it and it's hardly been a problem. This latest time it was so bad that it literally took about 1/2" into the body from the upper horn. Thank goodness for epoxy and wood dust! Lucky for me this bass was to be painted black and was not a comissioned instrument. I wonder what that'll do to that ol' MH (mid-hump, for the uninitiated).

I've done the exact same thing, always at the horn. Never happened with a hand held router and I'm not sure why. Would using spiral bits help this problem in any way?

Being a guy with the skills to build and repair basses, would you not of fixed it. I know its a big job taking off the fret board and redoing the work but still if you use it a lot...

One day maybe....

Ok, sometimes I use a tape measure. When I do, I don't believe the little wiggly tab at the end is accurate so I start measuring at the 1" mark and add an inch at the other end. So once I forgot to add the inch at the other end and ended up routing for a whammy bar in the wrong place :crying:

Do you know that if you get a good, name brand tape measure that has that wobbly end its perfectly accurate, if you're measuring the outside of something pull the wiggly thing taught. If you are measuring the inside of something push the wiggly thing all the way in. The wiggly thing is calibrated to account for the actual metal wiggly thing itself when it is pushed in...when it is pulled out the measurement starts from the inside part.

I've done the exact same thing, always at the horn. Never happened with a hand held router and I'm not sure why. Would using spiral bits help this problem in any way?

I'm not sure. But I think using one of those start up pins may help ...but the one time I used it it was so uncomfortable that I removed it after the first 5" or so. Also, I think starting the cut with a more definite sweep instead of the shy "is this going to work?" may help because there's no climb cut that way (my suspected reason for the grab). Are you using a start up pin? If not, you may want to try it ...but it takes a while getting used to it.

My thinking is that a regular, straight bit bites its way in perpendicular to the wood. So there is a collision, so to speak. If the knives were not perpendicular, as with a spiral it should ease its way into the work and channel the energy down, rather than out.
Now, the problem is coming up with the cash for one of these bits. Very expensive. If someone can confirm this is a home run, i'd shell out the money.

Being a guy with the skills to build and repair basses, would you not of fixed it. I know its a big job taking off the fret board and redoing the work but still if you use it a lot...

This bass has the fingerboard (bloodwood) epoxied on. So the chances of it coming off and being able to be reused are fairly slim. I did however put a normal marker there in the missing fibers spot. Once the frets need reworked I may go ahead and rebuild it, for my personal playing its really not too big a deal. Mostly a pride thing I guess. :rollno:

I've got a few prime examples...

- While drilling the wiring channel on a beautiful 2 piece ash body I had made, I popped the bit right through the back of the body:eek:

Reminder to oneself - remove the pup routing template before attempting to angle the bit from the pup cavity to the control cavity.

- I was making a ledge on a body for binding when I felt the bit sort of "let go" - hard to describe except I ignored it and attempted to continue the rout since I didn't have any visual idea that something was wrong. The guide bearing had come off and I proceeded to route a nice loop into the face of the body!:mad:

Note to oneself - ALWAYS check the bearings on your guided bits to make sure they are tight and secure before routing.

- When using a StewMac fret guide template and their registration system, I mistakenly used the first notch as the first fret notch - NOT!! - That notch indicates the nut and not the first fret.

Note to oneself - READ the instructions a couple more times before attempting something new.

- I use spiral bits for my work as much as I can...If they aren't tight in the collet, they will drill themselves right through a body blank and into the, now, sacrificial material you have under it - like a nice bookmatched mahogany blank! I know this is a fact so just take my word for it, OK?? :D

- When using a StewMac fret guide template and their registration system, I mistakenly used the first notch as the first fret notch - NOT!! - That notch indicates the nut and not the first fret.


Been there, done that...just not one of my worst... :rollno:

This thread is worthless without pics.

true that

Ok, here's mine. This was the first time, but it's happened to me twice more since then. More recently about 3 weeks ago. The first two were fixed by slightly re-shaping the horn, but this last one was so bad I had to fill it up with epoxy and wood dust.

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/8392/dscf0528ku2.jpg

Ok, sometimes I use a tape measure. When I do, I don't believe the little wiggly tab at the end is accurate so I start measuring at the 1" mark and add an inch at the other end. So once I forgot to add the inch at the other end and ended up routing for a whammy bar in the wrong place :crying:

This used to happen to me. I've found that holding the tape at either the 10" mark or 1'-0" mark works better...it's easier for me to register the offset in my mind.

Robert

Ok, here's mine. This was the first time, but it's happened to me twice more since then. More recently about 3 weeks ago. The first two were fixed by slightly re-shaping the horn, but this last one was so bad I had to fill it up with epoxy and wood dust.

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/8392/dscf0528ku2.jpg

OUCH!!!

Wilser what type of epoxy do you use and how much wood dust etc is used and is it really good enough to hide a tear like that?

OUCH!!!

Wilser what type of epoxy do you use and how much wood dust etc is used and is it really good enough to hide a tear like that?

that particular one was fixed by reshaping the horn. The one I fixed with the epoxy/wood dust mix was much worse than that. I use system three clear coat and whatever wood dust was in my RO sander's canister.

Some good advice here too........

http://talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=313585&highlight=Mistakes

Been there, done that...just not one of my worst... :rollno:

BUT, in this particular case, the fretboard had been glued to a fully assembled blank with the trussrod in place. :(

You could've made it a short scale bass and claimed it was intentional :ninja:
The spacing would all still be correct, imagine a normal bass with a capo on the first fret.

Burned purple heart edges with router. Purple Heart burns very easily. It doesn't look so bad in the pics, but it's burned and a chunk came out. :(

Pics...
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g122/dopey-25/Hornburn.jpg

wow... please resize that bad boy! Yowza!

Routing a trussrod slot. The bit broke 7/8 of the way through the job. Just sheared clean off, right where the flutes start. There was no drama, no flying pieces, it just fell off and stopped cutting. (Grizzly 1/2" shank 7/32" bit, from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Grizzly-C1476-Single-Fluted-Straight/dp/B0000DCZEI/ref=sr_1_1/002-4360748-9776031?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1192196958&sr=8-1))

Ok, I'll just use the straight 1/4" bit I have on hand for the last part. Measure the depth so I can match it - 12mm. Set the bit, start my rout, something's wrong! Pull it out, measure the bit depth - 17mm! :eek: I thought I was putting it at 10+2 mm, but I actually did 15+2.

That's going to go right through the back of the neck, right under the 2nd fret! :mad:

One of my "bad habits" in the shop is that when using the drill press, I like the tip of the drill bit to be very close to the surface I'm drilling.

Well, I was using a 7/8" forstner bit to "hog out" a control cavity before finishing it up with my router. I was about 3/4 of the way done when I realized the drill bit was about and inch from the surface, so I decided to raise the drill press platform up to get the wood closer to the drill bit. Up it went, I drilled the last 5 or 6 holes and when I flipped the bass over I saw that I had drilled the last 5-6 holes right through the front of the bass... I had forgot to reset the depth stop on the drill press! Luckily, this particular bass didn't have a figured top on it so all I had to do to fix it was to bandsaw off that body wing and replace it....

One of my more memorable ones to me was when I got a bass to the point of having all the wood done and ready for final carving and routing. I sent the customer (in Sweden no less...) pics of the bass and he replied "it looks great, but it is supposed to be a single cut....". POOP! I had cut the body to be a double cut design and it was supposed to be a single cut! I had to start over from scratch on that one!

I guess my most recurrant one is when I cut truss rod slots. I have not locked the depth stop in place, and have turned a slot into a trench, usually correctable, as my blanks are always 1/2" to 3/4" oversized.

As for the router table grab, been there, done that, quit doing bodies on a router table. Actually I rarely use a router table anymore, I like my over arm router for such operations these days. I have more control of the router and workpiece this way. Just my preference.

well, thank Larry for having another top that's exactly the same..............because I cut the top for a neck through and made it fit perfectly around the fingerboard.................only problem, I hadn't tapered it yet...........Oh well, now I have wood for top and back of the headstock!