3 Wood Challenge: natural red and white neck thru

[Mister Know Not]

Congratulations, it's looking awsome!!!
I'm very glad to see it holds. very well done.
I really like the colours on your bass.

Would love to hear how it sounds.

Again...great job...!

[suraj]

Originally Posted by lbridenstine

Thats gotta be one of the coolest and most unique neck joint..!! Congratulations The bass looks great..

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by Mister Know Not

Congratulations, it's looking awsome!!!
I'm very glad to see it holds. very well done.
I really like the colours on your bass.

Would love to hear how it sounds.

Again...great job...!

Thank you! I can't wait to hear how it sounds either. And I can't wait to get this completely 100% done.

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by suraj

Thats gotta be one of the coolest and most unique neck joint..!! Congratulations The bass looks great..

Thanks! It definitely looks unique, haha.

[Smilodon]

Looks good.

There will always be imperfections here and there. Especially when it's a first try at something.

A small tip when it comes to screws in hard wood:

coat the screw with some candle wax before screwing them in. I tend to light a small candle (The ones in a aluminum cup) that I just dip the screw into before assembly. Some of it will crumble away, but most of it will lubricate the screws slightly. Just remember to clean up the pieces that crumble to prevent them from making a mess.

Also stay away from cheap screws and use the correct type size of screwdriver to prevent stripping the heads. Pozidriv and Phillips isn't the same thing!

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by Smilodon

Looks good.

There will always be imperfections here and there. Especially when it's a first try at something.

A small tip when it comes to screws in hard wood:

coat the screw with some candle wax before screwing them in. I tend to light a small candle (The ones in a aluminum cup) that I just dip the screw into before assembly. Some of it will crumble away, but most of it will lubricate the screws slightly. Just remember to clean up the pieces that crumble to prevent them from making a mess.

Also stay away from cheap screws and use the correct type size of screwdriver to prevent stripping the heads. Pozidriv and Phillips isn't the same thing!

I keep intending on using wax or I've also read bar soap works, but every time I screw things in, I don't think of it! I'll have to remember next time.

The ones that are stripping the most are the pickup screws. The ones that came with the pickup stripped/broke off a long time ago so I bought a pack of 8 more. The new ones seem fine for the pickup (after pre-drilling the holes), but for some reason I grabbed those for the truss rod cover instead of some better wood screws. :-/ I don't know why. I had them both sitting there. I also have a bridge screw that's stripped (and another broke off) and one of those tiny screws for a tuner is almost stripped, but I'm able to use a regular screwdriver on it, just not one attached to a drill. That's why those little screws aren't screwed in all the way in those pictures, because I'm going to need to take them off again, since I worked on that area, there's no tru-oil there yet, so I didn't want to push the screws too far and risk stripping them more.

I'm not sure what Pozidriv is, all of mine are phillips and I try to always find the right size screwdriver head for the screws I'm working with.

I'm highly considering using magnets for everything I can on that guitar build so I can avoid as many screws as possible.

Would magnets on a pickup ring mess with a pickup? I assume it would, but if not, that might be something I could do when I make a new one.

[Smilodon]

What shape is the head of the screw you are using for the pickup rings? Are they by any chance countersunk?

Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw#Screw_head_shapes

If you look a bot down the page you can see the difference between Pozidriv and Philips. I have seen countless people use Pozidriv screwdrivers on Philips screws. They sort of work, but it's very easy to strip the heads if the screw encounter some resistance.

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by Smilodon

What shape is the head of the screw you are using for the pickup rings? Are they by any chance countersunk?

Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw#Screw_head_shapes

If you look a bot down the page you can see the difference between Pozidriv and Philips. I have seen countless people use Pozidriv screwdrivers on Philips screws. They sort of work, but it's very easy to strip the heads if the screw encounter some resistance.

They had a rounded top.

Hmm, I don't think we have any screwdrivers like that. The majority of ours are Phillips or flathead.

[lbridenstine]

I took it to practice yesterday and everything works good! It sounds a lot better than my other bass, weighs almost exactly the same (somewhere around 7.5 lbs, I'll have to weigh it again now that I have everything installed), action is about the same too, and it feels very comfortable with the satin oil finish.

It sounds best in the passive pickup mode so far. There's no noise or radio signals, which is good because I didn't sheild the control cavity. The neck is a little thicker than my other one, so I'll have to get used to that. I sanded the fret edges again while I had it out there to work on the headstock joint and the frets are very smooth now and beveled pretty nicely.

I'm really happy with it other than the dents, scratches, and having to replace the pickup ring. I might end up making a new truss rod cover too and just use magnets so I don't have to unscrew it if I need to make an adjustment.

I'm seriously dreading having to work with steel wool even more, but it did make it look and feel really nice, so I guess I can't complain.

[jmorbita]

that's good to hear!! congrats!

[FBB Custom]

glad to hear it's holding up. now, on to the next one!

[HaMMerHeD]

I think the truss rod access area looks great without a cover. I'd fill the holes with walnut-stained filler and leave it that way.

[Smilodon]

Originally Posted by lbridenstine

It sounds best in the passive pickup mode so far. There's no noise or radio signals, which is good because I didn't sheild the control cavity. The neck is a little thicker than my other one, so I'll have to get used to that. I sanded the fret edges again while I had it out there to work on the headstock joint and the frets are very smooth now and beveled pretty nicely.

What do you mean by passive mode? The TW doesn't support passive mode, does it?

[HaMMerHeD]

Originally Posted by Smilodon

What do you mean by passive mode? The TW doesn't support passive mode, does it?

That is correct. The push/pull switch is a coil switch between parallel humbucker and a stacked humbucker. It does not do passive.

[lbridenstine]

Thanks guys!

The truss rod access area isn't very smooth because it was really hard to work around that shape of the fretboard with anything. I smoothed it out a bit with the router when I took out the original frets, but it's still not great. I guess it didn't show in the pictures.

I guess I meant single coil mode. The description for it says "The single-coil mode is a new version of our J pickup built in the CS (ceramic and steel)." which made me think it was passive, I guess because I've never seen active J pickups.

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by FBB Custom

glad to hear it's holding up. now, on to the next one!

Working on it!

Building a guitar with what I've learned here. Walnut/Maple/Ash/Eastern Red Cedar

I was just trying to finish up the bass first, but I'll probably work on the guitar for a couple weeks before I go back to the bass finish and pickup ring.

[crazygtr]

I'm very glad you fixed it!! Next time you do splines try to orient them quartersawn, they're a lot stronger that way. Actually the fix looks kinda cool.

[lbridenstine]

Originally Posted by crazygtr

I'm very glad you fixed it!! Next time you do splines try to orient them quartersawn, they're a lot stronger that way. Actually the fix looks kinda cool.

I'm hoping there won't be a next time for that, haha. I'm going to try a scarf joint on the next one.

[lbridenstine]

So... the nice look the lemon oil brought out is fading away and there are some areas of the front that are more dull than others. The rest of the bass (except where I made repairs and have to refinish still) looks fine. For a little while, I attempted to sand instead of using steel wool and I was planning on doing more layers, then later didn't think I needed more layers. I think it was probably 800 grit, but it started forming little bumps in the finish, then when I sanded those off, they created divets in the wood, so that's when I stopped using sand paper and went back to the steel wool.

I'm considering doing another layer or two of oil. Do I have to sand the whole thing with 800? And should it be wet or dry sanding? I tried dry last time, maybe that was the problem? Will the lemon oil be sanded away or would it effect the new layers?

Last time I applied the oil with coffee filters and I think it went on too thick, so I think I'll try cutting up an old shirt and using that this time. I feel like waiting until after 4-5 layers of oil is why the steel wool is taking a ridiculous amount of time, but I'm not sure if that's the case or it really just takes that long. Either way, I think I might try getting some 3m equivelant instead of steel wool for the next build at least to hopefully reduce the mess.

[HaMMerHeD]

I used steel wool on a finishing project once.

Once!




But seriously...3M scotch brite pads, I think the dark grey are around 800 grit. Way better than steel wool.