5 string fretless comp.

[Grant Bass]

k, might aswell get on the record and start my thread;
had a blank glued up, but went wood shopping today and was inspired; of course dissapointingly i forgot my camera, but knowing this thread exists without pictures will remind me for tommorow;
specs so far;
5 string fretless
thru neck
gold hardware
neck blank will be wenge with pau amarello stringers;
hafta hold up some body woods to it and see what looks good, but for a top i have set aside either curly mac ebony; buckeye burl or thuya burl; in my double version of my 'cutaway top' as seen m'here

it will be exposed neck lams as im not comfortable with the full top on neck thrus, as im shyly returning to neck thrus in general, and if theres gonna be a deadline, i want to be in at least a 50% comfort zone; good luck to everyone, this is gonna be fun.

[Musiclogic]

Very cool Grant ...Looking Forward to it.

[miziomix]

cool!!! wow...

[__HM__]

Wow. I really love how the cap is cut to expose the core. It reminds me a loooot of a Fodera, in all the best ways.

[Beauchene Implements]

Nice design, I like the cutaway top!

[jmorbita]

good luck with this! subscribed!

[Grant Bass]

i'll take that as a compliment; its a hard sell tho; someday hopefully!

[Grant Bass]

hair shot eh?

thats me "fiddling" around
but seriously after all the stress i put on documenting this thing i havent got one good picture (im such an f'n hipocrit!)
my camera died when i got to the shop; well i had a lil juice and i needed an update for a client, and a paying customer wins out; but i got them on my cell phone, so when i out them up, please dont crucify me!

[Grant Bass]

k; so like i said; theyre a little fuzzy; so i'll do my best to describe; but your not missing anything but some nice grain;
here we have the rough idea for the outline shape, mostly drawn up to get my measurments and wheels turning; nothing extremely creative as of yet; gold hardware

neck woods-wenge pau ammarello and zirocote (top to bottom)

so this is gonna be a fretless unlined board; then why am i bothering to slot the ziricote? im going to fashion this board with front and side visable dots, i use to free hand dots (with a template guide) on the side of the board; and thats just sloppy, if i use the fret groove as half of my center mark (x with the fretboard edge) i get as close as i know how; and i went with 3/8" mahogany dowel, so 1) they were nice and big to not distract from the typical 'untonation' and 2) i needed something light that wouldnt get dirty from sanding the board

the fretlines are just notched in slightly, so with my fretboard template edge i marked my line and center punched the appropriate crossections and brought them over to drill press;
my method was to lock into the hole with the forstener and then use 2 spring clamps with my other hand to keep it from moving; being that this board was getting sanded down to
2/3s its current thickness, i didnt want any wavering or something to make me pull my beautiful locs out my head.

test fit the plugs; i doused the mahogany with water when i first began (1.5 hrs) to fuzz them up for a tighter fit; she worked

taped bottom of fingerboard to stop plugs from stickin out and makin a mess on my super clean table; mixed up some epoxy with a lil ziricote dust (just to darken it up if any deposits are visable after radiusing)

so unless it just doesent work with the visual pallete; im gonna go with mahogany wings and a buckeye top; but if i go buckeye im not gonna try to bend a headplate and will go with a black veneer instead; or just do a normal tilt back headstock; but its not as rewarding looking at it after, and i find it supperior because of the straighter line from neck to headstock tip while still having the same string break angle

and now i gotta go dream of something crazy cuz all the other builds are lookin a lot better than i was expecting;
cheers

[phmike]

I'm liking the nice looking fancy wood choices (even though I can't spell any of'm) and big marker dots.
How wide is your fret board? The pics make it look really wide or maybe it's the camera angle.

[Grant Bass]

lol!
well it isnt cut out yet;
i needed some outer girth to get the inlays, and i will be slicing thru them;
now without it right infront of me i think the 24th fret is 70mm and the nut is like 46mm?

[phmike]

OK - that sounds more like it. Even with my rubber (polyurethane) strings I'm looking at about a 50mm nut width and 75mm bridge string spacing.

[Grant Bass]

k, so cut up the neck blank, tapered the center lam and thicknessed the straights in the sander;
here i dry clamped them over night; the next evening i took them out to see which way they were bowing, and re-arranged them so anything away from straight had a equal movement oposing ot on the other side.
they glued up in the same fashion with 3x the clamps and left for 3 days

the blank was squared up after another day out of the clamps


this is the mahogany for the wings, it was perfect but mannn
its pretty f'n heavy, but hey thats got some nice stripe to it and if i was ever gonna take a peice of body wood for its looks, it'll be for this.

this is the sandwhich ready for glue up;
buckeye burl black veneer mahogany

and in the clamps

heres a very modest layout of the lumber

[Grant Bass]

heres the christmas present for my grandfather i had goin at the same time; for giggles of course!

[miziomix]

Looking great! love the Burl

[roberthabraken]

Nice build. Subbed. What scale length is that tiny bass?

[Grant Bass]

14" lol

[pilotjones]

Love those fret markers.

[Grant Bass]

its too late for this one, and not wanting to anyways, but i thought it might be cool for another board to have the same idea and fill the lines with matching veneer; kinda look like a lolipop, i guess

[Grant Bass]

body wing blocks glued up; filled the big craters up with epoxy; just for explosion proofing the buckeye; not really any of the shape lands on the enclusions; if they did; this would be the stage that would cut out matching size pieces for the hole and epoxy them in.

fingerboard tapered, so far so good? not for long!

i put a black veneer thru the double dot postions.....so i thought! notice anything?

so apparently i cant count and no matter how comfortable i am , after i sand off the fret #s i should replace them immediatly;
so i marked the 24th and 9th fret i thought i could redo the 12th and stick a mahog veneer in the screw up, but for something thats whole reason of being is to be looked at, this wasnt gonna fly, i have to redrill and stick a new piece of dowel in there, ah well; ive been gettin to comfortable!