Homemade Musicman / refinish+fixes

[Spider]

Hey,

I got a hommade musicman from my friend, I don't mean to make this a fancy bass, this shoud be beginners bass for my friend, nice to look at, comfortable to play, not so much question of tone quality (even though this is 10 years+ old ash). Well the finish was very bad, so I am at the stage of sanding it down.

First problem I have, is that the finish got into the wood "rings" (is that how it's called?) and I guess this will take a lot of sanding. Together with this the original prep work..... well sloppy is not enough to call that. So I guess I will have to give up the idea of transparent blueburst and refinish it in solid color.

Second ding is that the original bridge (that I don't have) was routed into the body/recessed (plus it is not evenly positioned and there are some router holes in it), and any bridge I tried would be too deep. So my idea is to route straight area with a template and use the opposite template to cut out opposite piece from ash leftovers that I have from my last bass, and just glue it in, sand it down. Anyone has better idea ?

Ding number 3: The areas (inside the control cavity) where the control plate was mounted to the body vere originaly routed too small, and when the originator tried to mount the control plate the wood just chipped off. Again, my idea was either route these off and glue in small blocks of wood, or to make bigger control plate. Whatya think ?


I know this is not going to be worth the effort, but hey, It is goot to try things I haven't done before (that's why I was originally gonna go for trans blueburst). The tires were used only to take photos, no wood was harm..

[vbasscustom]

i dont think that a trans finish is going to work out on this one. but, i would say, fill the holes with wood, route them square, sand, seal, and paint, it shoould look pretty killer when its finished.

[Spider]

Thanks. I pretty much figured out that transparent is not the way to go. Will have to try next time.

[Spider]

so, little update>

I cut out under the bridge area that originally had recessed bridge, but it was just too deep for any type of bridge I han on hand. I used vertical router, for both making the area under the bridge as flat as possible and cutting out the leftover wood I had from previous build in the shape I needed. Than just glue it in, rough-shape it with router and then sanded it down.

Aftet filling all the holes, snading them, I foud a bottle of filler spray, so I did the back of the body. Still i need to do some retouches, and fine sand it with 600 grit.

The original owner did a sloppy routing, so the pickup cavity is a bit out of shape, tried ti fill it but, when I try to sand it down, the tiny bit I need to have there always chips off...any ideas ?

[joeyl]

looks good man, the wood fill looks almost perfect

[Spider]

lot of sanding done.. another layer of paint will be applied later