Not that kind, I quit skateboarding years ago...Anyway, my last bass came with a ramp and I've grown to love playing with one. That bass sold and I got a new one yesterday and I was in need of a ramp, so I made one.
I used the excess of a macassar ebony fingerboard blank that I set aside for this reason. Measured the distance between pickups (about 1 1/4in) and cut it with a little wiggle room just in case. Luckily the FB of the bass is pretty low so the ramp didn't need to be too high, but alas the 1/4 in of ebony wasn't quite enough. I used a piece of a claro walnut sheet about 4mm thick to get the extra height as well as make it look sexy. The bass has a walnut top so it matches nicely.
I cut out a piece of the walnut and glued it to the mac ebony. I then sanded down the excess walnut using a ghetto rigged handheld belt sanded upside down. Done? Not quite, the FB has a radius to I need to curve the ramp to match. I went totally freehand getting a rough radius to the ramp making sure not to over do it. I then test fit it, got an idea of what needed to be done and hit the sander again. I made sure to sand the bottom at an angle so the bridge side was higher than the neck side. A few more fit and sand trips and it was good. Feels great!! So then I finish sanded it and used a rattle can of Polyurethane, 3 coats like it says. Here's the result...
So there it is. Nothing amazing but I'm pretty happy with it for playing and "look what I made" reasons. The walnut/ebony combo looks pretty classy, and the diagonal flame was a nice suprise after spraying the finish
I'll get some pics up of it in the bass once the neck is done drying (refinished it while I was at it...needed it bad) Oh, and sorry for the pic quality, cell phone is all I have.
