First Project PREVIEW

Well as I said in the title of the thread this is not what is supposed to be the oficial threat of my first project but just a preview. Why I post just a preview with almost no information? That is because I want to have some feedback before start to buy things like wood.

Any comment or suggestion will be highly appreciated so please guys feel free to write down any feeling you have about this.

THANKSSSSSS!!!!

EDIT: Pups and bridge sizes are not in scale, the bass is.

You are right about the neck. When I start to drawing this a few weeks ago I made the neck 6.2mm at the 24th fret and 3.1mm at the nut. Then I realize that this measure at the nut was not enough and thought to change it later but I just remember that I never did it. I have to remember this before cut any wood!!!

About the upper horn... good point!!! I am looking for peruvian walnut (if I found somebody who want to sell to me a blank of 20"x13" and not enough wood to build a house) or mahogany and any fo both are known as strong wood. I think I'll make a few changes at the internal part of that horn.

Another thing is that in this draw the headstock looks pointy. I doesn't looks like that in the paper template but I will try to round this a bit before any cut on the wood.

Ok after a two months on which I worked a little bit on the skinny neck issue (there's a few things to do there yet), then stopped to read, bought wood and re-read (again) some threads here I start finally my first building!!!

Here is what I came with (as you can see is the same pic as the one above but the neck at nut looks better now (not perfect but more changes will be done at wood itself).



Specifications so far:

- 4 string, fretted, neckthru.
- Cavity cover: Continuos
- Wings: peruvian walnut core with moena back and top. I was going to use just a top but this piece of walnut doesn´t look too pretty so I decide to use some moena on the back too.
- Neck: Laminated. Pumaquiro/purpleheart/walnut.
- Fretboard: Quinilla. 17 3/8" radiused. I will keep looking for some Estoraque or Bálsamo though. The ****ing rain on the rain forest left me without some wood choices and about 3000 people homeless!!



Some info about the local (exotic for most of you) woods:

Moena (Aniba ssp\Aniba Amazonica): Janka 1470 and specific gravity 0.6. BTW I had to buy a 3m piece and will use about 1m so if any of you want some of it just PM me .




Pumaquiro (Aspidosperma macrocarpon): Known as peruvian maple somewhere over internet. Janka 1500 and specific gravity 0.67.



Quinilla (Manilkara bidentata): Known as bullet wood or peruvian cherry. Janka 3190 and specific gravity 0.85. Hard enough to be used as a fretless. The grain looks much more pretty as it looks in live ..maybe with some sanding it will look like in the pic.



I've worked on the neck but there is no pic of it yet because it's not finished. I hope to have it done soon.

I worked a bit on the wings too.



The wings next to the top blank. I'll take the top and back blank to be cut tomorrow afternoon.



Not sure yet about ussing some sap wood as it can be seen on the pics or not. What do you say?

Pics of the top and back lined and ready to be cut. Take a look at the wing shapes with some sapwood on them.



I have a ton of doubts here and I will post them here when the time comes.

Any comment or suggestion will be apreciated.

Bryan316 said:

Hmm... I really like that you've given yourself an extra 1/4" past your lines to cut. I learned that the hard way. Leave excess, and belt sand down to the line. Far more accurate.

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The only problem with it is that I have no belt sander so I have to buy some more sandpaper!!!

Bryan316 said:

And that top for this project is gonna look gorgeous. I can't even imagine how cool it would look in different colors. Like bright orange or golden or maybe deep purple.

I'll need to start another bass project just as an excuse to buy your excess wood from you! LOL

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It'd look just great ...actually if I were you I would buy a piece of it RIGHT NOW just to be sure I won't run out that wood!!!

What about the sap wood?? First I thought It would be nice to have some sap wood at each side but now (about an hour to take the blank to be cut) I'm not that sure.

60:00
59:59
59:58
.
.
.

Ok here is a tip for when cutting a rare as hell top (read carefully and have it always in mind):

If you are sure about the measures you have take and have taken two or three times...

...it doesn't matter ...DO IT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!

Well having two weeks which were real nightmares, this weekend finally got some time to work with my project (I had to choose between it or the beach and believe me it wasn't easy to choose one of them). I finally glued all the lams of the neck. The pumaquiro blanks didn't were thick enough so I got to glue some (why all wood must cutted using standard sizes???)rails on the side of the body but some parts are going to disappear when the neck get tapered. Here you have a pics of this.





There is some planning to do yet on the neck but this just a little thing. A problem I saw is that there are a few gaps in the neck and the rails and on one purpleheart lam. Here are the pics (sorry for the crappy pics). If you want I'll try to get a few better ones.


This is about 3mm long and about 1mm wide


This is about 10mm!!! long and less than a 1mm wide

Those gaps are really really thin so I'm not sure about how to get some glue and wood dust in them. A needle is not going to be able to get into it. Any suggestion?

Some other doubts are regarding some measures and the order of steps doing the tapering, planned to the proper thick and finger joint. What I'm planning to do is:

1. Get the neck 100% planned at the top and back sides.
2. Cut the finger joint at 15° and get planned it to 1.5cm thick (is this Ok?).
3. Taper the neck (4cm at the nut and 8 cm at the bridge).
4. Cut the neck to 2.5cm at the fretboard side and at 4.2cm at the body side. Enough wood is left at the body side so I can get a nice transition from the fretboard side to the body side.
5. Planned the finger joint parts.
6. Get glued the finger joint.

I worked a bit with the wings too and find out that I'm working with the wings in the long way. I mean I should glued the core, the back and top and the veneer first the then cut the shape. This would be fast. Made it in the other way and cut first the core, then the top and then the back and after that I glued the veneers to the core and then glue the top and then the back. I guess that this is a learning process!! I got some wood left so for my next project I will have this in mind. Good thing about my next project is that I don't have to buy almost no wood at all . Bad things: It will be a g**t*r (not enough for a bass ...as I said before nobody is perfect!!!) and yeah yeah I know!!! I got that bass building illness too!!!!!

Here are the pics of this. I'm using the first blank of pumaquiro I bought and some pice of moena that left from the piece I messed up(!!!) to clamp the wing.





You can see that the high side wing it is not glued yet. Why? Because I have some doubts with the control cavity. The electronics are not here yet and I want to take off as few wood as I could so I'm not sure how much wood I have to take off. Another question is how thick (or thin) the top side of the control cavity must be?

I've thinking about the pickup wires too so what I'm going to do is to route a line on the high side of the neck (before gluing it to the wing) from neck pup to the bridge and the same on the wing so when the neck and the wing get glued I will have access to the neck and do the wire work. The same process used Melvyn Hiscock. So let's see how this work out with me. I have to do a lot of practice with the router first (bought it and haven't even take it off from its box).

As always any comment or suggestion is welcome!!

PD: Does any of you know why all that $%&”# sawdust can’t fall in just one spot of the floor instead of having it flying around you or around the whole room or around all rooms????

Bryan316 said:

Gaps in the glue joints... will they be carved away once you radius the neck? Will they be cut away once you install the graphite rods?

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Nope. Those are going to stay there and the problem is that even if they are not big, I know they are there and they will keep shouting at me ...HEYYY ...LOOK AT ME!!! YES... RIGHT HERE!!!. I'm not worried about the purpleheart gap but about the pumaquiros one. I'm not using the original blanks I posted but some flame ones I found and the piece I got was big enough for a whole new neck so I guess that I'm going to cut those edges close to the neck and sand them down and then use this extra blank I have left (I'm still have the original one so I can use it in other neck). I'll will send the neck and this blank to get planned close to perfection and see what happens. I'll do that this week unless any of you have a better idea!!!!

Bryan316 said:

The body cavities... I assume you're gonna cut the body wood out for the electronics pocket, rout a perfect canal to the pickup pockets, and THEN glue everything, right? I'd definitely wait for the electronics. What kind are you getting? Are you getting individual pots and jacks and electronics, or will it come pre-soldered and laid out like a Bartolini assembled kit? Cuz I'd recommend using a piece of paperboard like the back of a notepad, cut it to the profile of your body, draw a minimum of 3/4" from the edge, and start punching holes for your volume and tone pots. Then, wiggle in the electronics, and draw your pickup wire paths. Once you've got it all laid out and the pots mounted to the cardboard, then you can draw your cavity silhouette. Pull everything off the cardboard, trace the silhouette, and there ya go!

Click to expand...

Sounds easy ...so it will be the way to go. Thanks.

BTW, I'm getting a kit from Bartolini. 5.2 I guess it is. The one with hi-mid-low/3way mid selector/vol/blend/pull-push on the vol knob for active-passive. A friend of mine will buy it before coming back to Peru.

Haven't post any update lately because there wasn´t nothing interesting and finally found sometime to work in my project in this ...how it is called in English?? ...holly week as in spanish??? ...well ...in this holydays and here are the pics.





I slotted the fretboard and I think I $&@!# it up. I made the slot for the nut and then the slots for the frets. Took measures and everything seems to be Ok. When I take a look at the FB already slotte I realize that there was too little space between the nut slot and the zero fret slot. It's about a little bit more than 2.5mm.

So please tell what can I do??

The pics of that







EDIT: sorry for the big pics.

I thought about gluing some scrap in the nut slot and the re slot the slot about 4.5 mm from the zero fret (and not just 2.5mm) but Im not sure if there is going to be any problem with glued scrap at the moment of routing that slot again.

Edit: I planned to use the same wood from the FB at the nut so basicly a can glue the nut ...then tap put the zero fret and when the time came to change the nut I just can sand it off ...right??? Can I do that???

Edit2: The wood is quinilla. I guess is called bulletwood in english.