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$100 Bass Challenge - Black P

#41
Dig the design!

I've been curious about using that carbon fiber looking material for awhile (I had hopes to build a StealthRay years ago.) At the time I was worried that, because the Kydex was heat sensitive for shaping purposes, it might be prone to warping though. I'm assuming though that's probably not a realistic issue given the temperatures needed to work with it. (Probably not a real concern on a $100 build...)
 
#43
@MrArose13 Bourns pots are great. They have more expensive models, which may be more or less desirable for various applications. I did choose these because they are inexpensive, but...I mean it's a Bourns pot. They are well-built, purpose-made guitar potentiometers. I have no reason to think they won't be durable.

@CosmoReverb I think it will be fine. I mean I wouldn't leave it on the dashboard in a car parked in death valley all day, but I don't think the heat will really be a problem. ABS is a thermoplastic too, and most pickguards are made from it, and they don't seem to be melting off of guitars like some Salvador Dali painting.
 
#44
Well, I went out into the shop today and found that the maple fretboard I had set aside for this build was bowed like rodeo rider's legs. Damn. So.....I went up to woodcraft to get some more maple, but they didn't have any hard maple. Blast. And there weren't any other lumber sellers open today. Damn and blast.

So I sauntered over to their clearance section and found some lovely stuff. It was marked as Mayan cherry, which is also known as Machiche. It's hard and dense, and in fact quite a bit more so than Hard maple. It has a listed janka hardness rating of 2700lb/f, compared to 1450lb/f for hard maple. And, it was a special purchase of the stuff, on clearance for $6.88 per board foot. So I bought a big ol' chunk. The piece I sawed out for this build is 30" long, 2.5" wide, and 0.5" thick. That gives me a total of 0.2604167 board feet for the fingerboard, which comes to $1.79 (actually 1.79167) for the fretboard. So I'm still within the $100 budget.

It's a nice piece. Here's a close-up:
015_fretboard_zpsrgqyophv.jpg


It kinda looks like red wenge to me. It smelled strikingly like East Indian Rosewood during sawing and planing. Of course I didn't leave it at 1/2" thick. I planed it down to 5/16".
 
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#45
So last night I transferred the neck design to the neck blank and routed the truss rod slot.
016_neck_truss_rod_1_zpssch14saw.jpg


017_neck_truss_rod_2_zps6rho8jgb.jpg


The slot is about 1/64" off-center. Ask me how worried I am about that.

If I get a chance, tonight I'll try to rough-cut the neck out of the blank, and route it clean to the template.
 
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#47
HaMMerHeD said:
Well, I went out into the shop today and found that the maple fretboard I had set aside for this build was bowed like rodeo rider's legs. Damn. So.....I went up to woodcraft to get some more maple, but they didn't have any hard maple. Blast. And there weren't any other lumber sellers open today. Damn and blast.

So I sauntered over to their clearance section and found some lovely stuff. It was marked as Mayan cherry, which is also known as Machiche. It's hard and dense, and in fact quite a bit more so than Hard maple. It has a listed janka hardness rating of 2700lb/f, compared to 1450lb/f for hard maple. And, it was a special purchase of the stuff, on clearance for $6.88 per board foot. So I bought a big ol' chunk. The piece I sawed out for this build is 30" long, 2.5" wide, and 0.5" thick. That gives me a total of 0.2604167 board feet for the fingerboard, which comes to $1.79 (actually 1.79167) for the fretboard. So I'm still within the $100 budget.

It's a nice piece. Here's a close-up:
015_fretboard_zpsrgqyophv.jpg


It kinda looks like red wenge to me. It smelled strikingly like East Indian Rosewood during sawing and planing. Of course I didn't leave it at 1/2" thick. I planed it down to 5/16".
Click to expand...

It does kind of look like a cross between wenge and padauk
 
#49
The neck is cut out, but I did not have time to route it clean.
018_neck_2_zpsojw406qo.jpg


018_neck_1_zps4pv0sc8x.jpg


It's a little rougher than I usually like it to be even on rough cut, because I had a 1/2" blade installed on the bandsaw for resawing the fretboard stock, and I didn't feel like putting the 1/4" blade back on. It doesn't much matter though. The ragged edges will all get removed pretty soon.
 
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#52
Today, I routed the neck flush to my template.

Since this neck was so cheap, I wanted to try something different. I've been thinking about ways to speed this process up. It's always several passes, and even router bit changes, and I feel like every time I stop the router and adjust it, I'm introducing a possible point of failure. I want to get this process down to one pass. Plus I find it really tedious and unpleasant. So...I've been looking at solid carbide spiral pattern bits. Because of the spiraled cutting edge, the cutter impacts the wood gradually. So rather than the jarring chopping action you get from straight bits, the spiral bits give you a shearing action.

So I bought one:
019_neck_3_zpsi2icvo0c.jpg


It has the bearings on the top, and a 1" cutting length. That's not enough to do a body, but it's sufficient for my 13/16" thick neck blank.

So I loaded it up and set the height in my router table.
020_neck_4_zpshbhmic1z.jpg

The cutter just clears the wood and is set so that the bearings can ride on the template.

I went pretty fast and wasn't super careful. Again, if this was a build for someone else, or I was using expensive wood, I may not have gone this route. I did this so that I could see if it was feasible to do this in one pass on my router table. Three minutes later, I had this:
021_neck_5_zpsklmqprgz.jpg


I'd say the method is a success. The edges are square and clean all the way around with no tearing or chipping, even on end-grain.

While I was at it, I drilled for tuners.
022_neck_6_zps4akvmbpf.jpg
 
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#57
I'm drooling over that carbide spiral bit. Nice.

The electronics can be gotten from Mouser, Newark, or Digikey. (If anyone know others, please chime in.) Sometimes one is cheaper than another. They are all generally cheaper the MI suppliers, but you have to know what you're looking for since there are literally millions of part numbers available.
 
#58
pilotjones said:
I'm drooling over that carbide spiral bit. Nice.

The electronics can be gotten from Mouser, Newark, or Digikey. (If anyone know others, please chime in.) Sometimes one is cheaper than another. They are all generally cheaper the MI suppliers, but you have to know what you're looking for since there are literally millions of part numbers available.
Click to expand...

It was like $42 at Woodcraft. It can be had slightly cheaper on amazon. However, if I was going to buy it again I'd get the 1/2" shank, 1.25" cutting length version. It's about $70 on Amazon.

Mouser is my preferred source because they ship quickly and they aren't far away from me, so USPS regular mail is like 2nd-day delivery. Also, Digikey's website is stuck in 1998 and I find it a lot harder to navigate than Mouser's.
 
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#59
Yes, Digikey's site is a little rough. Newark's not bad, I think equal to mouser. Once you get past two screens, Digikey is the same as the others in function, it just looks stylistically out of date.


Worse is mscdirect vs. McMaster-Carr. MSC has a lot of stuff in tooling areas that McM doesn't but even with recent improvements, the UI sucks.
 
#60
Hammerhead
Really nice design, great work so far. Did you already have the template? I am finding template making pretty difficult, any tips? That spiral cut bit is sweet. Mind posting a link to Whiteside?

Mouser is great. You can set up an account and save build lists under any name you like and then share the lists by e-mail. I've done a couple pedal builds using their parts, all top quality stuff.
 

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