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Build II - Paradox MJ5 - New design!

#321
Carbon rods are glued in now, came out great! The wax paper really worked, didn't stick at all - I used masking tape on my previous build and it was a pain to remove - and the rods lie in nice and flat. Very minor sanding to remove some excess glue and I'm done.

No further progress today, but I made this kinda cool shot, showing off the matching body and headstock wood laminates:

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#322
Today I machined the neck to it's final shape (not the neck profile that is). I started out by cutting the neck well around the traced outline with a new jigsaw blade:

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When done patiently and careful, this can't go wrong, producing the rough shape of the neck:

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After that I aligned my neck template and started routing. I did not tape the template to the neck, because once the tape sticks it's hard or impossible to do minor adjustments, so I clamped it in place. Here I'm almost done routing:

176-routing-neck-with-template.jpg


As you can see, the protrusions of the neck template pretty much explain themself right here. I also benefited from a well made template, because the neck to headstock transition is almost perfect after routing already, as I spent a lot of time to get the neck template and headstock template fitting together perfectly:

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After routing, this is what I got left:

178-finished-routing-neck-shape.jpg


Here you can see the other side of the transition and.. I'm happy that I got some flames left, as they appeared mostly outside the outline of the neck shape:

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Did everything went well? No, sad enough, it didn't. I had one very minor tearout where I stopped routing and started again after repositioning my clamps. That's when I probably hit the grain in a delicate spot and got this:

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So I dug into a pile of sawdust and wood chips and I think I've found the concerning wood chip, so, after some negotiation I found it willing to get the hell back where it belongs :scowl:
This is what we're waiting for right now:

181-glueing-back-wood-chip.jpg


Since I will bind the fingerboard and the neck will obviously be shaped, I guess most of the wood where the tearout appeared will be removed anyway, but just in case, I want to get this fixed before I proceed. Chances are good it will be invisble in the final product...

:rolleyes:
 
#325
roberthabraken said:
So I dug into a pile of sawdust and wood chips and I think I've found the concerning wood chip, so, after some negotiation I found it willing to get the hell back where it belongs :scowl:
This is what we're waiting for right now:

http://www.robhabraken.nl/content/buildlog/paradox/181-glueing-back-wood-chip.jpg

Since I will bind the fingerboard and the neck will obviously be shaped, I guess most of the wood where the tearout appeared will be removed anyway, but just in case, I want to get this fixed before I proceed. Chances are good it will be invisble in the final product...

:rolleyes:
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It is more than likely you will get away with it unless you are planning on a baseball bat neck. The reinforcement tends to make me think otherwise.:D

That's the one thing I wish I had more discipline with. Workshop tidiness and sweeping up between operations. Finding chips like that is a near impossibility however you seem to have beaten the odds.
 
#326
mikebpeters said:
I love your thin dark line that matches between your body and headstock. I intend on going about things exactly the same way in my builds.
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I like it too, the blond woods with the dark accent layer really pops.. I'm almost starting to doubt dyeing it red :hiding:

Thumpin_P said:
Maaaannnnn! Continues to be awesome! Keep up the excellent work!
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Thank you :smug:

Prostheta said:
It is more than likely you will get away with it unless you are planning on a baseball bat neck. The reinforcement tends to make me think otherwise.:D

That's the one thing I wish I had more discipline with. Workshop tidiness and sweeping up between operations. Finding chips like that is a near impossibility however you seem to have beaten the odds.
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Yeah I sure hope so. If it appeared on the lower half of the side, it would've been removed completely. Right now, it sits against the fingerboard, which isn't ideal because there the neck has the full width (profile-wise). So I hope I did find the right wood chip, the glueing in went well and that I'll manage to hide it completely in the end. It's also in a though spot, around the 12th fret on top of the neck... but I wouldn't learn if I wouldn't make mistakes and be presented with challenges during a build :rolleyes:
 
#328
Hey Rob, this looks very nice.

Out of curiosity, any reason for the CF spars to be arranged that way? They look dangerously in the way with the neck profile below 15th/17th fret. I guess you have looked into it. Else, be careful with the profile or they might show up at the back.

Cool bass :)

Maurizio
 
#329
miziomix said:
Hey Rob, this looks very nice.

Out of curiosity, any reason for the CF spars to be arranged that way? They look dangerously in the way with the neck profile below 15th/17th fret. I guess you have looked into it. Else, be careful with the profile or they might show up at the back.

Cool bass :)

Maurizio
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Thank you Maurizio :smug:

The reason for the CF rod arrangement is strength. I feel when inserted this way, they create a triangle and provide more torsional strength. No mathematical or scientific evidence however.

The rods are 1/4" high and placed almost 1/2" outside the edge of the neck, so in theory they shouldn't be in the way. I cannot measure right now if the placement went as I planned, but I quickly threw together a cross section for the 15th fret based on my CAD plans and got this:

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I measured the shortest distance from the carbon rod to the profile edge and got 5,3 mm. Looks safe, but I'm inexperienced, so time will tell... what do you think?
 
#330
Hey Rob, I actually assumed your CF spars were a deeper 5/16".

Anyway, it all depends on the neck profile. If the spars are placed very close to the edge of the neck and the profile is very thin with a progressively flatter curve towards the heel, then it might get a bit tricky. I guess that's not the case here, you've got it all under control ;) Cool!
 
#331
miziomix said:
Anyway, it all depends on the neck profile. If the spars are placed very close to the edge of the neck and the profile is very thin with a progressively flatter curve towards the heel, then it might get a bit tricky.
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True and I admit that it is a scary part of the build, everything has to come out exactly as I planned it.

miziomix said:
I guess that's not the case here, you've got it all under control ;) Cool!
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Lol.. well, not sure if that's the case, but I'll do my very best ;).
 
#332
5mm is a large margin given that the real intention of working from CAD to the finished item is to have tight tolerances. All depends on how close to the design you are working, and from what I have seen you shouldn't be more than a mm or so out from most things. The neck profile depends on how you shape it from the intended profile to the actual one.

5mm is the kind of tolerance you would expect if you were shaping the neck with a chainsaw or perhaps landmines.
 
#333
Prostheta said:
(...) 5mm is the kind of tolerance you would expect if you were shaping the neck with a chainsaw or perhaps landmines.
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:D

I actually meant that I may have placed the rods 10,5 mm outside the neck outline instead of 11,2 mm (intended spacing). This would, however, barely change the free space I have while shaping the neck. But you're right, I don't have to worry, I guess.
 
#334
Firstly, I checked the spacing between the routed edge of the neck and the carbon rod channels. I designed that distance to be 11,2 mm and found that it turned out to differ somewhere between 11,2 and 11,7 mm. So that's just fine. I still need to take care while working on the profile, but everything still goes according to plan.

Secondly, I worked on fixing the tearout on the side of the neck. Last build log post you saw the tearout and the glueing of the wood chip. Out of the clamps, it looked like this:

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I used the router table with a bottom bearing guided router bit to clean up the fix. I let the bearing ride the clean lower half of the neck next to the fix and got this:

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That's looking hopeful! Let's take the sandpaper out!

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Pfew, that went well. I think I'm happy with this for now. There's a very minor line that's still visible and two tiny scratches on the right, but I will leave it like this and take care of what's left while shaping the neck. I hope that it still stays looking this good while shaping, because I will create a cross section of the fix so to speak. But from now on, it's not a problem area anymore.

:smug:
 
#337
Looking very cool Robert. Something I have learned with doing figured maples and other figured woods is to take very shallow and very thin cuts when getting close to the finished size. I try to get the final cuts to <1/16" thick and no more than 1/8" deep for the first 1/4" below the fretboard, this helps to avoid chipout.

Keep up the good work, it's looking cool
 
#338
Musiclogic said:
Looking very cool Robert. Something I have learned with doing figured maples and other figured woods is to take very shallow and very thin cuts when getting close to the finished size. I try to get the final cuts to <1/16" thick and no more than 1/8" deep for the first 1/4" below the fretboard, this helps to avoid chipout.

Keep up the good work, it's looking cool
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Thank you for your compliments and tips! Indeed, I seem to have learned the hard way that figured wood is prone to chipout. I clearly saw the chipout following the figure and it looks like the parts of the wood where the flame is visible is harder and more dense than the surrounding material.
 
#340
Musiclogic said:
Yeah Robert, Figured woods can be very entertaining to work with, especially sanding. You learn very quickly to always sand with a block or you get a rippled texture from the figure...LOL I think we all have learned the hard way. Keep up the good work ;)
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That actually happened with the belly cut... and I feel that the neck is going to too.. so I'm a bit worried about finishing up the neck profile carve with sandpaper, but we'll see. I will use a block and I'll try to memorize this during the build :smug:
 

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