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Build II - Paradox MJ5 - New design!

#141
I'm back again, overcame some difficulties, not yet completely satisfied with results and progress, but I'm confident I will still be able to make this project succesful!

Today I received an important new tool, a 1/2" roundover bit. Pricy, but good quality. I'm a bit anxious using it on the swamp ash, since I got tear out last time, but I will make a test piece first.

067-roundover-bit.jpg


Then I test fitted the pickups in the template I've made. It still needs some small adjustments, but it's pretty close already:

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After some reshaping and masking tape patches, I'm ready to copy the master template into the template that also contains the neck pocket and gets shaped to the body contours for easy alignment. I will do that next time:

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Back to the maple top. This is the jig I've used to plane it down from 8,5 mm to 6 mm. Don't copy this method, results were bad:

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As I already told in the previous post, I used a sled (same method as with the control cavity cover) to correct this. That worked out pretty well (no pictures, sorry), but didn't deliver a glueable surface as well. So, I screwed down the two halves of the top to a thick piece of MDF; the maple wasn't completely flat and this ensured a flat working surface. The screws are all just outside the body contour and I will also use them when glueing the two halves together later on. I then sanded and scraped the two pieces flat, by hand, making them ready for glueing:

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Time to glue the two halves of the top together. You can never have too many clamps and I barely got enough, as I used all of my clamps on this:

072-joining-top.jpg


But, I'm rather pleased with the result, this being the glue line:

073-glue-line.jpg


So, since I'm back on track, I think I deserved this:

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It's a Hertog Jan Karakter, a strong dark ale. It's a subtle and sweet beer, also on my list of favorites :D.
 
#143
Nice job, Robert! Very nice joinery, very nice brew, and nice recovery from a difficulty! I was told once, by a luthier whom I respect: "The measure of a truly great luthier, is how they recover from mistakes." I continue to watch and learn, with anticipation. Thank you for sharing!

Thumpin_P
 
#145
T-34 said:
When cutting large roundovers, do it in several passes, this minimizes tear-outs substantially!

And your glue line is perfect, I am in deep envy :)
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Thank you very much :smug:. I know about the several passes, I think I will take only 1/16" per pass, but even then I'm scared ruining such an expensive sandwich of wood.. so I will make a test piece first and.. I'm still in doubt if I use the router table or just use it as a plunge router. I figured the reason why I had tear out, was because on the router table, it's easier to bump the wood into the bit too fast, opposed to the handheld router: I feel I have more control over speed and angle when approaching the wood with the bit.

Thumpin_P said:
Nice job, Robert! Very nice joinery, very nice brew, and nice recovery from a difficulty! I was told once, by a luthier whom I respect: "The measure of a truly great luthier, is how they recover from mistakes." I continue to watch and learn, with anticipation. Thank you for sharing!

Thumpin_P
Click to expand...

Thank you. Making mistakes, or, I would rather say, encoutering mishaps, makes me feel not having full control over what I'm doing. Somehow, I expected things to go a little better than the first time, so it doesn't feel good not everything works out the way I figured it should. But on the other hand, I'm doing more difficult things and my demands are higher. Next to that, I have a lot less time (only a few hours a week) and sometimes I am in a bit of a hurry, which absolutely does not contribute to obtaining better result.

tZer said:
Router-planing has never worked well for me either. Small jobs are ok but large areas always expose the subtle deflections in the system.

The top is looking really good!
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Yeah indeed, it worked for me on the scarf joint, cavity cover (twice) and even a fingerboard. I had to sand out the router marks each time, but no biggy at all. This was the first large area I used this technique on, to find out it doesn't work.
 
#148
octaedro7 said:
Glad to see that your sorting all the inconvenients out.
There are some screw holes around the center of the top, are they gonna end up below the pickguard?
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No, the top will be clean, even underneath the pickguard (maybe I'll decide not to use it, I want to have that possibility). The screws you see are all placed safely 1/2" outside the outline of the body shape, and positioned so, that I have enough material left for a headstock veneer or two.
 
#149
I finished the last master templates. Number 6 and 7 are a pickup cavity & neck pocket template and a template for the pickguard:

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Also did some other small things, like practicing how to cut veneer. Not very interesting, but I got this tip to put tape where you want to cut and it really works out, so I thought I'd share:

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Without the tape my knife got pulled from its path by the rough grain of wenge (like rutting), and if I cut in a specific angle to the grain, it tends to split. The tape solves all of those issues very well.

Last thing today was drilling the alignment holes through the maple top, which I found to be very scary. I checked and checked, a dozen times.. wouldn't want to drill through the top in the wrong place... but those holes come in handy when glueing the top and veneer to the body. Since I used the same holes for attaching the body shape template to the body core, they're already in there and a perfect way to fixate the top in the exact right spot while applying pressure when glueing.
 
#152
tZer said:
Router-planing has never worked well for me either. Small jobs are ok but large areas always expose the subtle deflections in the system.
Click to expand...

roberthabraken said:
Yeah indeed, it worked for me on the scarf joint, cavity cover (twice) and even a fingerboard. I had to sand out the router marks each time, but no biggy at all. This was the first large area I used this technique on, to find out it doesn't work.
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I used a sled to cut an angle on the back of a body I'm working on. I found that going across the width of the body gave me pretty poor results. However, going with the length of the body worked very well. 5 minutes with a flat block, sandpaper and a scraper was all it took to remove the router marks.
 
#153
Thumpin_P said:
Very cool stuff, Robert!!!
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Thanks :D

chris1125 said:
Another awesome bass, You are my favorite designer on talkbass, that body design is amazing.
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Thank you very much! Great to hear you like it that much! I hope it'll turn out a great bass too :smug:

fretless_guy said:
I used a sled to cut an angle on the back of a body I'm working on. I found that going across the width of the body gave me pretty poor results. However, going with the length of the body worked very well. 5 minutes with a flat block, sandpaper and a scraper was all it took to remove the router marks.
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Yes, that's what I experienced too.. lengthwise reasonable results but across the width very poor. Especially because I needed it to be a glueable surface. If it wasn't completely flat, the glue line around the body would show irregularities. My first try produced too deep router marks, so I couldn't just sand 'm out. Second time I could. I nice jointer and thickness planer is still very high on my whishlist.
 
#154
I made a test piece to practice glueing the top and veneer and route the roundovers:

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Pretty happy with that (mind that it's not yet sanded really well).

I first glued the veneer to the top as a whole and then cut it out together with the jigsaw. This way, I didn't have to cut the veneer with a knife, which causes cracks easier and then you'll end up with the veneer protruding in your glued sandwich, which makes it easier to break.

So, after glueing the veneer to the top and cutting it with a jigsaw, I glued that to the ash core, routed the top and veneer flush with the body core and finally did the roundover in a lot of small steps.

First, I got burn marks from the router, but after lowering router speed and increasing feeding speed, I got it just right. No burn marks and a smooth edge. That's what this test piece was meant for :smug:.

I used a small paint roller to spread the glue over the veneer in a very thin layer, making sure the grain was properly filled with glue. The other part (ash or maple) I spread the glue with a card in a much thicker layer. Pressed it together with as much clamp as available / possible. Before glueing, I also covered the sides of the ash with masking tape, so I do not have to sand the excess of.

Now, onto the real stuff...
 
#156
whodom said:
Very nice test piece- that's going to look amazing.
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Thanks, I hope so!! Right now, I'm impatiently waiting to discover the result of my glueing job last night... I glued the veneer to the top, using the same procedure as with the test piece, but since it's such a large area I found it very difficult to get everything done before open clamp time expired and I'm not sure I used the right amount of glue and if I got enough clamping pressure (I used 12 clamps and two 3/4" thick boards of MDF to divide pressure). I practiced the whole setup before I started glueing, but it still stays a nerve-racking job.. pfff :scowl:

After leaving everything for about one hour, I removed all clamps and cleaned up the excess glue and removed the masking tape that held the two halves of veneer together. Then I put everything back in clamps with new pieces of wax paper. This way, I have less change my MDF clamp cauls get glued to the working piece and I've got less lumps of glue around my working piece when it's completely dried out.

I noticed two things: because of the glue, the moisture content of the maple board increased massively on the side of the veneer, causing it to bend like crazy... with two of those tops I could've made a drum :rollno:. The other thing was that the edges of the glue joint weren't closed very well, but that's somewhat logical, because the pressure was applied on the contour of the body, not on the edges of the whole board.

Tonight I might have time to cut out the top and that's when I'm going to find out if I succeeded in getting such a nice glue joint as I did on the much smaller test piece.....
 

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