Double Sevens

[Will_White]

Today was the perfect opportunity to finish up some layout stuff that I've been putting off.

I marked the layout of the tuners on the headstock shape. I think I'm just going to drill pilot holes into the template to guide the pilot holes on the headstocks, then I can drill full size holes from top and back of the headstocks, but I'm still waiting until after I get the veneers glued on for that part.

I laid out the electronics to come up with a shape for the control cavity/cover.

Poll: 2 vol, 1 tone or 1 vol, 2 tone? Which would you prefer? If I go 2 tone, I think I need to buy more capacitors.

Copied the shapes over to the black limba for both bodies. I thought I could cut in from the edge for both cavities, but it turns out that I can only do that for one, so the other will have to be drilled through. I also marked where to route for the pickup and bridge ground wires.

Traced the shape back onto this after leveling it last time.

I still need to level the myrtle.

I placed small holes through the center of the pickup routes and I am going to drill those thru the tops and part way into the bodies and use them to line up the tops to the bodies when I glue them together. [The x's on the black limba picture]

And now I get to go outside in this...

As far as one volume two tone or two volume two tones, I don't play guitar but I've re-wired a couple guitars for a friend and he likes two volume, one tone with no tone on the bridge pickup , the next time I do one for him I might do a push pull so he can do his standard, or the standard two volume one tone set up. With passive instruments multiple (treble cut) tone knobs aren't isolated in the middle position so they effect everything.

 

[Jonny5bass]

Personally I've never liked having two separate volumes. It never made sense to me and seemed like just one more variable that would take my focus off playing. That's just me though.

 

[mapleglo]

Two volume, one tone vote for me. Frankly, I'd go with volume, blend, tone. But that's me. Looks great, by the way. And sorry about the snow. That's one thing I like about Phoenix. Shoveling sunshine is a lot easier

 

[wraub]

Yep, after a decade in NYC getting up before the sun to clear the sidewalks and avoid a ticket/nasty neighbor, 65 degree daytime winter temps are quite nice. Quite.
Almost makes the 9 months of Summer/ 3-4 months of triple digit temps bearable.

Lisa- IMO, 2 PUs = 2 vol, 1 tone.
My Jazz bass agrees.

 

[fjadams]

Another vote for V/B/T. But I always vote that way since it's my favorite electronics system.

 

[Will_White]

Another vote for V/B/T. But I always vote that way since it's my favorite electronics system.

Based on the way my guitar player plays and how I've seen other guitars players use their instruments I'm not sure if a blend would work well for guitar, it also doesn't allow for a selector switch (to my knowledge)

 

[fjadams]

I think I've seen a schematic for using a V/B/T selector switch, but I'd have to look where. Since I never put them in my own basses I just ignore other diagrams.

 

[lbridenstine]

It sounds like 2 vol, 1 tone has the most votes. I'm pretty sure that's what I had planned on doing anyway.

 

[Ol'Bass'ead]

For guitar, I prefer 1 vol, 1 tone behind the selector switch.

 

[lbridenstine]

Bandsaw = Fixed

I did work on the guitars today too. I'll update tomorrow.

 

[lbridenstine]

The bandsaw cut really nicely with the new blade and it was a lot easier turning the tension knob with the new part in there.

So, I cut the ears for the bodies and headstocks (no headstock pictures yet), cut out the control cavity for 1 with the bandsaw and drilled out the other with a forstner bit. Cutting was much quicker. I cut inside of the lines because I have one of those dish bits now (flat bottom, rounded edge), so I think I'll clean up the bottom of the cavities with that and I wanted to leave a little room for the little rounding at the bottom. I probably left too much room.

I also routed the wire paths and jointed the headstock veneers.

I didn't want to cut to the lines of the body yet, because I always seem to get a better result if I leave a bit of overhang when I glue things together, so I will cut closer after gluing the tops on.

The grain matches perfectly for the body ears on this one, so hopefully the glue-up turns out good.

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This one only had 1 piece to glue on, but I had to cut it out from the other side of the board, so the grain doesn't match perfectly. It's pretty close though.

I stacked them so I could glue them at the same time.

I should be back with more updates later.

 

[lbridenstine]

These turned out really good.

I glued the pieces of this headstock together this morning.

The other headstock is in clamps now.

I'm going to shape the headstocks and drill the tuner holes before gluing the scarf joints this time since cutting/routing/drilling into an angled headstock is pretty inconvenient and probably not the safest thing either.

 

[lbridenstine]

This morning I glued the tamarind/katalox top to the body. It was pretty stressful. I got some of those registration pins from LMI and this was the first time using them. They are TINY. So tiny. Like my drill press wouldn't even hold the bit. Luckily the hand drill did, but then of course the bit broke while I was drilling through the katalox.

Anyway, those tiny little holes are very hard to line up with something like this. I think they'll be more useful when it comes to gluing the scarf joints and gluing the fretboards to the necks, but I spent so much time trying to line them up during this glue up and was worried that the glue would dry out before I got them lined up right.

Luckily, at the end I somehow magically got both of them to go together like it was nothing and the glue was still tacky. The top bowed like crazy from the glue during all of this, but I clamped it down good and now it's out of clamps and all seems good.

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Not really the best view, but the top is glued down good. The veneer is only lifted at the edge where it will be cut off anyway.

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I decided to use bigger drill bits to line up the myrtle top for gluing, which went a lot better and so much faster.

I accidentally scraped my wrist on the tip of one of those drill bits while spreading the glue on that one and now I have a cut on my wrist...

I thicknessed the headstocks today and I'm just waiting to clean up the scarf angle on them before I cut out the shapes. I need to make my template too.

The necks are taped down to mdf and the next thing I will do is clean up the scarfs on them, then switch over to the headstocks. I already have the router sled setup to the angle and ready to go so hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow.

 

[lbridenstine]

I cleaned up the scarf joints with the router sled.

Cut out the bodies.

And the headstocks.

And ended up with this.

I have my myrtle cutoffs sanded and got a tube of black artist oils paint. I'll do some tests soon.

 

[lbridenstine]

I went to Menards over the weekend and got a Dust Deputy kit for $30 off. I won't be able to use it until after Christmas, but I guess at least I can do an end of the build/winter cleaning with it.

I also picked up a new can of tung oil, but they didn't have Formby's, just Minwax. Anyone have experience with Minwax tung oil? I think when I've searched tung oil before, a lot of the time it says "Formby's" but shows a picture of Minwax, so I'm hoping they're basically the same. If it doesn't work out good, I'll save it for furniture I'll be building.

 

[Jisch]

Funny, I just went to Home Depot to get another bottle of Formby's and all I could find was the Minwax. I bought it, but I ended up not needing it for the project I just finished. I am expecting it's the same stuff, I'll be interested to see what you think of it. I've gotten pretty good with the Formby's.

 

[lbridenstine]

Funny, I just went to Home Depot to get another bottle of Formby's and all I could find was the Minwax. I bought it, but I ended up not needing it for the project I just finished. I am expecting it's the same stuff, I'll be interested to see what you think of it. I've gotten pretty good with the Formby's.

If I remember right, I think the Formby's can says to wait 12 hours between coats and sand with 220, the Minwax says wait 24 hours between coats and doesn't say anything about sanding. I'm not sure if the formulas are different or not. I'll try on my myrtle test pieces and see how it turns out.

 

[eightyearsapril]

I believe Carvin/Kiesel use the Minwax tung oil. The neck on my new Kiesel Icon bass is tung oiled and feels silky, and looks like bare wood.

 

[fjadams]

I use the Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil and have had good results with it. Finish with their Gunstock Wax.

 

[lbridenstine]

I believe Carvin/Kiesel use the Minwax tung oil. The neck on my new Kiesel Icon bass is tung oiled and feels silky, and looks like bare wood.

If that's what they use, then I definitely think it will work well for me. I'm actually going to make the necks on these match the shape of an asymmetrical Carvin 7 string neck. A friend brought his over last year and let me use my contour gauge to get traces of the neck shape. He absolutely loves the neck on his Carvin, both shape and finish. I'm pretty excited about seeing how they feel with the wenge/walnut with tung oil and that shape.

I use the Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil and have had good results with it. Finish with their Gunstock Wax.

I used Tru-oil on my first couple of builds, but I like tung oil better. It goes on thinner and doesn't get gummy like Tru-oil can. I never tried the gunstock wax.