I'm in the midst of building my new Fenderbird. It's been a learning experience, but things are moving along.
I started with a fairly beaten up Epiphone T-Bird from which I am using the body and pickups. I started out stripping down the body with a chemical stripper, only to realize that the body had a hard, plastic-like undercoating. Apparently, Epiphone uses a catalyzed poly finish, which is pretty impervious to chemical strippers. Luckily, with the help of a used heat gun that I purchased for $15 at Re-Tool, I was able to get the body down to bare wood pretty quickly.
Next, I had to route out the neck pocket to accommodate the All-Parts Jazz neck which I was able to acquire, new and unused, locally off of Craigslist. I tried several times to make a template for the neck pocket to use with my Dremel router, but I couldn't get the template anywhere near accurate enough because the Dremel router tool requires that the template be cut bigger than the actual size that needs to be routed (for the same reason, the pre-cut Fender neck pocket templates wouldn't have worked either). So, I decided to go free-hand. Risky, I know, but it actually came out quite well. One of my lines was a little off, so there was a gap between the body and the neck in one area. I was able to fill that in with some epoxy wood filler and now I have a perfectly fitted neck pocket.
I've sanded down the body with 220 and given it two treatments with a water based grain filler. Now the wood is smooth as glass. Next, I'm going to follow the ReRanch advice on treating and painting the wood. I'll probably use a Duplicolor spray followed by 3 or 4 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer. Unfortunately, I need to wait until the weather cools off a bit and the humidity drops. In the meantime, I'm in a holding pattern.
Interestingly, as I was test fitting the bridge and neck, I realized that the minimum string height on the bridge and the horizontally fitted neck resulted in strings that were way to high off the fret board. After doing some research, I realized that the T-Bird neck is actually on an angle (not parallel to the surface of the body). The Hipshot Supertone bridge is designed to fit the angled neck. In order to get the string action adjusted properly, I'm going to need to shim the neck a bit, to give it the proper angle. Not a big deal.
Ultimately, I am going to do this bass with all black hardware, with a vintage maple neck/fretboard. I picked up a black Hipshot Supertone bridge and black Schaller tuners. I would love to find some authentic Gibson T-Bird pickups to put on it, but they're hard to find. I'll try to post a few pics, if anyone's interested.
I started with a fairly beaten up Epiphone T-Bird from which I am using the body and pickups. I started out stripping down the body with a chemical stripper, only to realize that the body had a hard, plastic-like undercoating. Apparently, Epiphone uses a catalyzed poly finish, which is pretty impervious to chemical strippers. Luckily, with the help of a used heat gun that I purchased for $15 at Re-Tool, I was able to get the body down to bare wood pretty quickly.
Next, I had to route out the neck pocket to accommodate the All-Parts Jazz neck which I was able to acquire, new and unused, locally off of Craigslist. I tried several times to make a template for the neck pocket to use with my Dremel router, but I couldn't get the template anywhere near accurate enough because the Dremel router tool requires that the template be cut bigger than the actual size that needs to be routed (for the same reason, the pre-cut Fender neck pocket templates wouldn't have worked either). So, I decided to go free-hand. Risky, I know, but it actually came out quite well. One of my lines was a little off, so there was a gap between the body and the neck in one area. I was able to fill that in with some epoxy wood filler and now I have a perfectly fitted neck pocket.
I've sanded down the body with 220 and given it two treatments with a water based grain filler. Now the wood is smooth as glass. Next, I'm going to follow the ReRanch advice on treating and painting the wood. I'll probably use a Duplicolor spray followed by 3 or 4 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer. Unfortunately, I need to wait until the weather cools off a bit and the humidity drops. In the meantime, I'm in a holding pattern.
Interestingly, as I was test fitting the bridge and neck, I realized that the minimum string height on the bridge and the horizontally fitted neck resulted in strings that were way to high off the fret board. After doing some research, I realized that the T-Bird neck is actually on an angle (not parallel to the surface of the body). The Hipshot Supertone bridge is designed to fit the angled neck. In order to get the string action adjusted properly, I'm going to need to shim the neck a bit, to give it the proper angle. Not a big deal.
Ultimately, I am going to do this bass with all black hardware, with a vintage maple neck/fretboard. I picked up a black Hipshot Supertone bridge and black Schaller tuners. I would love to find some authentic Gibson T-Bird pickups to put on it, but they're hard to find. I'll try to post a few pics, if anyone's interested.
