First Build (here goes nothing)

I have been lurking on this board for about 10 years and have always been interested in building, but the tools and time always seemed to be a barrier for entry for me. However recently a few things have come together just right, and I am going to give it a go.

One of my longtime friends who is an experienced woodworker recently started working with me, and the subject came up in discussion. He has a fully functional workshop and a lot of experience, which made me think that leaning on his experience may help me get to the finish line. At the same time, I told another bass player friend of mine that I was going to try to build a bass. He owns a kitchen cabinet company, and said "you know I have a CNC right?".

That brings us to today. For my first bass, I am going to build a "Jazz on steroids" type of bass. I thought that would be easiest for a first build, since there are no exotic tops, crazy body contours, etc. If this one goes well, bass #2 is a little more... ambitious. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

On to the build. I started by sketching out what I wanted to do. The body is a slightly modified Jazz, with the main difference being the lower horn. This will be a 5-string Jazz with Bartolini P2-shaped pickups (I spec'd the routes for Aguilar DCB D2s). I want to get a little wild and attempt block inlays, but we will see when we get there. Here is the initial sketch.



The headstock is a combination of things.. I always loved the tuner (3+2) layout on Lakland basses as opposed to 4+1 layouts. I also like headstocks similar to Sadowsky/Lakland (very similar) and I loved the (J)unk headstocks from Tim Cloonan at Callowhill. I also like the tele-style string retainer vs. the string trees or hipshot-style retainer. This headstock sketch is sort of a merge of those. I have an idea for a headstock logo but im not sure it will stick. Im planning on boring out a 1" hole about 1/8" deep, in which I will glue/epoxy a custom pvc soft logo of my design. Still some details to work out there, but here is the rough idea:



The next hurdle is creating all this in CAD. I am a software engineer by trade, and have done some CAD-y things in the past, so im hoping the learning curve isnt too steep. The real challenge will be CAM, which I have no experience with whatsoever. Next post will be about that journey

 

For the CAD side, I am using Autodesk Fusion360 since it is free for hobbyists, and has a fully functional integrated CAM solution. This journey started with me watching a LOT of youtube on designing in Fusion. I found a ton of videos by Lars Christiansen that were a great resource. See this link if you are interested:

Lars Christensen

I started out with the body, which should be the easiest part. The main challenges here are going to be the arm contour and the Body cutaway. Here is the rough shape of the body:


Pickup cavities are next, should be easy:


That was the easy part... now I have to figure out how to get those pesky contours. I ended up creating some curved splines and using them as cutting tools. Seems like it worked pretty well! I will clean up any sharp edges when I sand later, assuming I can actually figure out how to CNC this thing.


Body is pretty much done.. next post will be the neck (gulp)

 

Im on the same page.. neck dive = the suck! My upper horn goes right to the 12th fret, so I think im good. It was only the lower horn that I modified thank goodness I actually don't have any CNC experience at all, so I hope im not in for a hard lesson haha.

 

And now on to the neck:

This presented all kinds of challenges. The fretboard has a compound radius, and a taper from 3" to 1 13/16". I found an online calculator for the compound radius to allow the edges of the fretboard to remain consistent throughout the length of the neck (it is .187" in my case). I also added the fret cutouts and the inlay. The fret cutouts were based on StewMac fretwire tangs (.023). I also made them blind frets, which I hope I dont regret later (haha). The bottoms of the fret cutouts are radiused to the fretboard, so the fret tangs wont have a gap at the bottom when installed. For the block inlay, I ventured a tiny bit off the beaten path with slightly rounded corners. I guess its that vintage look with modern style haha.

As you can see I am installing 0.125 x 0.375 carbon fiber rods. Here is a look at the truss rod channel:


And the fretboard:


The heel contouring and base of the headstock were a big pain. I actually messed up the headstock contour (where it joins the neck) so bad that I had to start over at one point. But I am pretty happy with the way it came out now (fist pump!)




And here is the fully assembled body!


At this point I have probably 80+ hours into the CAD side of things. I sure hope this works. Either way, it has been fun learning all of this stuff!

 

Now CAM work. Sooooo I didn't know anything about milling prior to this, and I think I have spent as much time on this bit as I did the CAD side. Trying to understand speeds and feeds, deflection, chip per tooth rates, etc for different endmills and machines is a bit daunting for the newbie. Each machine also has a seperate post processor that is specific to the type of CNC/Controller you are using. However after a ton of videos, I feel like I have an elementary grasp on this. One great resource I have found is Highline Guitars youtube channel, where the luthier talks about his CNC process, including bits and such. He is a great communicator and his channel has been helpful to me on many fronts, from CNC to finishing (not that I have done either yet lol)

Highline Guitars

Here is a look at some of the CAM action:

 

And now.. the first potential deal breaker. We are going to see if we can get my friend's CNC to even work at all with the files I am generating. Our first goal is to drill 2 reference/locator holes that we will be using when we flip the stock. His machine is a Omnitech Sellex with a Fanuc Oi-mb controller. I had to find a generic Fanuc post processor from Autodesk to try to get it to work. Here is a picture of us doing the trials:



Sooo that was difficult. After 3 hours and about 50 iterations, we were able to bore 2 holes, in the correct location (yes!). Our first few tries were a big no go. I honestly thought at one point that the whole thing was going to be scrapped. We couldnt even get the CNC to move at first (lol). After researching and trying, we were able to tell what line of the G-code was causing the failure, and then lookup what it meant. From there we could either change CAM, or edit the G-code directly to troubleshoot. When we left, everything *seemed* to be working properly, so im hoping that on my next visit we will mill the body.

We are going to use foam for the first prototype to see if the CAM and toolpaths are correct. I created 4 body blanks from some pink panther insulation foam panels (4 x 8) I bought at Home Depot. They were 1" thick, so I had to face glue 2 of them together to make a single 22" x 14" blank. I have seen this done elsewhere on the web, so im hoping it is a good prototyping method. Here are some pics from the web where others have done the same:

 

So now that this thing seems like it might be viable, it is time to acquire some wood! My friend that is a woodworker said he had a stick of birdseye maple laying around that I might be able to use for the fretboard (YES!). We took a trip to his shop to plane & joint the board.

Here is us jointing and planing the raw stock:


While we were there, we got some sweet lessons on hand planing! Here is a shot of my daughter planing a scrap board on the workbench, she loved it!


And here is the finished board, ready for milling! Its not crazy figured, but it has some nice details for my first build

 

Now that we have a fretboard, we need some body wood right? I took a trip to our local lumberyard with my friend. I have never been to a lumberyard and it was quite the experience. I could have spent hours just looking at all the amazing woods. Our local lumberyard is one of the locations for woodslabs.com. They were very friendly and helped us get what we needed.


I ended up buying an 8/4 stick of Poplar. They had stock wide enough for me to do a 2-piece body. The Ash they had would have required a 3 piece body, and I wanted to do a 2 piece for now. I decided on Poplar because I am going to paint this first bass, so grain/color doesnt matter as much, and it is also fairly priced so I can scrap a body and not cry. This stick should be enough for 2-3 bodies, depening on the milling. It is starting to feel real now that I have brought the design slightly out of the virtual world and have real wood.



This particular piece has a big knot in one end, so we wont be able to use the whole thing, but we should get enough for 2 blanks pretty easy. It ended up being about $70, so im building 2 blanks for the price that I could get 1 from online.

Next up, tomorrow morning (Saturday) we are going to joint and plane the body blanks, then glue them up and clamp them. Since everything is a first for me, im overly excited about this process.

 

Thanks! I sure hope so!

 

Today I headed to my friends house (I nicknamed it "woodhaven") to joint/plane the body blank and glue it up.

I have to say, I have discovered that I absolutely love working with wood. There is something unexplainably satisfying about taking a raw piece of lumber and coming out with something totally different. Here is a shot of us running the board through the jointer (I had my son jointing this one)

Gluing up the blank:



And here is the finished blank. The before and after shot is pretty satisfying.



Next up is cutting out the foam body prototype this Thursday. If we can get that dialed in we are ready to move on to real wood! In the meantime I need to finish the CAM toolpathing done for the neck and fretboard.

 

Playing around with Fusion 360 rendering a little today. I came up with a "name" for the basses I build so it feels official. I didn't want to do the normal last name thing, since my last name is Smith (Ken seems to have that one already).

 

Quick update for those following. My buddy who has the cnc is moving his shop to a bigger location, so things on that front are paused for a bit while it gets up & running. In the meantime, I am working on setting up my new workshop (aka my garage). I built an assembly/finishing workbench, and have ordered an AC and insulation to deal with the Florida heat.





In addition, I am going to start practicing my sand/paint/clear coat process on a scrap leftover from the raw stock I had. I squared it and added a roundover and contours to simulate a bass body.



I have an HVLP gun to spray with from my woodworking buddy, so hopefully I get the hang of it. I’ll post pictures of the results soon! (After a bunch of sanding, coating, and more sanding).

 

I appreciate the kind words! Honestly I'm excited and scared out of my mind at the same time, but it's a heck of a ride lol.