The guy who I'm building this bass for (me) keeps changing the requirements. I'll have a stern talk with him.That is some seriously bespoke sh1t man
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Five string bolt on
- Thread starter Jisch
- Start date
I'm going to say something nice about mahogany: a card scraper works amazingly well on it. I did a lot of scraping of the body last night, it looks really nice. I'm digging the flow of the curves. Still more to do, but good progress there, apparently I didn't take any pics after that session.
This morning I started working on the headstock a bit. I mounted the tuners, planned out the logo size and edited the shape with the french curve. I got it all pulled in. I sanded out for the bottom two tuners, I didn't go quite far enough when thicknessing the headstock. It looks like the fretwire won't get here until Monday. I guess I can get that logo installed over the weekend.
That little piece of paper is the size of the logo that I used for testing purposes.
This morning I started working on the headstock a bit. I mounted the tuners, planned out the logo size and edited the shape with the french curve. I got it all pulled in. I sanded out for the bottom two tuners, I didn't go quite far enough when thicknessing the headstock. It looks like the fretwire won't get here until Monday. I guess I can get that logo installed over the weekend.
That little piece of paper is the size of the logo that I used for testing purposes.
I'm as anit-AI as anyone when it comes to creative endeavors. I like what I heard the other day: respect demands effort. AI is a lazy way to accomplish anything creative, not to mention the "stealing" aspect of AI learning.
That said, boy is it good at doing mock ups. We are installing a new patio behind our house, I made probably a dozen iterations in a design tool, my wife vetoed all of them. I had AI take one of my cartoonish designs, a picture of our house and make it look real and bam - instant approval. The difference between a cartoon and a realistic view was huge in being able to envision what it will look like.
I asked it to add the logo (which is not the exact font nor size I am using), and assume the mahogany is finished with oil and show me a mock up. Kind of crazy how this stuff has progressed. I asked it for different inlay colors and it glitched out, so maybe not THAT amazing. I'm sure I can get the mock ups for other colors, but funny how it loses track of things. Also this looks a lot more like finished walnut than mahogany.
That said, boy is it good at doing mock ups. We are installing a new patio behind our house, I made probably a dozen iterations in a design tool, my wife vetoed all of them. I had AI take one of my cartoonish designs, a picture of our house and make it look real and bam - instant approval. The difference between a cartoon and a realistic view was huge in being able to envision what it will look like.
I asked it to add the logo (which is not the exact font nor size I am using), and assume the mahogany is finished with oil and show me a mock up. Kind of crazy how this stuff has progressed. I asked it for different inlay colors and it glitched out, so maybe not THAT amazing. I'm sure I can get the mock ups for other colors, but funny how it loses track of things. Also this looks a lot more like finished walnut than mahogany.
I did the inlay, the epoxy is not curing, ugh. I'll give it another day, but removing that is going to be painful. I'm not going to think about that right now.
I cut all my frets and cut the tangs off the ends.
I didn't like how the magnets were aligned with the strings with my pickup holders, I measured and they are about .1" too wide, they needed more overlap. I cut some new ones out of maple, I'm back to double reverse P. The holders still have some fuzzies on them, need some cleaning up. It was far easier to cut both at once than cut four and glue them together.
I'll stain those black. After I got done I checked the magnets using my magnet viewer, they look good now. The viewer has a glossy finish, hard to get a good pic.
For anyone who is wondering I have about .04" of wood between the magnets and the top, the magnetic field doesn't look appreciable less strong with the pickup cover in place or not.
I cut all my frets and cut the tangs off the ends.
I didn't like how the magnets were aligned with the strings with my pickup holders, I measured and they are about .1" too wide, they needed more overlap. I cut some new ones out of maple, I'm back to double reverse P. The holders still have some fuzzies on them, need some cleaning up. It was far easier to cut both at once than cut four and glue them together.
I'll stain those black. After I got done I checked the magnets using my magnet viewer, they look good now. The viewer has a glossy finish, hard to get a good pic.
For anyone who is wondering I have about .04" of wood between the magnets and the top, the magnetic field doesn't look appreciable less strong with the pickup cover in place or not.
It's been a while, and not a lot of progress.
I got the pickup routes done. I cut a template on the CNC, positioned it and routed out the cavities. The bright birdseye maple is way too stark.
I recently made a dining room table which I covered in "table top" epoxy. One of the parts is about the consistency of cold molasses, the other part is the consistency of caulk, it's very thick. Since I had a little left over I figured I'd use that for the inlay. When I was "pouring" out the thicker stuff it plopped out in a blob on my workbench and a bit dropped in the cup I was mixing in. It was impossible to know how much dropped in the cup, but it looked about even to what was already in there, it wasn't and the epoxy never cured.
I had already planed off the first headstock skin due to the router slip. I had to plane off this one as well. I used the CNC, it works well for that job, though I kind of wish I didn't know that.
This time I figured I'd do the inlay before gluing, that way if I mess it up I won't be planing for a third time. I have some fresh epoxy, but I don't have any other projects coming up, so I am reluctant to open it and have it go bad over time. I did try to make mother of pearl inlays with the CNC, but the pieces are just too small, I broke 2 pieces pretty quickly and decided that wasn't going to work.
I figured I'd go the other direction with the birdseye maple and dye it black, I'll do that on both the pickup covers and the headstock. It's going to be tricky to fill the inlay without going over as I can't sand it. I struggled a bit thinking about order of operations to get this done, we'll see if I can pull this off. The other consideration is what the sides of the headstock plate will look like once it's cut to size, I doubt the dye will have penetrated evenly. I figure I can either dye the edges once they are exposed or do a binding. We'll see.
I love the look of this dyed birdseye. I've got a fair amount of that wood in stock, maybe my next top will be dyed birdseye
I got the pickup routes done. I cut a template on the CNC, positioned it and routed out the cavities. The bright birdseye maple is way too stark.
I recently made a dining room table which I covered in "table top" epoxy. One of the parts is about the consistency of cold molasses, the other part is the consistency of caulk, it's very thick. Since I had a little left over I figured I'd use that for the inlay. When I was "pouring" out the thicker stuff it plopped out in a blob on my workbench and a bit dropped in the cup I was mixing in. It was impossible to know how much dropped in the cup, but it looked about even to what was already in there, it wasn't and the epoxy never cured.
I had already planed off the first headstock skin due to the router slip. I had to plane off this one as well. I used the CNC, it works well for that job, though I kind of wish I didn't know that.
This time I figured I'd do the inlay before gluing, that way if I mess it up I won't be planing for a third time. I have some fresh epoxy, but I don't have any other projects coming up, so I am reluctant to open it and have it go bad over time. I did try to make mother of pearl inlays with the CNC, but the pieces are just too small, I broke 2 pieces pretty quickly and decided that wasn't going to work.
I figured I'd go the other direction with the birdseye maple and dye it black, I'll do that on both the pickup covers and the headstock. It's going to be tricky to fill the inlay without going over as I can't sand it. I struggled a bit thinking about order of operations to get this done, we'll see if I can pull this off. The other consideration is what the sides of the headstock plate will look like once it's cut to size, I doubt the dye will have penetrated evenly. I figure I can either dye the edges once they are exposed or do a binding. We'll see.
I love the look of this dyed birdseye. I've got a fair amount of that wood in stock, maybe my next top will be dyed birdseye
