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Five string fretless singlecut.

David Pinton

David Pinton

Jul 27, 2008
176
121
Normandie, France
www.myspace.com
Disclosures
Builder DPinton Guitars and Basses
#1
Here's a build thread for a bass I'm making for a French bassist named Flo.

I started with a rendering done with Gimp.:

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It's got curly maple front and curly ash body, curly maple and maçaranduba laminated neck, Ebony fretless board with 24 lines. White Mother of Pearl small dots on the face and side of the fingerboard.

I printed the plan on paper after making adjustments to better suit Flo's taste.

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I then make a plywood template. That's cut with a jigsaw and shaped with a disc sander, scalpel and files.

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I smooth out the bumps with a sanding block made out of cork. It conforms to the curves and takes out the high spots.

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Some wood shots:

body in the rough:

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The maple top freshly bookmatched:
without flash:
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With flash:
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#4
:)
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This thing HAS TO compare to my Foderas... It's gonna be killer... I play only luthier's instruments for years (Noguera, Capelli, Smith and Fodera) but always bought them second hand... Feels really great to "design" and choose things on your own instrument...

Go Johnny GOGOGO
:D
 
#9
U americans definitely have something with my name ^^
When i subscribed for the Smith forum Ken also had fun about it...

Can't wait to have this done...
BTW, it's gonna be a 2 singles, the Tom Kennedy/ Benavente way (both "bridge"), pope pre and ebony board... Killa :)
 
#12
You guys are really funny!
I've thicknessed the body halves yesterday but didn't take picture, I'll do that later on.
I used my router with a extra large plywood baseplate and long rails on the work bench.
It doesn't leave a perfect surface but I always finish with a handplane anyway so it works great for me.
I usually go to a woodworker's to get my wood planed and thicknessed, but this time I decided I'd do it all by myself! I may have to go there to rip the neck laminations though...
 
#14
There was some progress this weekend.
I jigsawed the body shape and then routed it out using a flush trim cutter and the plywood template.

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You can see I routed out some wood to lose some weight. Like a lot fo the builders here I remove the bulk of the wood by drilling it out first. I left about 15mm of wood around the perimeter and in the bridge, pickups, belly contour, electronic cavity and neck pocket areas. The bottom of these "tone chambers" ;) is 10mm thick.
I then thicknessed the maple top halves, again with my router supported by rails. After a little clean up and jointing with my handplane I glued the halves together.
When that was dry and after a little more handplane smoothing and cut the top to its rough shape.

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Here's the top being glued to the body. As always I used up just about all of my clamps.

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Note that prior to gluing I dry fitted the top to the body and made sure the center joints lined up I drilled holes for some centering pins (...nails).
After the glue has dried I flush trimmed the top overhang, this time following the body edge like a template.
Then it's on to the roundover and comfort contours.

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You can see I added a dyed maple veneer between the maple top and ash body. This is because the contrast helps making the joint cleaner as it is very tricky to make an invisible glue line over such a large area.

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The bass will later be dyed somewhat a dark honey colour so the line around around the body won't be so obvious.

Now I'll be working on the neck for some time. I've recieved the ebony fingerboard and my maçaranduba laminations are ready from a previous project. I need to start cutting some curly maple...
 
#18
Hello there's been some progress last weekend!!
I tapered the fingerboard after having inlaid some dyed maple veneer strips in the slots.

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You can notice I added some Ebony bindings, I like the clean look and I figured it's actually quicker than filling the ends of the slots...

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The taper was measured after Flo's Fodera.
I also routed out the control cavity, I still need to add a separate compartment for the batteries.

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I also cut the neck laminates and glued them all up after jointing them (with my router again).

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Here's a close-up:

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You can still see some shallow router marks, I'll remove them with some light handplaning.

Now I'll be cutting and glueing the scarfjoint on the headstock, routing the trussrod slot and all that jazz. Speaking of jazz I'll also need to make me some Jazz pickup templates...
 

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