It is easy to do things wrong that nobody sees from a little distance but makes a bass more or less unplayable.
Three are good reasons why only a certain kind of glue is used, how repairs are done and why.
This is all much easier to understand and check if you can play the instrument at least a bit.
For the beginning I would recommend to read the Setup & Repair forum here over several months (almost any post) and try to find an instrument that only needs some open seams to be glued and some setup work on a really cheap instrument.
Even on such an instrument it is easy to ruin the fingerboard while planing it.
The idea with a violin first is good, but you should try to play it a very little bit to find high spots on the fingerboard, check the playability with string action height and bow clearance etc.
You don’t need to make it your instrument, but even luthier apprentices always start with a violin (less wood into the fire if something went wrong).
If you made an acceptable violin, you know the basics and may try restoring a bass player in a state that is not too bad (not the example you showed us…).
I have a thick book about violin making (in German, so I cannot recommend it to you) that I take a look into if I don’t know enough about it for a certain task. But I learned most reading this forum for several years to find out if I would do something to my good instrument or let a luthier do it before I ruin something that gets expensive.
No patience, not able to get knowledge from books if you don’t have an instructor, and a missing understanding how things work physically is an easy way to deasaster.
Always triple check what you do, how you need to do it and what you are doing.
I planed the fingerboard under my high C string myself, but only after my luthier tried it and explained to me how I can make it better if it changes over time. And I was very cautious to find the right spot where I needed to remove wood, did very little every time, waited a few days, checked and corrected it, found new high spots and corrected them to etc.
It took me several months until I was satisfied, but playing it is beyond compare to the state before the planing.
As an inexperienced builder you might easily need ten times as long as an experienced luthier to restore an instrument and still be able to ruin it or at least parts of it. Even with a bit of experience I expect that you need at least four times as long.
And you don’t have the specialized luthiers tools that can get expensive for a full restore.
If you want a cheap experience get an ultra-cheap Chinese violin and take it apart (like a luthier would do) and put it back together. You might encounter problems taking it apart because of the wrong glue, but these are things that can happen with a bass as well.
BTW, if you want something you never get finished with, learn to play a bowed string instrument …
Three are good reasons why only a certain kind of glue is used, how repairs are done and why.
This is all much easier to understand and check if you can play the instrument at least a bit.
For the beginning I would recommend to read the Setup & Repair forum here over several months (almost any post) and try to find an instrument that only needs some open seams to be glued and some setup work on a really cheap instrument.
Even on such an instrument it is easy to ruin the fingerboard while planing it.
The idea with a violin first is good, but you should try to play it a very little bit to find high spots on the fingerboard, check the playability with string action height and bow clearance etc.
You don’t need to make it your instrument, but even luthier apprentices always start with a violin (less wood into the fire if something went wrong).
If you made an acceptable violin, you know the basics and may try restoring a bass player in a state that is not too bad (not the example you showed us…).
I have a thick book about violin making (in German, so I cannot recommend it to you) that I take a look into if I don’t know enough about it for a certain task. But I learned most reading this forum for several years to find out if I would do something to my good instrument or let a luthier do it before I ruin something that gets expensive.
No patience, not able to get knowledge from books if you don’t have an instructor, and a missing understanding how things work physically is an easy way to deasaster.
Always triple check what you do, how you need to do it and what you are doing.
I planed the fingerboard under my high C string myself, but only after my luthier tried it and explained to me how I can make it better if it changes over time. And I was very cautious to find the right spot where I needed to remove wood, did very little every time, waited a few days, checked and corrected it, found new high spots and corrected them to etc.
It took me several months until I was satisfied, but playing it is beyond compare to the state before the planing.
As an inexperienced builder you might easily need ten times as long as an experienced luthier to restore an instrument and still be able to ruin it or at least parts of it. Even with a bit of experience I expect that you need at least four times as long.
And you don’t have the specialized luthiers tools that can get expensive for a full restore.
If you want a cheap experience get an ultra-cheap Chinese violin and take it apart (like a luthier would do) and put it back together. You might encounter problems taking it apart because of the wrong glue, but these are things that can happen with a bass as well.
BTW, if you want something you never get finished with, learn to play a bowed string instrument …
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