New Build - Five String single cutaway fretless

[Jisch]

I may go deeper with this, but I got the body indent done, I love the way the woods interplay with the curves.
Before:

After:

 

[Jisch]

This little detail has been messing with my head, now that I have it started I think I understand what I need to do. Now that I see it I'll have to clear more wood out around it so I can get under it. I wish this didn't happen to fall in a piece of cherry, it's so hard. I'll have to work on it slowly (like I have a choice!).

I used a router bit in a dremel to clear the wood near the pad, the thing is it's got to be undercut from there all the way from the front to back to give the illusion that the scroll continues on into the neck.

Here's the pad by itself:

 

[Jisch]

Slowly getting closer

 

[Jisch]

I got a few hours in the shop today. I surfaced the back of the body with a router sled of sorts, worked great, again. I didn't take any pictures of that, but not much to see anyway.

I cut the excess wood off the neck, thereby removing any square edge I would use for fretlines. I know I could still glue paper to the top of the fretboard, but I'm going with no lines on this one. Once I got the sides cut down I put in pins for the fretboard, worked out great (I put a third one in up by the headstock):

I roughly cut the fretboard on the bandsaw - I'll bring it in perfectly as I go here. The cocobolo didn't bother me too much, I felt a tickle in my throat, but all I did was cut it, not sure if things will get worse when I sand it or if it was just my imagination anyway.

Test fit of everything:

and finally I glued up one side of the headstock wings, I'll put the other one on tonight.

I made a mistake and cut the side of the body down where the wings will connect. I made a piece that will fit in there and will have to re-square everything up again. Hopefully it will be relatively invisible. So mad I did that. Oh well.

 

[Jisch]

I'm not sure how many people are like me but when I make a mistake it haunts me until it's fixed. Last night I was up a couple of hours thinking about the problem and how to fix it. Even though I lost a lot of sleep I actually did figure out a good way to fix things. Basically yesterday when I was cutting the sides of the neck I cut the bass side of the neck too far down past the point where the upper wing will connect, leaving an ugly cut and a gap between the wing and the neck. I sanded the cut to make it smooth, then carved a piece of cherry to fit against the neck. The challenge was that in order to cut it on the tablesaw I'd have put it in fret side down and where the fret board mounts is proud of the body. I put a piece of double stick tape on and stuck a board to the bottom that was flush with the other side, and ran it through the saw.

Here's the ugly patch and the pusher I stuck on top so I could guide it through the saw:

It came out great, no one will know about this except me (and you):

I carved the patch so it's the same shape as the wing:

It's not perfect yet, but it's close, I'll do more shaping:

I did a bunch of other stuff that won't seem significant in pictures including trimming down the fretboard, fixed a thickness problem on the neck blank and planed down the wings a bit, the drop wasn't enough and the bridge looked like it was going to be bottomed out. I'm going to add a thin laminate between the fretboard and the neck as well (I'll check things again before doing that). I need to round off the body again and I'll have to reshape the scroll on the top as well after the thickness work.

All in all a good couple of hours that will hopefully put my mind at ease - I'm traveling for work this week, so this is the end of progress until next weekend.

 

[Jisch]

I meant to mention that I had no issues trimming the cocobolo with the router, no allergic reaction at all. We'll see how the radius sanding goes.

 

[Jisch]

After an exhausting week of travel for work, I got an opportunity to spend a bit of time on the bass today:
I radiused the fretboard - it came out great, straight end to end and no allergic reactions to speak of. I was careful with the dust, but obviously if you're sanding there's dust in the air.

Then I brought the truss rod slot out through the headstock - this is rough, I'll clean it up a bit:

Next up I'll sand the body more - after planing the body down and doing the round over I have a lot to clean up.

 

[Jisch]

I did more body sanding, but nothing that would show in a picture.

I spent a bit of time doing a headstock design. I haven't been happy with the headstock on very many of my basses, in fact I think I'm only happy with the four string A/E one. I'm trying to stay away from any pointy things this time around. I think this one might need to be a bit longer. I'll let it sit overnight and see what I think in the morning (any comments welcomed!).

 

[Jisch]

I worked on the easy parts of the neck, I'll double stick the wings on and see if I can figure out what to do there.

First facets marked:

Getting there with the first facets:

I put some blue tape on to protect what was "done" (HAHAHA) and started bringing the transition:

Getting there:

At this point I stopped to put the wings on and see where I am - it's really easy to remove wood, a lot harder to put it back on (as I've been reminded once already on this build).

 

[Jisch]

This is getting interesting! I am sure there is a better way to do this than using a Shurform, but it went just fast enough to keep things under control and not so fast that things got out of control. I think I have a good idea of how this will be shaped to fit the scroll. I'll likely have to shape the back of the scroll a bit too. I have to be careful with the bump where the scroll meets the neck as I don't want to have it interfere with your thumb. It will have to be limited to the top 1/4 of the neck, which shouldn't be too hard. I have a rat tail rasp that will be used to fine tune it from here, I think.

After this I'll have to round over the edges, but I have the width just about consistent edge to edge.

 

[Jisch]

I have the thickness set side to side, now I need to carve the back of the scroll to meet it.

 

[Jisch]

I spent a couple of hours on the bass this afternoon, lots of slow, careful work. I'm happy so far, probably a couple more hours before I can move on to the next step. Another work trip this week, so no updates during the week.

I used a Shurform to remove the bulk of the wood, then a scraper to fine tune. The shape is slowly revealing itself.

Front (not a great picture):

Back - getting the back flat in the spot where the bulge connects to the scroll has proven to be difficult, but I'm getting there. I need to trim down the back of the scroll a bit more:

 

[Jisch]

I spent a little time with the neck last night. There is a lot of fine tuning to do, but it's starting to come together. I'm realizing that I need to work on the neck with the upper wing attached, this allows me to form everything together and make it look like one piece. I'll have some this week and weekend to do more.

 

[Jisch]

It's hard to imagine how many hours I have into this connection between the neck and the upper wing, I keep say "it's getting there", but it never seems like I'm there. I think I'm going to glue it up and work on the rest of it when the wings are connected. Most of the work I'm doing now is with the wings clamped on anyway. The primary tools I'm using at this point are scrapers and sandpaper.

 

[Jisch]

Let the glue up begin

 

[Hopkins]

What is the reason for tying the scroll into the neck?

 

[Hopkins]

What is the reason for tying the scroll into the neck?

 

[Jisch]

I don't have a good reason other than design evolution. It was supposed to be a singlecut, as I went through designs I messed around with a lot of things and this kind of stuck. In retrospect it adds an unnecessary amount of complexity. I do like the way it looks right now, but I wouldn't do it again. I did a lot of searching for something similar once I was into this one, I did find one somewhere, but of course I can't find it now.

 

[Jisch]

Out of the clamps. Glue up looks great - no gaps that I can see right now. I hope to get more time to work on this in the coming week.

 

[Jisch]

I bought an orbital sander for my birthday, it should get here today, but I had a little time this morning so I got to work with a scraper to bring the neck blank in line with the wings. I planed the neck blank down with a router sled, but I made the wings thinner as it looked like my bridge was going to be bottomed out. I still may need to recess the bridge a little, we shall see. The front is even more proud, I'll probably bring it in close with the orbital sander and use the scraper to get it flat.

The scraper worked great, but man it's a finger workout to take this much material off:

I alternated planing the neck blank with smoothing out the curves on the rest of the body. Still lots to do, but it's coming together. It's going to be a very flowy body, with lots of curves and swoopy turns.

 

[I-Am-The-Slime]

That fingerboard is soooo cool! It almost deserves to be hung on the wall by itself