Project "Senior"...

[J. Wes]

After building my "Twins", I decided to build a bass for my uncle. He has a small horse ranch in Colorado, so I wanted to use a more rustic theme to this build. I used hardware and electronics that I already had, and the neck was an experiment with maple and rosewood I had after some other projects. This experiment initially backfired, but it may be salvageable...time will tell.

Anyway, here is Senior's build. He is a brand new, old, used, new jazz bass. Here we go...

I started with the neck. I don't have a table saw, or a jointer or anything else that would have made this MUCH easier, so I took a straight piece of maple and jig sawed it in half, flipped it over to use the straight edge for the glue up. I also jig sawed a (roughly) 3/4" slice of rosewood out of a larger piece for the middle. Glue...clamps...you know the drill:

The rosewood wasn't straight, so the glue up wasn't very flat. I figured I could sand/plane/joint it flat later, so I didn't worry too much about it. I should have...

 

[J. Wes]

Here's the final glue up...next to my full size template and the original mdf template. In the end, I used these templates very little.

You can see the rough edges on the outside. They get sawed off in the end anyway, so whatever!

 

[J. Wes]

Instead of having to buy a jointer, I found out that a friend had an industrial sized jointer that I could use. Sure enough, it was flat (ish) but considerably thinner than I needed. What to do, what to do...

So I grabbed a small slab of basswood from Hobby Lobby and glued it on the part where the fretboard would go. In my mind, the maple and rosewood fretboard would give it enough strength and stability, and the basswood would give me the depth that I need. It also would eliminate the routing on the headstock. You can see where this is going.

 

[J. Wes]

Gluing it on.

 

[J. Wes]

Routing the truss rod channel. I'm using a one-way truss rod. It's what I used in my first 2 basses, and it worked out well, but this turned out to bite me in the butt. 2 way adjustable rods for me from now on...

 

[J. Wes]

Truss rod fits perfectly. Fretboard waiting to be glued!

Glue that fretboard!!

 

[J. Wes]

As usual, I needed some real estate for the headstock, so I'm gluing on some wings. I did a poor job of choosing matching wood. The maple I found was darker than the original stock. Sigh...

And here's the rough shape...You get a good idea of how much thinner the neck blank had to be planed to get it flat.

 

[J. Wes]

While I did use the template, when I was final sanding the shape, this is where I stopped. 2 things stopped me...I really liked this shape (it is Fender-ish, but smoother), and this is the tightest bend my sander can do. Mostly the last one.

 

[J. Wes]

Now for the body. Again, I was using "rustic" as a theme and then saw these knotty pine body blanks at StewMac and it was perfect.

I had to turn the template a bit to get it to fit, so the grain runs upward. Not a big deal.

 

[J. Wes]

As usual, no big tools. Just a jig saw and a router. Here's the rough cut out:

I left lots of meat around the marks.

 

[J. Wes]

I screwed/clamped the template to the blank, then routed the final shape into it. In hindsight, this was dangerous. It turns out that the depth adjustment on my old router had stopped working. Luckily, it didn't slip during this rout...

The final body rout. There is a slight gak in the body near the lower wing, but don't worry, I have sandpaper!

 

[J. Wes]

I routed the round over onto both sides and then got to rasping. I love this dragon rasp. It hates wood as much as I do! Can you see the big gash on the bottom where the belly cut will go? Yeah...that's when I found out that my router's depth adjustment didn't hold. Luckily I was smart enough (hahahahaha) to start that rout where I was going to eventually remove material!

After rasping and sanding, it was time for some more routing...with a new router. Same cheap, crappy brand, but with a depth adjustment that actually works. This is the neck pocket and control cavity rout.

 

[J. Wes]

Routing the pickup cavities. I love using templates to make template to rout cavities. I had to adjust the second template to more accurately fit my Bartolini J pickups. New router was soooooo much better.

While lighting is strange, here's the "finished" body (finished with the woodworking, at least) with a couple coats of Teak Oil applied. This pine sucks up the oil like my old pickup truck!

 

[J. Wes]

And now back to the neck. Rasping the contour on the back while sitting in my yard. Not as comfy as I had imagined.

 

[J. Wes]

Neck rasping/sanding done, now time to drill the tuner holes. Here's the test fit...

...and the back! I love what this looks like!

 

[J. Wes]

Time for lacquer. I used my old trailer as a paint booth for spraying.

...and using my shop for Teak Oiling the neck!

You like my neck-through 5 string neck in the background? Time to start focusing on that one now, I suppose...

 

[J. Wes]

Don't fret...wait, I mean fret. Fret a LOT!!!

Then lacquer...back porch spray booth! It's fantastic!

 

[J. Wes]

Painting the shielding paint in the pickups and control cavity.

And getting the control plate wired up. I made the control plate about a year ago out of Acacia wood. It matched the theme...

 

[J. Wes]

Body...done. Oh yeah, I had a tooled leather pickguard made to fit the theme! Real leather, baby...

The knobs in this pic are Ebony, but afterward, I decided to make knobs out of off cuts of the body wood to match better. You'll see...

Wilkinson bridge, Bartolini pickups, Gotoh tuners...mmmmm, mmmmmm good!

 

[J. Wes]

Done! (With pine knobs...)

Body...

Headstock...

The back. I thought it was awesome how the wood didn't color where the forearm cut was...stayed really light while the rest of the body darkened up a lot!