Thanks for the replies. I should've propably mentioned that I have read most of that over the last few years. As I said, returning slowly. And I am very thankful for you Bruce for sharing all that. Not many have the will or the patience to do what you do.
But I'm more interested in what jigs or fixtures other hobbyist scale builders use regularly in their workflow. I want to build a solid collection of tooling before starting an actual project. And honestly, in the near future I can maybe find enough hours to build a jig. A guitar or a bass is a bit further down the road.
Here are my recommendations for a hobbyist electric bass builder, with a small shop and basic power tools (Drill press, bandsaw, router). The overall idea is to build two holding fixtures, one for bodies, and one for necks. These holding fixtures can be used for Router Planing, cutting flat surfaces on blanks, using wide bases on your router. Then flat templates can be clamped down to the holding fixtures, to use to rout neck pockets, pickup cavities, control cavities, truss rod slots, etc. You make the templates yourself from 3/4" MDF.
Collar routing through templates makes everything easier. I recommend setting up to use two sizes of collars with their associated bits: 3/8" Collar/1/4" Bit and 5/8" Collar/1/2" Bit. Note that they both require the same 1/16" offset in the templates. So, you make all of your templates with 1/16" offset. Then, with the same template in place, you can hog out most of the wood with the 1/2" bit, and switch over to the 1/4" bit to clean up the small corners. Ideally, you have two routers all set up, and just switch between them.
Here's the list of what you need to make up:
Router accessories:
- A rectangular base with a 3/8" collar
- Another one with a 5/8" collar
- A long base with a side handle; open center, no collar
- A 30" long bridge base, that mounts the router in the center.
Building bodies:
- Body holding fixture; about 28" long x 20" wide, with 2" high parallel rails and clamping flanges on the rails. The body blank mounts down into it.
- A collection of templates, made from 3/4" MDF. Make them all the same size, like 24" x 20", so they can be stacked and stored neatly. You could make one that has all the standard pickup cavities that you use; P, J, MM, Soapbar, etc. One for neck pockets. One for control cavities. Or any combination that you want. And you can even make templates to rout the body perimeter shape, if you want to do that. Thay are all made to be used with the collar bases, and to be clamped down to the holding fixture.
Building necks:
- Neck holding fixture, long and narrow, about 30" long x 6" wide, with long side rails about 3" high. Clamping flanges on the rails. I recommend building it as a squeeze fixture; One side rail is fixed and the other slides. Several bolts and knobs tighten them together, like a long wooden vise, clamping on the neck blank. I've shown several designs for these in my threads. A flat base router can be used on the rails to router-plane flat surfaces on a neck blank. Including surfaces of angled headstocks. And long MDF templates can be clamped to the fixture, for routing slots for truss rods and bars.
- A few templates, for cutting truss rod slots, or even neck perimeters. All of the templates are made with the same 1/16" offset to use the collar base router.
Some other useful specialty fixtures:
- A vertical Router Jointing Fixture. Quickly and accurately joints the edges of boards to be glued up into body blanks. Real simple to make.
- Fingerboard radiusing fixture. This can be fairly simple or can get complicated, depending on how much you want it to do. A big time saver.
- Fingerboard slotting jig. The hardest part is buying or making accurate metal scale templates.
- Neck holding fixture, for mounting the neck face-down on your bench, to make it easier to shape the back of the neck.
- Holding fixtures for painting the neck and body.
Those are what I consider to be the essential fixtures for building electric basses. Without getting into making hardware and pickups.
I'll refer you to other threads, if you have questions on any of them.
