It cut so nice, I took off a 3/32ish slice from a piece of walnut for the headstock veneer. A few passes with some 220 and it was done.
All thanks to that vid and the saw setup.
All thanks to that vid and the saw setup.
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Second Build - TT68's Diva inspired Fretless
- Thread starter TerribleTim68
- Start date
- Apr 18, 2008
- 16,015
- 1
- 31,728
- Disclosures
- I'm highly opinionated and extremely self-assured
Wow TT, that’s a yuge chunk of sawdustery!
I never use a router table for the truss rod slot, just a WorkMate and a couple of guide rails. After a few minutes of setup, it’s quick and easy.
I never use a router table for the truss rod slot, just a WorkMate and a couple of guide rails. After a few minutes of setup, it’s quick and easy.
Right? I showed my wife, who spent the better part of the last 18 years working for DeWalt (who owned B&D before Stanley bought the whole mess) and even she said "Oh my God, something those stupid workmates are good for!"That, sir, is a very stealable idea.
- Apr 18, 2008
- 16,015
- 1
- 31,728
- Disclosures
- I'm highly opinionated and extremely self-assured
Ha! My WorkMate was a gift from my dad, who always had one when we were kids. The surface panels have delaminated and warped, but are still usable somehow. I’ll make some new ones in the near future. The rest of the unit is perfectly fine!
I've always kind of wanted one but have never owned one. It looks like the kind of thing that would be handy to have kicking around the garage.
I find that WorkMate with rails idea OFFENSIVELY SIMPLE. You are clearly violating my preferred method of making everything as difficult as possible. Despite multiple flags to prevent it, I managed to partly route the TR slot on the WRONG SIDE of the neck on my HF III build, which necessitated a slight.. er...reduction in thickness for the whole body. 
That might be less of a problem if I could actually SEE the slot as I route it. Now I have a router sled.
Love me some Diva builds, might have to try one some time, that is arguably the most beautiful body shape in all of Bassdom. BTW, I have that EXACT bandsaw, inherited from my Dad. The work light didn't function for as long as I could remember, until I discovered the big wad of bug-cocoon and sawdust in the socket.
That's one skil I have yet to acquire: Resawing!
That might be less of a problem if I could actually SEE the slot as I route it. Now I have a router sled. Love me some Diva builds, might have to try one some time, that is arguably the most beautiful body shape in all of Bassdom. BTW, I have that EXACT bandsaw, inherited from my Dad. The work light didn't function for as long as I could remember, until I discovered the big wad of bug-cocoon and sawdust in the socket.
That's one skil I have yet to acquire: Resawing!
Hahaha, I did the same thing on Lucifer, so now my volute has an odd groove in the middle of it that I just tell people "I thought it looked cool".I find that WorkMate with rails idea OFFENSIVELY SIMPLE. You are clearly violating my preferred method of making everything as difficult as possible. Despite multiple flags to prevent it, I managed to partly route the TR slot on the WRONG SIDE of the neck on my HF III build, which necessitated a slight.. er...reduction in thickness for the whole body.
I'd be interested in seeing your sled.
I won't say I have any resawing skills, but I managed to pull it off. A couple things I learned along the way:...
Love me some Diva builds, might have to try one some time, that is arguably the most beautiful body shape in all of Bassdom. BTW, I have that EXACT bandsaw, inherited from my Dad. The work light didn't function for as long as I could remember, until I discovered the big wad of bug-cocoon and sawdust in the socket.
1) Working freehand was very difficult for a noob. MY smaller ShopSmith bandsaw at home has a very nice Kreg fence with the "resaw guide". I really think that would have been way better! I had a couple of them cut sort of "leaned over" because the base that was sliding on the table wasn't perfectly square to the side. So that was a challenge.
B) While that light was nice, I don't know that it was pointed in the right location anyways. Or maybe I'm just blind, either way. Man, it's hard to draw lines on wenge that are visible!
3) Feed rate is key! Reading the saw and taking your time are bigly here. I'd say that wenge chunk took three times as long as the maple chunk. Like most everything else in this, it's all about taking your time and not being in a hurry, which is often something I'm not good at. In the moment I'm never in a hurry, but I tend to be in a hurry to get in the moment so I crash ahead and often skip steps.
I'm telling you, watch that vid I linked to, that @Rôckhewer pointed me to in my thread.
I used to always look at band saws as basically a large coping saw, only useful for cutting shapes. Even the one at work, that I fixed up, I only used that thing maybe a dozen times over 17 yrs. I never really liked band saws because of the wavy cuts and bendy blades. I didn't even know what resawing was. It was as simple as watching that vid, a new blade and a few adjustments on the saw and I see the saw in a whole new light. I'm even considering purchasing a nice 14-20" in the future (when I have a decent shop space on ground level).
Anyway, even with zero experience resawing, with the right setup and blade, everything worked perfectly on the first try for me. So, I'm now pushing that vid on anyone the says "band saw".
If I can do it, certainly you guys with more exp working on instruments and band saws can do it.
I'm the exact same way. I rush through to get to the meat-n-potatoes of the project and often do a lot of temporary things to get me operational. That makes more work down the road and I'm almost always working in the middle of a huge, disorganized mess. For some reason, this whole bass thing has got me pausing, putting the bass away, building jigs, setting up the tools properly, buying the right tools, etc. Much less rushing and improvising. That tells me that I must really wanna do a good job on the bass, because I'm almost never this patient to get to the end of a project.
Am I finally growing up?
Nah, that doesn't sound right.
Hey @RichterScale
Can you post a link to that resaw video? Which thread is it in? I’ve been gradually replacing stuff like bearings and guide wheels on the bandsaw, luckily most of those Craftsman parts still available. A lot of the later Craftsman stuff was junk, but that bandsaw is a champ. My Dad bought it in 1975 when we moved to the Cape, so we got some mileage out of it!
Can you post a link to that resaw video? Which thread is it in? I’ve been gradually replacing stuff like bearings and guide wheels on the bandsaw, luckily most of those Craftsman parts still available. A lot of the later Craftsman stuff was junk, but that bandsaw is a champ. My Dad bought it in 1975 when we moved to the Cape, so we got some mileage out of it!
Sorry Tim, I'm still tickled about how well it worked. I'll drop this here and then shut up about it. I don't remember everything he went over in this vid, but I remember looking him up and watching several of his set up vids.
That's a great video. He just explained in 30 minutes what it took me 20 years to figure out!
Enough With The Bull$&!t Talk, Let's Get To Work:
So we arrived back at "the woodshop" for another 3 day weekend. I really only planned on doing the operations that I can't do at home. The major one being resawing all this lumber! My ShopSmith bandsaw has a throat of about 6" max. The old Craftsman at the woodshop has a throat of a healthy 7". That extra inch is bigly. Plus, I had already purchased that gnarly resaw blade for it, so we're already in it to win it here! First order of business would be fixing that tire issue. Last year it kept kicking the tire off the wheel. So I took some suggestions from you guys and showed up with some 3M Temflex in hand. Let's get that old tire off, along with the previous failed attempt at it -
View attachment 4287203
And then wrap it with the Temflex -
View attachment 4287204
Let's get a blade on this bad mamma-jamma and see what happens!
View attachment 4287206
So that's a 1/2" Timberhawk 3tpi blade, she's a beast!
If At First You Can't Saw, Resaw And Resaw Again:
I sent that chunk of wenge through first, for a couple reasons. 1) That stuff is made of concrete and hatred, I figure it's probably best to use the absolute sharpest blade you can and do it before you dull it on other stuff, and B) It was the widest chunk I needed to resaw, so maybe everything would get easier from that point on. After the wenge went through, I followed that with the purpleheart, then the maple. It's a fairly simple procedure, draw a line down the middle and try not to suck too much as you feed it through -
View attachment 4287210
My resawing skills are pretty sub-par, but after all that, I had a stack of lumber that should be a decent looking bass body -
View attachment 4287213
Yeah, yeah, my resawing skills suck. I know. After a quick trip through the planer to clean that up some, we got this -
View attachment 4287214
So that flame maple top, for those who don't recall, was a reject from a local guitar shop. I don't know who, but both Warmoth and Sound Guitar Works are within 15 minutes of my house and 25 minutes of the woodworking store my wife bought it from. It doesn't have a ton of chatoyance in it, but at $23 it doesn't suck. I can't get an image that shows it to upload.
Let's try this FB video link -
I also resawed that Bolivian Rosewood I had for the fretboard, along with a couple purpleheart strips that will go between the neck and body wings. It was an insane amount of resawing!
Templates Are A Road Map:
I figured while I was here I could get a template shaped too, that oscillating spindle sander is pretty cool, even if it is rusty as heck! First, with the big resawing done, swap that bandsaw blade back to something less yuge and get after that MDF. I cut my template out -
View attachment 4287251
Then taped it to my MDF and marked a line around it -
View attachment 4287252
Then we've got something like this -
View attachment 4287253
Let's head to the bandsaw! -
View attachment 4287221
Then to the OSS and we have this -
View attachment 4287222
So that shows the sandwich for the body as well as the neck blank and the strips, the fretboard in the background. And then I couldn't resist laying it out -
View attachment 4287223
So that's all of the work done for now. I'm fairly confident that I can do the majority of the rest at home. The one thing I'm still unsure of is how to rout a truss rod channel without the router table. I have a very nice router, but it is NOT table mounted. So that may require another visit to the woodshop. We shall see.
I also did it without a table. Just used a plunge router with a fence on it, simples. (much more simples if you do it before shaping the neck, but still possible after, you just need to clamp something straight for the fence to run against.)
I'm always surprised by how little my American friends seem to use plunge routers.
Yeah, I plan on routing it before it gets shaped, so it's still a block right now. I'm just trying to figure out how to clamp a fence. Got any pics of your operation? Or a link to a build thread where you did it?
