The Hossenfeffer Bass Build

[Gilmourisgod]

Thanks Maple, I like his tutorials. I think I've seen most of the other binding jigs, hadn't seen that one. If I was building guitars on a regular basis, id invest in a jig. I got excellent results with the borrowed Stewmac bearings and a router table setup, now just trying to decide best method of gluing. I picked up some water-thin CA glue and accelerant, going to try the wicking into pre-taped binding technique on scrap to see how it goes. Science!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

After re-reading Ledbelli's block-inlay tutorial, I went at it on my bubinga fingerboard:
Triangle markers temporarily hot-glued to fingerboard for scribing

Marker positions scribed with a sharp utility knife

First one done, took me around an hour! I'm shaving my way down with the dremel and a 1/8" downcut spiral bit. The inlays are a fat 1/8" thick, think it's safe to cut the recesses in one pass like Ledbelli does? His inlays are probably 1/16" thick. I am being excruciatingly careful not to chip out, the bubinga is very hard and brittle. Time to re-sharpen the chisels, I thought they were sharp, not near enough for this work yet , I guess.

I took some very careful measurements on my checker binding channel, and realized they vary a little in depth, probably because I wasn't as careful as I should have been to keep the body edge perpendicular to the centerline of the binding bit. You wouldn't think that tiny error would matter, but it does. I re-cut the inner ledge using the next smaller bearing to make it .010" deeper, binding seems to fit better at the horns now. I got some water-thin CA glue and the kicker, will try the tape first/then glue method on some scrap.

 

[TonH]

What I did with my rick is to keep the neck tapered all the way.
So from top to bottem.
I had no problems when I glued the wings to the neck.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

What I did with my rick is to keep the neck tapered all the way.
So from top to bottem.
I had no problems when I glued the wings to the neck.

In retrospect, that's how I should have done mine, there is a tiny "weird zone" where the fingerboard overlaps the body that will require some care sanding to transition right. Ric switched to continuous taper neck beams a few years ago, and now I see why. It's not a huge deal either way, but the extra time would add up in a mass production situation. I'm going to glue the wings on at the last possible minute so I have full access while carving the neck and installing frets. As you can see from earlier photos, I used dowels to keep things lined up, and that's worked out really well.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

FINALLY finished cutting the FB inlay recesses for the triangle markers. Looks really deep, but it's 3/8" thick FB, so i still have a fat 1/4' left below markers.

I tried all kinds of techniques, chisel alone, razor saw, etc. The only thing that worked at my minimal skill level was dremeling out in 1/16" passes and then chopping out waste with a chisel. Crude but effective. I had a couple minor chip outs i was able to immediately glue back in with water-thin CA glue. it's the best I'm capable of at this point, so I'll call it good.

Next up I'll sand some FB offcut to make color-matched epoxy and glue in. Then I have to rout a ledge all the way around for fingerboard binding, then radius.

 

[ctmullins]

Nice work! I did mine in much the same way, with a combination of Dremel and chisel. It was tedious, but I like the end result.

 

[TonH]

The FB and inlays look great!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Todd
Are your inlays forming part of the actual fret slot along that edge? That's pretty slick. Where i had some chipout was along the narrow band of wood between fret slot and inlay. That will be solid again once the inlays are glued in.

Am I likely to have any trouble with burning or melting of the pearloid inlay when I rout the binding ledge? I have some scrap bubinga cutoff, maybe I should try a quick mockup, that's saved me a good bit of pain (but no time!) all along. Never routed plastic before.

 

[ctmullins]

Todd
Are your inlays forming part of the actual fret slot along that edge? That's pretty slick.

Yep. This board, like all my boards, is a pre-slotted LMII board. If I recall (the neck's been finished for about three years, waiting on me to get off my ass and finish the body - New Year's resolution), a few of the inlays intruded into those slots, but a bit of quick filing took care of that.

 

[RaniBrandt]

Looking good, Gilmourisgod!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Looking good, Gilmourisgod!

I realize this truly is slower than watching paint dry, thanks All for hanging in there. This is my first attempt at virtually every step of this project, so it's a one-step-forward, practice on scrap, two-steps-back situation. So far I've managed not to make any fatal errors. Fingers Crossed!

 

[RaniBrandt]

Nah, good for you doing it the right way and testing on scrap first. I always seem to forget that step, and it usually means more time and money has to be spent fixing the mistakes.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Cut the binding rabbets on the FB using my ghetto binding jig, worked fine after a lot of fine tuning on scrap

Used this little xacto miter box and razor saw to miter binding ends, worked sweet.

To avoid getting crazy glue in the fret slots, I went with old school straight acetone to attach FB bindings. Still a bit undecided about which method to use for the body binding. I really don't like using CA much, nearly always get some on my skin, and the fumes are nasty. I didn't realize CA would stick to latex gloves too!

 

[ctmullins]

Looking sweet brother!

 

[TonH]

Before you do the binding for the body, can you try it on a piece of scrap wood?

I can only tell you that I attached the binding on my walnut Rick with acetone.

 

[PDX Rich]

That board is looking fantastic!

 

[gsnad2000]

Looking at this pic on my tiny phone screen I thought I was seeing a resurrection of the glitchenbacker build. The I realized it's just tape around the fretboard.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Thats not just "tape", its extremely overpriced Stewmac Binding Tape, which possesses magical properties. It does work better than the crappy blue painters tape I used before, damn well better at that price.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Tonh
I actually have tried gluing some binding on scrap, I have just enough of the insanely expensive checker binding , so I can't really experiment with it. The CA method has the advantage of setting up instantly, which is good if everything lines up right, bad if it doesn't. I'm leaning heavily towards acetone because you have at least a short time to fiddle with it before it grabs.

 

[Scoops]

This is inspiring!

Luv the FB.

BTW, How do you really feel about the highly overpriced tape from Stewy?