Hi there!
I think this is my first threat I have ever started on the forum but I think it is worth posting.
Today I was cleaning my harddrive and ended up finding some old photographs of my journey to build a plywood bass. I was very interested about the "tonewood" discussion and was wondering what such a bass would sound like. After spending most of my weekends with my neighbor who happened to be quite a famous violin luthier in the area for about ten years I decided I wanted to finally build my own instrument. And as a 14 year old it ended up being quite a challenge. We didn't really have powertools so every piece of wood was hand cut, shaped and sanded. Although I put about 50+ hours into the project, I unfortunately never completed the bass and ended up giving it away to a friend.
At first I started with some sketches I made in school with the basic shapes and contours. After redrawing them from time to time I ended up with a blueprint:
Later I scanned the pictures and put them in ms paint. I cleaned up the lines and printed everything on a few pieces of paper. Then I glued it on a piece of plywood and cut them out with a jigsaw.
I used hard plywood for the core and some soft cheap plywood for the front and the back of the body. I thought it would make it easier to make some contours in the body. It wasn't that good of an idea because I easily made dents in the guitar and had to repeatedly apply filler to make the body perfectly smooth.
It took a really long time to file everything to the correct shape and make the edges square to the front and back of the body. A mill would have made the job a lot easier, but I could not afford one at the time and I thought I didn't really need to use powertools because the violin builder also did everything by hand.
Eventually I used filler to make the body as smooth as possible and to fill up the gaps in the plywood.
It really wasn't the best filler available. It was the cheapest I could find (like every other material I used in the project). But after applying filler and sanding it down multiple times, the body was just like I wanted it to be. Though, I forgot to make the belly and arm cut so after chiseling and gouging for some time with blunt equipment, I had to start all over again.....
I know.... It really looked like a big mess, but after filing and sanding a few hours straight it ended up real smooth. Some more spray filler was applied and I ended up with this:
It still doesn't look like much, and I ended up failing a lot of times to apply a nice even coat of spray paint, but after multiple big mistakes I got the hang of it.
On this point I decided I didn't want a Jazz bass pickup anymore and I ended up with buying some P bass pickups. I never ended up using them in the project and put those in my fretless P bass (this one was meant to be a fretless one too). So I filled up the hole with a piece of meranti wood. And I forgot to make a cavity for the electronics, so I gouged it out in a hurry.
The body was nearing completion so I started designing building the hardware. The pickguard was made from some bakelite I made myself with my chemistry teacher. I didn't document that very well because we weren't allowed to make photographs during school because of privacy reasons. Making the bakelite was quite fun, the sheet was bright orange red straight after pouring, a few hours later it got a darker brown and about a week later it was safe to touch and was a beautiful deep brown color. As I didn't finish the project I gave away the blank to a guitar player. He really wanted a bakelite pickguard on his telecaster, so he was very happy when I gave him the sheet. The original design for the pickguard would eventually look kinda like a pbass.
Whilst waiting for the bakelite to cure I finished filling and sanding the body and applied about 15 ground coatings. I really didn't want to screw up the paint at this point so I decided to take my time.
I think this is my first threat I have ever started on the forum but I think it is worth posting.
Today I was cleaning my harddrive and ended up finding some old photographs of my journey to build a plywood bass. I was very interested about the "tonewood" discussion and was wondering what such a bass would sound like. After spending most of my weekends with my neighbor who happened to be quite a famous violin luthier in the area for about ten years I decided I wanted to finally build my own instrument. And as a 14 year old it ended up being quite a challenge. We didn't really have powertools so every piece of wood was hand cut, shaped and sanded. Although I put about 50+ hours into the project, I unfortunately never completed the bass and ended up giving it away to a friend.
At first I started with some sketches I made in school with the basic shapes and contours. After redrawing them from time to time I ended up with a blueprint:
Later I scanned the pictures and put them in ms paint. I cleaned up the lines and printed everything on a few pieces of paper. Then I glued it on a piece of plywood and cut them out with a jigsaw.
I used hard plywood for the core and some soft cheap plywood for the front and the back of the body. I thought it would make it easier to make some contours in the body. It wasn't that good of an idea because I easily made dents in the guitar and had to repeatedly apply filler to make the body perfectly smooth.
It took a really long time to file everything to the correct shape and make the edges square to the front and back of the body. A mill would have made the job a lot easier, but I could not afford one at the time and I thought I didn't really need to use powertools because the violin builder also did everything by hand.
Eventually I used filler to make the body as smooth as possible and to fill up the gaps in the plywood.
It really wasn't the best filler available. It was the cheapest I could find (like every other material I used in the project). But after applying filler and sanding it down multiple times, the body was just like I wanted it to be. Though, I forgot to make the belly and arm cut so after chiseling and gouging for some time with blunt equipment, I had to start all over again.....
I know.... It really looked like a big mess, but after filing and sanding a few hours straight it ended up real smooth. Some more spray filler was applied and I ended up with this:
It still doesn't look like much, and I ended up failing a lot of times to apply a nice even coat of spray paint, but after multiple big mistakes I got the hang of it.
On this point I decided I didn't want a Jazz bass pickup anymore and I ended up with buying some P bass pickups. I never ended up using them in the project and put those in my fretless P bass (this one was meant to be a fretless one too). So I filled up the hole with a piece of meranti wood. And I forgot to make a cavity for the electronics, so I gouged it out in a hurry.
The body was nearing completion so I started designing building the hardware. The pickguard was made from some bakelite I made myself with my chemistry teacher. I didn't document that very well because we weren't allowed to make photographs during school because of privacy reasons. Making the bakelite was quite fun, the sheet was bright orange red straight after pouring, a few hours later it got a darker brown and about a week later it was safe to touch and was a beautiful deep brown color. As I didn't finish the project I gave away the blank to a guitar player. He really wanted a bakelite pickguard on his telecaster, so he was very happy when I gave him the sheet. The original design for the pickguard would eventually look kinda like a pbass.
Whilst waiting for the bakelite to cure I finished filling and sanding the body and applied about 15 ground coatings. I really didn't want to screw up the paint at this point so I decided to take my time.
