'English Tan' is a lighter shade than normal tan (which is often referred to as 'Russet'); I've never heard of 'American Tan'. Good color match, it looks like you won't be able to see that from 4 feet away.
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Trying to fix a worthless Bass
- Thread starter Markshan
- Start date
Some of you who have been following this project from the beginning may remember that at one point I filled the neck pocket with epoxy. Getting that right relied on using a level elsewhere on a curved body. So because of that, it ended up that the epoxy set the neck pitch too far forward. So just now using the Shinto and a fret rocker to make sure I was keeping everything level, I filed out about 2/3 of that epoxy and at the far end even took some wood. But I think that I now have the pocket at the correct pitch to bring the neck to the correct angle for the wooden bridge. At the very least, I think I am within the range of adjustment on the bridge. And if I'm not I can go back with a shim anyway.
Much closer than the white putty at any rate.
We are in the home stretch now. Dress the frets. Sand the body with some wet soapy thousand grit, polish and assemble.
Oh, and I have to put real fret markers on the side of the neck. This thing was made so cheaply that the old ones were just painted on and there's only a tiny bit left of fret 5. Everything else scraped off as I worked on the neck.
Oh again, I forgot cut a new nut. I have a bag full of bone blanks.
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Yeah that does sound kind of funny. It's actually just a little Ziploc baggie. I needed two nut blanks but it was exactly the same price to buy two as it was to buy 10 so I bought 10 to have them on hand.
I ended up staying up too late last night and did much of the fret dressing. All the sharp ends are dealt with and the frets are mostly crowned but need polished.
Now I'm late for church cuz I overslept.
See the bad things that happen when you let work get in the way of your hobbies?
Now I'm late for church cuz I overslept.
See the bad things that happen when you let work get in the way of your hobbies?
Do these appear to be adequately crowned? I know it might be hard to tell in the picture. Before it was pretty obvious that they were flat. Now to me they just look like they're fret-shaped. I guess that's what I want. More importantly, before I could rub my hand up and down the neck and there were literally 10 or 12 spots that were sharp enough to catch and could have possibly cut if I had been playing hard on them. Now I rub my hand up and down the neck fully wrapped around the edges and everything just feels smooth and comfortable.
Before...
After...
Before...
After...
I was very intimidated to file frets, but it actually doesn't seem all that difficult now that I'm doing it.
It's really weird how removing metal makes them look taller. I guess it's because they're skinnier they appear to be taller I don't know.
First the side dots disappeared with sanding...
Then I installed new side dots. Not perfect but utilitarian. Of course the one I buggered the worst was at the 12th fret where it's the most noticeable...
Now that I've done it once freehand I'm thinking that it would be pretty simple to take an L bracket and drill a hole in the spot to make a jig and that would perhaps help for them to all be in the same position. But since the necks have different radii maybe it wouldn't, I'm not sure.
Then I installed new side dots. Not perfect but utilitarian. Of course the one I buggered the worst was at the 12th fret where it's the most noticeable...
Now that I've done it once freehand I'm thinking that it would be pretty simple to take an L bracket and drill a hole in the spot to make a jig and that would perhaps help for them to all be in the same position. But since the necks have different radii maybe it wouldn't, I'm not sure.
The bracket would only have to cover 1 cm of the fretboard so the radius would hardly matter. The goal is to get them spaced the same distance from the edge. and your guide would do that.
That's what I'll do next time. To be perfectly honest though, I was just thrilled I didn't bring the drill bit up through the fingerboard. That would have been a mess.
Tonight I worked on final finishing of the body. I tried to correct the flaws both that existed when I took possession of the instrument and the ones that I caused. I went over the entire body with a sheet of thousand grit wet dry sandpaper. I wetted it in warm water with some Murphy's Oil soap added. I took a before and after photo of the worst spot but it really was of great benefit throughout.
Before...
After...
The sanding caused some of my color touch-ups to require being retouched...
I figure I'll do that with a fine artist brush rather than a rag, and just focus it right at the spots that need it. I was able to be less concerned last time because I knew it was going to be sanded again.
So my hope is I can bring this back to its original gloss with a random orbital sander and some cutting paste, followed by some polishing wax. After I do that I just have to make the nut and then it should be ready for assembly.
Before...
After...
The sanding caused some of my color touch-ups to require being retouched...
I figure I'll do that with a fine artist brush rather than a rag, and just focus it right at the spots that need it. I was able to be less concerned last time because I knew it was going to be sanded again.
So my hope is I can bring this back to its original gloss with a random orbital sander and some cutting paste, followed by some polishing wax. After I do that I just have to make the nut and then it should be ready for assembly.
Thanks Kathy. Your encouragement and so many others here have really helped the project along.
So this is the original nut. Definitely very worn. I can't decide if the orange crap in the G slot is just dirt or if it's something that was added to try to build that slot back up. It kind of looks like dried glue. The A slot is sitting much lower than the others.
It took me three quarters of Monday Night football to turn the blank at the bottom into the nut at the top. I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to cut and sand bone. I've never done it before and other than the hacksaw I didn't have any proper tools.
And here it is placed into position. I won't know until I put strings on the thing how close I got it but initially I won't glue it in so that I can take it back out and do whatever fine-tuning is required.
Just based on the eyeball check it looks like I missed the spacing on the D string by about a half a millimeter but that may just be because the thinner slots look that way. Frankly I'm tired and I don't feel like getting out the calipers to check. Even if it is a little bit off I don't see myself redoing the whole thing because of it. Frankly, for a first try, I think it looks pretty good. I'm actually a little bit impressed with myself. I heard Dan Ertlwine say that nobody ever ends up using their first nut. It's still too early to say but I feel pretty good about the chances that I'm going to be using this one.
It took me three quarters of Monday Night football to turn the blank at the bottom into the nut at the top. I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to cut and sand bone. I've never done it before and other than the hacksaw I didn't have any proper tools.
And here it is placed into position. I won't know until I put strings on the thing how close I got it but initially I won't glue it in so that I can take it back out and do whatever fine-tuning is required.
Just based on the eyeball check it looks like I missed the spacing on the D string by about a half a millimeter but that may just be because the thinner slots look that way. Frankly I'm tired and I don't feel like getting out the calipers to check. Even if it is a little bit off I don't see myself redoing the whole thing because of it. Frankly, for a first try, I think it looks pretty good. I'm actually a little bit impressed with myself. I heard Dan Ertlwine say that nobody ever ends up using their first nut. It's still too early to say but I feel pretty good about the chances that I'm going to be using this one.
Okay guys I need some sanding advice.
Monday Night football went into overtime so I decided to try to bring the shine back on a corner of the body. I used the cutting compound and it did in fact bring back most of the shine. The problem is that even with the shine there are still lots of hairline scratches showing through. So I need to know what my next step is. I'm thinking I want to sand again since the finish is hard enough that the cutting compound won't level it. So do I sand again with wet thousand grit but just go much lighter? Do I go up to 1200? 1500? Or do I just keep going with the cutting compound and see if I can get it eventually to come out?
I appreciate anyone's advice but I'm going to tag a couple of people who have helped me with these kind of questions before @Matt Liebenau , @Beej .
Thanks in advance.
Monday Night football went into overtime so I decided to try to bring the shine back on a corner of the body. I used the cutting compound and it did in fact bring back most of the shine. The problem is that even with the shine there are still lots of hairline scratches showing through. So I need to know what my next step is. I'm thinking I want to sand again since the finish is hard enough that the cutting compound won't level it. So do I sand again with wet thousand grit but just go much lighter? Do I go up to 1200? 1500? Or do I just keep going with the cutting compound and see if I can get it eventually to come out?
I appreciate anyone's advice but I'm going to tag a couple of people who have helped me with these kind of questions before @Matt Liebenau , @Beej .
Thanks in advance.
My smart aleck answer would be to use whatever grit works. If you start with a finer grit it will take longer to sand out any defects but you probably have a better chance of not sanding through. I’ve seen some guys go up to 2500 or 3000 before they buff. I’m not sure how bad the scratches are or how much clear seems to be left.
Probably should have put up a picture but I'm not sure they would even come across. The scratches are numerous but extremely fine. You don't even see them from certain angles. You only really see them when the light catches them just right. I already drove by a Harbor Freight so I picked up some 1500 wet dry paper. If that doesn't get it done then I'll go over it with 2000. As far as the thickness of the varnish or urethane or whatever it is it appears to be literally like 1/16 of an inch. There's lots of it.
