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What's On Your Workbench?

... the indicator line raised above the surface - even just a mm or so - so it gave a tactile indication of where the knob was pointing

Totally agree with a tactile indicator. I've always wanted to address this. I think the answer is sliding an indicator into a slot into a finished knob and hoping that your glue 1) is somehow on the surface area correctly after pushing it in, and 2) doesn't bond until the indicator is perfectly in place, and 3) cleans up nicely.

I want to try that but it'll take me some skill building and practice. My compromise was a raised dot:
20180825_184350-1.jpg
 
Last fall when I was designing a bass, I kept getting the urge to tweak another design I'd made...a variation on the mothman bass. If you don't know the mothman, google will help. The first variation I drew kept the general shape of the mothman, but moved it into more ergonomically practical dimensions - like if you made it from an off the shelf body blank.
Anyway, despite a strong urge to build it, after I worked on the drawing a bit, I rolled it up and shelved it. I laughed off the idea that any mothman bass would not permit itself to be put off and forgot about it.

Recently, I've been making avoidable errors on other instrument builds, and on the weekend, after making an error routing a fretboard, I threw a small block of wood, and it knocked the mothman bass drawing down, which fell squarely on my workbench. I put it back up and carried on with what I was doing.

Today I was picking up some materials for some trim work on my house, and I took a walk through their lumber area to see what was around. I came across this 11' long piece of african mahogany with this heavy figuring throughout it. Normally I don't buy dimensioned lumber, nor do I tend to buy much imported wood, but I'm only human. And a woodworker.
So back to the mothman. I'm getting there. I have a hatchback, so as a result I can only fit boards up to 9' long if they go from the passenger footwell to the back window. This board was 11', but had a little wave/bend in it around 9'. I asked them to cut 2' off that end so I could fit it in the car. When I got it all home and unloaded it, I brought the 2' piece in and put it on the bench next to the drawing. Interesting how the grain lines up, no?

It's almost like the mothman would like to see this bass built?
 
Last fall when I was designing a bass, I kept getting the urge to tweak another design I'd made...a variation on the mothman bass. If you don't know the mothman, google will help. The first variation I drew kept the general shape of the mothman, but moved it into more ergonomically practical dimensions - like if you made it from an off the shelf body blank.
Anyway, despite a strong urge to build it, after I worked on the drawing a bit, I rolled it up and shelved it. I laughed off the idea that any mothman bass would not permit itself to be put off and forgot about it.

Recently, I've been making avoidable errors on other instrument builds, and on the weekend, after making an error routing a fretboard, I threw a small block of wood, and it knocked the mothman bass drawing down, which fell squarely on my workbench. I put it back up and carried on with what I was doing.

Today I was picking up some materials for some trim work on my house, and I took a walk through their lumber area to see what was around. I came across this 11' long piece of african mahogany with this heavy figuring throughout it. Normally I don't buy dimensioned lumber, nor do I tend to buy much imported wood, but I'm only human. And a woodworker.
So back to the mothman. I'm getting there. I have a hatchback, so as a result I can only fit boards up to 9' long if they go from the passenger footwell to the back window. This board was 11', but had a little wave/bend in it around 9'. I asked them to cut 2' off that end so I could fit it in the car. When I got it all home and unloaded it, I brought the 2' piece in and put it on the bench next to the drawing. Interesting how the grain lines up, no?

It's almost like the mothman would like to see this bass built?

Do it
 
Last fall when I was designing a bass, I kept getting the urge to tweak another design I'd made...a variation on the mothman bass. If you don't know the mothman, google will help. The first variation I drew kept the general shape of the mothman, but moved it into more ergonomically practical dimensions - like if you made it from an off the shelf body blank.
Anyway, despite a strong urge to build it, after I worked on the drawing a bit, I rolled it up and shelved it. I laughed off the idea that any mothman bass would not permit itself to be put off and forgot about it.

Recently, I've been making avoidable errors on other instrument builds, and on the weekend, after making an error routing a fretboard, I threw a small block of wood, and it knocked the mothman bass drawing down, which fell squarely on my workbench. I put it back up and carried on with what I was doing.

Today I was picking up some materials for some trim work on my house, and I took a walk through their lumber area to see what was around. I came across this 11' long piece of african mahogany with this heavy figuring throughout it. Normally I don't buy dimensioned lumber, nor do I tend to buy much imported wood, but I'm only human. And a woodworker.
So back to the mothman. I'm getting there. I have a hatchback, so as a result I can only fit boards up to 9' long if they go from the passenger footwell to the back window. This board was 11', but had a little wave/bend in it around 9'. I asked them to cut 2' off that end so I could fit it in the car. When I got it all home and unloaded it, I brought the 2' piece in and put it on the bench next to the drawing. Interesting how the grain lines up, no?

It's almost like the mothman would like to see this bass built?
Reported...:smug:
 
Thanks! It's zipflex. Expensive, but easier to work with than traditional shell strips. And it looks really fantastic - better than any shell strips I've ever worked with or seen in a finished instrument. Paradoxically, it looks more "continuous" than normal strips, since the pieces are so much smaller the color changes from piece to piece sort of fade into the natural patterns of variation in the shell material, versus typical 1" strips where the color and pattern change from strip to strip can be much more abrupt and harder to hide. This stuff is one of those rare magical game changing products as far as I'm concerned.

I've toyed with the idea of doing a shell purfling like this on a bass, but I'm not really sure it "fits" from a style perspective. It seems more appropriate on a uke.
 
I brought the 2' piece in and put it on the bench next to the drawing. Interesting how the grain lines up, no?

It's almost like the mothman would like to see this bass built?
It does seem that way, minimum keep that cut-off somewhere so even if down the road ya know? Some things are meant to be...
 

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