| To begin
I went through my stack of timber to find suitable pieces. I decided
to use Ovangkol and Pear for the neck and Bubinga for the body. I
also found a scrap of Wenge that was big enough for a fingerboard. I started by ripping down strip on the table saw to make the neck lamination - three pieces of Ovangkol and two of Pear. |
 |
| I made the centre lamination a little narrower to ensure when the neck was cut down in width to its final dimension all five pieces would remain visible. |
 |
| Then it was glue-up time./ Lots of PVA, lots of clamps! |
 |
| When it was dry I scraped off any squeeze-out and put it through the thicknesser to true it up. |
 |
| I bought a truss rod and routed a suitable groove down the centre of the neck. |
 |
| After carefully marking out the neck I removed
some of the waste from the headstock area of the neck and planed it
true with a hand plane. In this picture you can see the bubinga for the body and the wenge fingerboard. |
 |
| Next I glued up the blank for the body. |
 |
| With a little web surfing I found a picture of the bass outline I liked. I blew this up on the computer and printed it out - this was stuck to a piece of MDF and voila, one body template. |
 |
| I laid out the fingerboard, cut the fret slots with a hand saw, cambered the board and tapered it to final dimensions. Then I hammered in the frets and glued in some dot inlays. |
 |
| Next step is to cut a slot through the body for the neck. I transferred the outline to the body and marked on the centre line. |
 |
| Then I used the table saw......... |
 |
| ...to start removing the waste. |
 |
| I test fit the neck to make sure I get a perfect fit. |
 |
| Then I used a router clean up the bottom of the slot. |
 |
| The neck is then notched to fit in the body, bringing the neck flush with the top. |
 |
| I want to make a slight "indent" where the neck joins the body so that the transition is hidden by the fingerboard. I mark the neck directly from body and trim it back with a router. |
 |
| From the rear the bass will look like a regular "neck through" design. The rear will be slightly hollowed once it is glued up. |
 |
| You can see here how the fingerboard hides the neck to body transition - I'm happy! |
 |
| I glue two "ears" onto the headstock to make it wide enough. |
 |
| I round over the edges of the body with a 3/4" radius cutter in the router - this kick starts the shaping. |
 |
| I re-assemble the bass to see what areas need work - next the grinder! |
 |
| The grinder is fitted with an aggressive wood cutting disc and guard. Then I begin shaping the rear..... |
 |
| .......And front. It is pretty coarse cutting but it is fast! |
 |
| I then put a 36 grit sanding disc on the grinder and blend it all together. |
 |
| And finally the random orbit sander with 60 grit paper to smooth it all out. You can make quick progress using your tools in the proper order - use the coarsest tool first to quickly remove the most of the waste then move to progressively finer tools to refine the surface. |
 |
| Now I need to work out where the the control cavity is going to be and where I need to make tunnels for the wiring - it's better to do this before it gets glued up. |
 |
| I routed a groove out of the upper edge of the neck which should be useful for the wiring - it should intersect the pickup cavities. |
 |
| Plenty of glue (cascamite) and clamps and it becomes a guitar. |
 |
| A maple veneer is glued to the face of the headstock. |
 |