Batteries included

Next up was routing the battery cavity. I decided to go with my all-wood theme, and leave the plastic battery boxes for later. So, I drew and made two templates, one for the cover area and one for the cavity itself. Both were easy, since the templates could be made rectangular.


The battery cavity templates

After making the templates I proceeded to route them. First I attached the cover area template to the body, propped up on two thicker pieces of wood so that I could route shallow enough, and routed the area. I then moved to the smaller, inside cavity template and routed it. After routing I noticed two things: one, I ended up with a free connection from the battery cavity to the front pickup cavity, since the routes connected, and two, the cavity wasn't quite large enough for the two batteries and their connectors (stupid me). So, after widening the templates a bit I re-routed them.


The battery cavity cover area routed


The final battery cavity


A free connection to the pickup cavity :)

After routing I took a drill and made holes from the control cavity to both the bridge pickup cavity and the battery cavity.

I next took my 15mm drill bit I finally bought and drilled the recesses for the neck attachment screw ferrules. No surprises there, everything went smoothly.


Recesses for the neck attachment ferrules

Next up was rounding over the body edges. I had bought a round-over router bit from Clas Ohlson, a cheapo store... I made a router table setup for the handheld router, so that I attached the router underside an MDF board with the router bit coming through a hole in the board, and a clear plastic mounted above the bit to act as a guard. I first tested the setup on a waste piece to practice and adjust the bit height, and then proceeded to the body itself. The front side went nicely, but when I moved to the back, I got the first 5cm routed when disaster struck! The guide bearing on the bit broke loose and the bit dug a nice 2cm groove into the side of the lower horn... Damn! Serves me right from buing from that cheap-ass sh*t of a store... At least they agreed to give me my money back for the bit. The bass looks a bit sad right now, but the damage isn't impossible to fix. I think I can hide it by making a more radical contour on the back of the lower horn.


My rounding over setup


The guide bearing blown off


A very sad lower horn


The front looks OK, though it needs some sanding

I didn't buy a new round-over bit, but instead decided to at least try to round the rest of the edges by hand, with a rasp, surform and some sandpaper. Elbow grease, I know, but I don't want to risk another cheap bit, and getting a more expensive bit seems a bit too much for just the back edge.

Everything under control

Yesterday I made the templates for the control cavity. I was going to route it too, but after drawing the templates, cutting them and filing them to shape, attaching them to the body and setting up the router I had to take it all apart and rush off to work. Damn. Anyway, the templates are from the same plywood I used for my main body template (which I never used for routing..).


The template for the control cavity cover route

Today I finally got to the routing itself. I first routed the cavity cover area, about 5mm deep. Then I decided that I didn't like my inside cavity template (too sloppy), so I did a new one. I then attached it to the body and routed the rest of the cavity, in three passes. The final depth of the cavity is 45mm, leaving 5mm of the top intact. I was in a bit of a rush, so I didn't have time to check if that's enough for pots or if I need to go a bit deeper still. I think it's enough though.. Definitely not too deep. I had to pull the router bit quite a way out of the collet to get that deep :)


The cover area routed


Close-up of the cover route


The final template for the inside route


Getting close to final depth


The router bit, a long way out of the collet

I didn't have time to take a pic of the final route depth. I'll add it tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'll try to do the battery cavities, or at least get them started. I still haven't decided if I want to use the black plastic battery boxes I bought, or if I want to use a wooden cover. I've been planning to make a wooden cover for the control cavity, so it'd be nice to have a matching one for the batteries as well.. Maybe I'll save the boxes for something else.

Pick up the pace

I've had a writer's block for a few days, but things have still been moving forwards. After making the neck pocked I moved to attaching the neck. I drilled some holes for the tuners and the neck attachment screws. I was planning to drill the inset holes for the neck screw ferrules as well, but the 14mm drill bit I had proved to be just too small for the 14mm ferrules, so I need to buy a 15mm bit.


Drilling the tuner holes


Headstock with holes


Headstock with tuners


Drilling the neck pocket holes


Neck attachment ferrules in place

After drilling the holes I mounted the neck (and found that the screws I bought are way too soft) and taped two pieces of string to act as the outer strings, so I could find the location of the bridge, which I then did.


The neck mounted


A small gap - damn!


Locating the bridge position

I then went on to start working on the pickup cavities. I aligned the pickups to the center line and marked their positions on the body. I then made a pickup-sized routing template (or actually six of them - the first five went wrong in various ways). I then clamped the body and template to a table and routed the hole - and cursed as I realized that I hadn't drilled the corners with a smaller bit, as I had inteded. At this point I should have stopped to think, but didn't, and instead went on to make some very stupid mistakes. I tried to chisel the corners square, but it proved to be a very bad idea. The wood chipped very easily. I then tried to make a jig to allow me to drill the corners at this point, but that didn't work either. So, I decided to take a moment to think, and instead routed the second pickup cavity, remembering to drill the holes for the corners of that one. Unfortunately the pickup still didn't fit, so I had a problem with both cavities. I the end I went with what I should have done all along - I filed the corners square. With this whole hassle the pickup cavities ended up as being the toughest part of the building process yet, and the one I'm the least happy with.


Pickup cavity template - and some practice ones...


Cavities with some failed clean-up attempts


The finished cavities with some chisel destruction

Next up was making the control cavity. First I marked the positions of the control pots on the body and drilled their holes through the body with a 8.5mm drill bit. I then turned the body around and designed the shape of the control cavity on the back of the body. I didn't have the time to start routing the cavity itself, and wasn't sure how I wanted to do it, so I left it for now.


The body at this stage


The planned control cavity shape

Body moving

I'm back to working on the body. The first thing on the agenda was the neck pocket, which I did yesterday. I first did a couple of practice routes on scrap pieces to see how easily the wood chips. Then I aligned the neck with the body center line (glue line between the two body pieces) and traced the shape of the heel to the body. I then placed two boards to the sides of the neck pocket shape and clamped them to place. I took a small piece of board, marked the neck heel shape on that too, and sawed it to act as a curved guide for the end of the neck heel. Since the curved guide was a bit thinner than the side guides, I couldn't clamp it, so I attached it with double-sided tape. A very solid contact :)


Marking the neck heel


The heel shape marked


My router bit with a protective coating on


The routing guides (sorry for the washed-out pic)

I then took the router bit (with the shank-mounted guide bearing) and started routing, roughly 7mm in depth at a time. In the first passes I only went near the lines, since the cutting depth of the bit is about 2cm, and the guides were only 1cm (or maybe 1.5cm) thick, so the guide bushing would have been higher than the guides, resulting in the router bit cutting through the guides like butter :) After I neared the desired depth, I went all the way to the guides.


2/3 of the way routed

As I had noticed earlier on, the sharp corners of the heel shape were impossible to get into with the router. I had planned on chiseling the corners of the cavity, but someone suggested filing the corners of the heel instead, so that's what I did. I only filed the corners of the maple, leaving the ebony fingerboard overhanging. Overall I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. The neck pocket isn't very tight, but it's still tighter than the one on my Washburn :)


Fitting the neck


Starting to look like a bass :)


Close-up of the join


The neck heel and pocket

Neck almost done

I am nearing completion of the neck. The back profile is done, and I've almost completed the fingerboard. The only things left are fitting the tuners, drilling the holes for the body-to-neck attachment screws and finishing the neck. Next I will start to work on the body.

The fingerboard is radiused and sanded to 360 grit. I started on the belt sander, making the rough shape, and then moved to using my self-made 14" radius block with 40grit paper. After it seemed I had gotten the shape I wanted, I pencil marked the surface of the fingerboard to check that I was indeed sanding the whole surface. When all the pencil marks had disappeared, I repeated the process with grits 80, 120 and 360 (I didn't have any paper between 120 and 360! Bad planning, I know...)


The fingerboard before radiusing


Some radiusing done, fingerboard pencil-marked


Approaching shape


Nice black dust :)

I then remember that I still need to glue in the inlay! :) So, I took some glue, mixed in some ebony dust, filled the cavities with the glue and pushed in the inlay. I clamped it down for 10 minutes, then wiped off most of the excess glue. After a bit more waiting, I sanded the PVC inlay almost flush with the surface on the belt sander and completed it by hand. The sanding left some black scars on the inlay surface, but I expect it to become pretty nice after I sand the fingerboard surface all the way to 1200 grit :)


The inlay done

High profile

I've now completed the back profile of the neck. As before, I found the rasp a much more suitable tool for the job than the surforms. I shouldn't have bought them.. Or maybe I just can't use them properly.

I'm very happy with the profile I ended up with. It still needs to be sanded more, but already it feels very nice to my hand. After I radius the fingerboard, I can really feel out the neck.

I also bought a straight router bit with a shank-mounted guide bearing, so now I'm ready to make the body cavities. I expect to get to them next week.


The neck profiled


The volute


Transition to the heel

Profiling

Good day today. I had a day off from work, so I spent most of it (= the time when Saara, my girlfriend is at work) working on the bass. I started on the headstock. I had now bought the 14mm drill bit for the tuner holes, so I drilled those to the template. It looked OK but not terrific, and since I had some second thoughts about the headstock shape too, I decided to redesign it completely. I'm much happier with the new shape I came up with. It resembles some designs I've seen on the internet, but isn't a direct copy of any of them (I hope -- at least it's not meant to be!).


First headstock design with tuners


Notice the top two tuners touching!


The new headstock design


Trying on the new headstock

After I was happy with the headstock template (third one -- the second had some tuner layout problems), I traced the shape on to the headstock blank and started sawing. First I took off most of the waste material with the band saw, then moved on to the coping saw. After sawing the right side and the top with the coping saw, my wrist hurt so much that I decided to take a small calculated risk and moved back to the band saw. The headstock angle was a small problem, but I solved it placing some waste pieces under the headstock, lifting it upwards. The end result was quite good, although I accidentally nicked off about 1mm from both sides of the fingerboard :)


Headstock shape marked


The final headstock!

After this I started to shape the neck profile. I first shaped the headstock end on the drum of the belt sander, then continued with a rasp and some rough sandpaper on a curved block. Before going to the belt sander I had first tried it with a surform, but it was too slow going for me :) I ended up doing a volute (I had made drawings both ways, with and without a volute), since it almost automatically formed itself. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.


Headstock end of the neck still unprofiled


Roughed out with the belt sander


The finished profile

After I was satisfied with the headstock end I moved on to the body end. Again I first roughed it on the belt sander, then continued with a rasp and sandpaper. I now have both ends shaped, and next I will join them, probably using the surform this time.


Body end roughly profiled

In the afternoon I popped in for about 30 minutes to work on the neck. So far I've got about half of the neck profile done (with rasp, I will sand it later). No pics yet, sorry!

Back to the future!

So. Here we are. This is what I've accomplished so far. All previous posts have been written a while after completing the phases, but from now on, updates will be almost in real time. Since the previous post, all I've done is sanded the sides of the neck flush with the fingerboard (no pics yet, sorry). Next I'm going to do the headstock and start working on the neck profile.

Things to do (in planned order):

• Headstock
• Neck profile
• Fingerboard profile
• Fingerboard inlay
• Fingerboard finishing (probably wax)
• Body cavities (neck pocket, pickups, control cavity)
• Neck attachment screws
  
• Control pots
• Rounding of the body sides
• Body contours (arm rest and belly contour)
• Jack hole
  
• Electronics
• Body finishing (probably oil)
• Strap pins
• Assembly
• Setup
• Play :)

Quite a list? :)

Bonding & quality time

The fingerboard sawed, sanded and sidelined, and the truss rod slot routed and the carbon fibre strips glued to the neck, it was time to join the two parts of the neck. At this point my sloppiness in gluing the headstock came back to bite me. When I was dry-fitting the fingerboard to the neck, the join was good everywhere else, but at the headstock end, where the last 5cm of the fingerboard didn't touch the neck at all. This could have been rectified with some planing and sanding, except that this would have made my truss rod slot too shallow. Even now the very end of the truss rod was about 0.5mm above the top of the slot. Of course, I could have made the slot a bit deeper, unless I hadn't already glued the carbon strips in... Damn.


The gap under the fingerboard end

After sleeping on the problem, I made a decision: instead of going the safe, but sure way of taking out the carbon, planing the neck and deepening the truss slot, I decided to take the risky way out. Since my fingerboard had lots of extra thickness, I took it to the belt sander to shape it to fit the neck. After about an hour of sanding and fitting, I got the good enough to glue it. As the truss rod peeked out of its slot a bit, I sanded a small recess into the bottom of the fingerboard for the rod top.

So, I went for another test run. This time the fingerboard sat tight on the neck, so I went ahead and started the gluing. I had drilled two small holes in the inlay cavity, and put two wooden cocktail sticks through them to the neck wood to act as guide pins. I also placed the fingerboard taper off-cuts to the sides of the fingerboard and pinned them with three cocktail sticks each. This way I could keep the fingerboard from sliding around while gluing.


Alignment pins in the inlay cavity


Side alignment helpers


Pre-glueing dry run

After I was happy with the dry run, I marked the fingerboard position on the neck, took the clamps and fingerboard off and masked the truss rod with some tape. I then spread some white PVAc glue (Eri Keeper) on the neck, positioned the neck and clamped it. I took the side guides off after 30mins (to prevent them from being glued in) and left the neck to glue for the night.


The fingerboard being glued


Body end close-up


Headstock end close-up


Side alignment helpers removed

In the morning, I came to take the clamps off and evaluate the result. Some glue had seeped out of the joint in all other areas except a 5cm portion of the neck at about 3rd-5th fret. I took the neck to the window, and sure enough, I could see some light from between the fingerboard and the neck. Double damn. The gap isn't big, maybe 0.2mm, but still big enough to concern me. I decided to go buy a syringe and try to insert some glue there. Haven't done that yet, though.


Fingerboard glued


Close-up of the headstock end after gluing

I then proceeded to rough saw the neck taper, so I took the neck to the band saw and sawed away. After that was done, I took the time to plan the headstock, and made a plywood template of it. I couldn't drill the holes for the tuners in the template yet, since I didn't have a 14mm drill bit.


Neck roughly tapered


Body end of the neck


Headstock plan


Trying on the headstock template

Lined up

I spent some time considering the choice between lined and unlined fingerboard. Since I wanted to resemble a staff (with the bass clef inlay), I thought it would look stupid with lines, but on the other hand I wanted some indication on where I was on the fingerboard, in case I couldn't hear myself on stage - playing a fretless needs to be very precise, if you want to sound good.

The solution I ended up with was to put fret marker lines to the side of the fingerboard. I wanted them to be light-coloured wood, so after considering matchsticks, toothpicks etc. I went with the obvious choice - veneer. I was going to buy a piece of veneer, but luckily the store I went to - Puukeskus in Herttoniemi, Helsinki, Finland - had some free sample pieces of some veneers. I chose a small piece of Oregon Pine and left the store. Back at the woodworking shop I cut the veneer into 24 small pieces (plus a couple extra..).


Veneer strips for fingerboard side lines

In order to be able to insert lines into the side of the fingerboard, I had to taper it before gluing it to the neck. I had originally intended to glue first, taper later, but it would have made making the side lines much harder. I marked the fingerboard shape on the ebony and roughly sawed the board to taper on the bandsaw. I calculated the fret positions on Martin Koch's handy fret calculator, and marked them with a hobby knife. I then clamped a straightedge to the ebony to act as a depth stop, and sawed the slots with a coping saw.


Fingerboard roughly tapered


Line positions marked, ready for sawing


Truss rod slot routed


Side line slots sawed

After sawing the slots I proceeded to glue the strips in. Putting glue into the narrow slots was a bit problematic, but by pushing the strip in a couple of times and shoveling the glue in with the strip I managed to get a good result.


First strips glued


Sailboat? :) Side strips glued


Close-up of the side strips

After the glue dried I cut off most of the excess of the strips and sanded the fingerboard sides and bottom down on the belt sander for gluing the fingerboard to the neck. The end result looked very nice :)


Side strips trimmed down


Fingerboard taper sanded


Close-up of the side lines and inlay cavity

A matter of truss

After gluing on the headstock it was time to start thinking about the truss rod. I was afraid that my single-piece neck wouldn't be stable enough with just one truss rod, so after some discussions on muusikoiden.net I decided to add two carbon fibre rods to the equation. I bought 120cm of 20mm*2mm carbon fibre profile from Kevra, which I proceeded to cut into two shorter rods. I didn't want to route extra slots for them (and didn't have a proper bit to do so), so I decided to route one slot wide enough to take the truss rod and both of the carbon rods.

The routing itself went without a hitch. I did a practice run, where I noticed that the route line differed about 1mm from where I'd thought I'd positioned the guide. After confirming this a couple of times I then took this into account when setting up the guide for the real route. After a couple of passes for width and depth, I had a slot that was about 0.5mm wider than necessary, and precisely the right depth, as far as I could tell.


Truss rod slot routed


Close-up of the truss rod slot

I then glued the carbon rods to the sides of the slot. For this I wrapped the truss rod in some plastic from a plastic bag, and used it as a "clamp" between the carbon rods. After the rods were glued I trimmed them roughly to height with a handsaw and sanded them flush to the surface on the belt sander.


Gluing the carbon rods


Carbon rods, sanded flush, and the truss rod

Heads up!

After doing the inlay cavity I started to work on the actual neck. The first thing to do was sawing and gluing the peghead scarf joint. Since I didn't trust my abilities with a hand saw I decided to make a jig to do the cut on the band saw. I marked a line at an angle of 12 degrees to a sheet of plywood and screwed a board to it to act as a fence. I then clamped a practice board to the fence and made a practice cut.


The neck angle jig

Now came my biggest mistake so far: I noticed that the cut wasn't 100% straight. Apparently the band saw table wasn't exactly perpendicular to the saw blade, so the cut was a little off. I tried adjusting the table, but it was at the end of it's movement range, so I decided to go ahead with the cut. (I later found another adjustment on the table that would have enabled me to set it straight...)


Cutting the headstock angle

The result was a cut that wasn't exactly straight across the board, but a couple of degrees off. This resulted in quite a lot of planing and sanding, and I still didn't get it quite perfect. But it did end up good enough that I didn't consider buying another neck blank, or trying to make another cut on the same wood.

I then proceeded to glue the headstock to the neck. I placed two guide screws on the sides, where I knew the wood would be removed eventually. I set up a gluing jig with some stopper blocks and clamps, and proceeded to do the gluing. After I removed the clamps there were slight gaps on the sides, due to my bad planing and sanding, but those areas will be removed later. On the whole, the end result was quite nice. Or at least good enough.


Gluing the headstock


Gluing the headstock - back view


Close-up of the guide screws and glue joint


Headstock glued - notice the angle of the joint


Headstock glued - right side

Thinking small

Before moving to work on the neck, I wanted to practice inlaying first. I wanted to place a bass clef on the body end of the fingerboard, so that the 5-string fingerboard would resemble a music staff ;) (Is that the right word? 5 lines, notes on them, clef at start of line..?)

I had some trouble selecting the inlay material. Last summer I had bought a piece of (agate, I think, akaatti in Finnish) to use as the inlay material, but it was too hard for my tools. I also thought about using a waste piece of alder or maple, but there would probably have been some problems with it getting dark, either in sanding the ebony around it, or by the grit in my fingers while playing. Normal mother-of-pearl or abalone wouldn't do, since I couldn't find them in large enought blanks, and the thickness was too small. The solution I ended up with was PVC plastic.

So, I whipped out my Proxxon mini-drill (Dremel-like tool) and the router attachment and started practicing on a piece of merbau I had lying around. I printed out a shape of a bass clef, glued it to the plastic and sawed it out, and made the dots with a plug cutter drill bit. I then traced the outline of the inlay onto the merbau with a pencil, marked it with a hobby knife and made the lines clearer with a sharp dentist bit. Then I started routing out the shape with some bits I got from my dentist. The dot holes were drilled with a forstner bit on the drill press.

My second practice go was good enough to make me courageous enough to start working on the ebony itself. I did it the same way as the practice ones, and routed to a depth of 3mm. It went so well, and became so tight, that after a test fit I had trouble getting the inlay out of the cavity! :)


Inlay glued to place for marking


Inlay marked to ebony and lines deepened with sharp dentist bit


My inlaying setup and the Proxxon tool


The first 0.5mm routed


Test fitting the main inlay, one dot for depth comparison


Dot holes drilled as well. Tight fit!

Bodybuilding

I started the actual building phase with the body. First of all I traced the body outline from my actual plan to a new sheet, then glued the sheet to a board of plywood, about 10mm thick. I then bandsawed the template to about 1-2mm from the line, and sanded it to the line on the belt sander.


Body template blueprint prior to glueing


Body template sawed and sanded

After I was happy with the body template I screwed it to the body blank, placing the two screws in the bridge pickup and neck cavities, so the holes will be routed away later. I traced the body outline onto the body, removed the template and proceeded to bandsaw the actual body to a couple of mm from the line.


Template screwed to body blank


Band sawing the body

I was planning to route the body flush with the template, but couldn't find a suitable router bit (straight cutter with a guide bearing on the shank), so instead I sanded it flush. I bought a cheap drum sander for the drill press, but soon became very frustrated with it (I don't particularly like the smell of burning rubber..), so instead I went to the belt sander. The only place I couldn't access on the belt sander was the lower horn cutout, so I hand sanded it to shape, and then did some clean-up on a straight sanding block.


Getting close to shape


Body sawed


Body sanded


Body sanded - lower horn close-up


After this I left the body to rest, and moved on to making the neck.

Stocking up

After designing the bass, the next step was to get the materials and parts for the bass. I was a bit unsure on the wood selection, so after doing a bit of research on the various forums, I ended up with alder for the body, maple for the neck and ebony for the fingerboard. This was almost the same as on my washburn; the fingerboard wood is the only difference. The Washburn has a rosewood fingerboard, but since I was building a fretless, I wanted the extra durability of ebony. Plus I like the black look of ebony, which I've had on my cellos.

I wanted some more information on the woods, so I called Soitinrakentajat AMF, which is a Finnish luthier company. They're quite a popular woods supplier among the muusikoiden.net crowd. Apparently the person I talked to was a good salesman, since by the end of the call I had ordered the woods :)

The hardware for the bass came mainly from SP-Elektroniikka in Oulu, Finland. I considered some other stores as well, including Millbrook (too expensive) and StewMac (didn't have a credit card back then, and I don't like ordering from overseas), but finally ended up ordering from SP-Elektroniikka, since it was the cheapest option, and I could get (almost) everything from the same place, minimizing shipping costs. The bridge (a Schaller adjustable bridge) I bought from Musamaailma, as well as the pick-ups (EMG 40DC and EMG 40CS).


The parts of the bass

I'll write more about the specific parts when the time comes.

Step one: The plan

I first got the idea that I'd like to build my own bass when I was in high school. I was playing keyboards at the time, and not making any progress (probably due to lack of practicing)... I wanted to switch to bass. My brother had been playing it for quite a many years, and I had also played it every now and then.

So, when I decided to switch to bass, the first thing I needed to do was to get a bass. I played with the idea of building my own, but due to lack of money, skills and equipment I decided it was not such a good idea.

The thought then resurfaced in the summer of 2004. I was surfing the net, when I found muusikoiden.net, a web site and a forum for Finnish musicians. The forum contained an area for lutherie and electronics, and I started to read the posts there. I became fascinated with lutherie and wanted to research the area further. Not much later I found Project Guitar, which is a web site devoted to guitar building. These two websites, and especially their forums have been my main inspiration - and a constant sink of my free time :)

I soon decided that I wanted to build myself a bass. I decided to make it a fretless, since I didn't have one. I'm a cello player since I was 6 years old, so I believe the lack of frets won't be a problem.

I started designing the bass. The idea was to make the scale length 35", but after trying and failing to find suitable strings (5-string fretless with 35" scale length isn't a good combination in Finland) I shortened it to 34 1/4". 5 strings was a natural for me, since my other bass (a Washburn Bantam XB-500) is also a 5-stringer. I feel that since the bass is the lowest instrument (tonally...) in the band, I need to go lower than E, whereas I don't need the extended range that a 6th string would offer.

The design of the bass was heavily influenced by the Washburn, since that's the only bass I've ever had, and there's hardly anything I wanted to do differently. After some thinking, the shape was altered a bit - the lower horn was tilted outwards, and I wanted to do a different headstock as well. The finished design (sans the headstock, which I will finish designing later) can be seen in the attached pictures.


Body design


The blueprints, headstock excluded

Going public

Whee.. This is it. :)

For those of you who don't know what this is about: I'm building myself a 5-string fretless electric bass. I started the building in April, and have continued since. I feel that I'm finally making enough progress to make me want to show my work to others.

So, sit back and enjoy the ride. Have some popcorn, and be prepared to laugh yourself off your chair at my mistakes :)