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Well, lots of progress since last time I posted. I've noticed that I haven't posted notes with the same frequency as I did with the electric cello project. Perhaps I've become jaded by my success... nah. It's been workload, that is, the workload outside of these projects. Oh well, whatcha gonna do, when it's time to feed the family?
Anyway, on to what's new.
Carved a bridge today...
Reset the truss rods too. The first time I tried to set the rods, I used 60-minute epoxy. Not a bad decision in itself, but I had to mix the stuff, which means that after several days of setting, there wasn't really any setting going on. So, I pulled the rods out, gouged out all of the unset epoxy goo, and cleaned out the truss rod trenches with a router (RIP, router bit). The second time around, I used the same brand, but with the premixing nozzle and 5-minute set time. Much easier, except that the nozzle flew off the epoxy tube while I was setting the second rod, so yet another trip to Home Depot for more epoxy. This time, the 5-minute stuff was sold out, so I took my chances on the 1-minute set time. I was mostly successful. I'll have a little grinding to do before I set the fingerboard, but fortunately not much.
A week or two ago, I laminated the body together, using some of the leftover rosewood, some of the zebrawood fingerboard that I didn't use for the electric cello project, a little strip of purpleheart, and some nice-looking curly maple (one of the two pieces is REALLY curly).
Today, I sanded a bevel into the body, to match up the various pieces of the laminate. Mostly done on that... Notice the swoop in the upper face plate.
Fits into the fingerboard rather nicely...
Carved out the headstock today, and am attaching the body wings very shortly.
Pictures will definitely follow.
With the right tools, you can do a lot. Well, I don't have all the right tools yet, but I still made some good progress.
Rough-shaped the neck, and the body wings. I wasn't too happy with the initial width of the wings, it gave me the impression that I would be playing a shovel. So, I narrowed them quite a bit. Now I need to sand them down so they fit the neck as seamlessly as possible.
Also, scored some really nice-looking purpleheart that I'll use for accent striping.
Today, made the rough cuts to the neck blank, fingerboard and body wings. Lots of cutting, lots of sawdust.
I'm exhausted. Pictures later.
The electric cello is mostly completed, except for a few tweaks to the nut (the high E string is still a bit too high off the fingerboard).
So, with wood to spare from that project, and some new pieces (from Ebay, of course), I've decided to make an electric upright bass.
The thing I remember from the cello project is that the hardest step to take was to make that first cut. I'm going to make that cut today, and hopefully lots more.
So, the design:
The neck:I'm going for a neck-through bass, which means that the neck literally runs the length of the instrument. I've got a 49-3/4" neck blank for this. With a scale length of a full-size double-bass being 41.75", my EUB will have to be a shorter-scale instrument. I've settled on 36", so that I can fit the neck, headstock and body sections on the same piece of wood. I thought about making an EUB with a bolt-on neck for a while, but decided to go neck-through with a shorter scale, more for the building challenge than anything else.The body:
Since the neck runs through the body, the body itself will consist of three pieces: the neck slab, and two "wings" attached to that (I'm thinking that I'll use wooden pegs and some good strong glue).
To picture what the woods will look like, here is sapele mahogany:
and here is hard maple:
