Had some time over the weekend to make some more progress. The combination of fretwire that matches the slot width, combined with a proper fretting hammer (seen in the first photo) made this probably the easiest fret installation I’ve done so far.
Frets being installed
I drilled tuner holes. But first I had to order a 14mm brad-point bit. (Well, it didn’t have to be brad-point, but they work a lot better for this application.)
Hmm, this might not be a genuine made-in-Austria Fisch. New bit on the left, an older one on the right.
Finally got around to gluing the plate on the headstock. To be trimmed later. Pretty sure it’s padouk. I know it’s left over from a previous uke build.
Need more clamps.
While it’s definitely easier and faster to post photos to Instagram, for some reason it doesn’t automatically generate a complete blog post here simultaneously. Possibly because WordPress is a completely separate entity. So you’ll have to pay attention to two different locations to get a more complete picture of what’s going on. I’m sure you can handle it.
Enough of that. You’ll have seen this first photo already, I suspect.
Bass body in a vise, after rasping most of the edges.
Not as much progress over the holidays as I’d like, but that’s what happens around this time of year. All the help migrates south for the winter.
At least the first two photos have already been posted to Instagram and Facebook, so unless you’re interested in reading about the details, you can skip this post. Both of you.
Fancy-schmancy flush-fit control cavity cover.
This bit didn’t come out quite as nicely as I’d have liked. Continue reading
Haven’t posted anything recently, but I have been working – albeit slowly – on this neck. Clickitinate to embiggenify.
The headstock-to-neck area gave me some problems. Partly caused by not being able to plane the headstock to an even thickness using the Saf-T-Planer; my drill press really isn’t big enough to handle this piece.
There is probably a better way to do this.
I think the real solution is to not use maple for necks. I can tough it out for one custom neck, I guess.
A tiny tiny amount of work on the bass neck. Maple is a lot harder to carve than mahogany. And of course, the real job has forced a temporary relocation of the entire workforce (well, at least all that can be trusted with sharp tools.) So nothing is likely to happen for a while yet.
That’ll buff right out.
