Update

Due to some upcoming projects by the Biological Research and Freaks of Nature department, we expect there will be no updates for a few weeks. (Last time they tried something like this — whatever ‘this’ is — we had Animal Control in here for two months trying to get rid of all the frogs.) So here’s a couple of photos to document current progress.

My neck in a vise. (note: get new caption writer.)

Tenor uke neck, in progress, some rough carving done on one side. Hard to see here, but he neck does taper from the 14th fret down to the nut. (when viewed from above.) Nut width is planned to be about 1-7/16″.

D7 ready for paint

The Polar Lights 1/1000 Romulan Battle Cruiser, which also includes alternate parts and decals for a Klingon D7. This will be a Klingon version. Lots of discussion as to what the ‘correct’ colors are. Plan is to use three tones of grey, unless it looks bad, in which case I’ll do something else. The color coat should cover those white specks on top of the hangar bay with no trouble.

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You know it’s handmade when. . .

one of your heel slots was cut in the wrong direction and had to be redone.

No one will ever see this (unless the neck gets redone) but it’ll still bother me.

Rough-shaped neck. Very rough.

Note to self – get a new rasp handle. Consider spending more than $4 on it.

Not gone, just really slow

Starting a tenor, Spanish cedar neck. The plan is to use the Hana Lima ‘Ia plans (since they worked well last time) with a Spanish heel. I have some Engelman spruce for the soundboard, and East Indian rosewood for everything else. But for now, I just have a mess of glue.

Cut to rough size

Scarf joint ready for smoothing

Heel stack glueup

I thought I had a photo of the scarf joint glueup, but I can’t seem to find it now. It wasn’t important anyway. Scarf joint was cut on the table saw using an angle jig, and smoothed with a block plane. It still needs to be thinned down a little bit.

Front and Back

I thought this was a good idea, but it turned out less than great.

They say the back side is for the player.

Finishing, unfinished

Not much visible progress. Doing the French polish thing.

Everything looks better with proper lighting.

It looks a lot better in photos than in person. It’s only shiny if you get the light hitting it just right.

Baby Steps

Not a lot of progress, what with holidays, vacation, and other projects. Although many are restricted to their homes and not working, I’m still putting in 40 hours a week. It’s just from my dining table instead of an office.

As noted last time, I forgot to leave a way to get the ground wire from the bridge to the control cavity. So here’s that done:

Bass body with new (and improved?) holes.

Strings

Strung up in the white. This way I can get a rough setup and look for major problems.

Still needs all the wiry stuff.

What lousy photo composition. It’s not something I’m good at. Should have taken it outside, but I want the wood to acclimate to indoor temperature and humidity. (The neck made a nice hygrometer in the garage.)

GSO

I’ve attached the neck, so I guess it’s officially a guitar-shaped object now.

Well, it looks like a bass.

Bass Frets

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

Hole-y Headstock

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.