Latest Project... Arrived!!!
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bpmorton777
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nice looking block of wood! you goona spill your guts and post up a pick of your body template or drawings? Is that alder or mahogany?
Brian
Brian
ByteFrenzy
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bpmorton777 said:
Hmmm.. It's alder. Apart from that there's not really all that much to spill yet. If you look at the first pic I posted, under the boxes of the pickups you'll see a piece of brown cardboard with the tracing of a J-bass body and a white sheet of paper with a tracing of a f-hole. It's going to be roughly J-bass shaped if only so it will fit in conventional cases. And I had been planning on f-holes but in the meantime I scored this:
which I could use on this bass, so it's tempting to make it into a theme and make a scorpion styled soundhole. And include something similar on the neckplate.
ByteFrenzy
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OK, update...
First of all I warmed up my router by making a replacement rear cover from a piece of Ebony. On a J-bass the cover is too big to cut a replacement from one of those pieces of peghead veneer that Stew Mac sell, but on the body blank the rear cavity is smaller, I think it's a P-bass shape rout, and the piece of Ebony was just big enough. I actually spent more time fabricating distance pieces so the guide bearing and the bit would be at the correct height, than actually routing. Definitely one to add to the list of 'piece of cake with major effect'.
Next up was the template for the body. I've copied the major body features to a sheet of Perspex, and then drawn my idea of a body outline. It's roughly based on a J-bass, with the upper horn drawn a bit forward, the rear more rounded like an LP, and the lower horn turned down in the style of my Traben Torrent. I've started shaping the template using a belt sander but it's a b1tch... perspex powder is static as anything...
Next will be transfering the design to two wood panels that will serve as the actual routing templates, one for the body cavity and one for the exterior outline.
First of all I warmed up my router by making a replacement rear cover from a piece of Ebony. On a J-bass the cover is too big to cut a replacement from one of those pieces of peghead veneer that Stew Mac sell, but on the body blank the rear cavity is smaller, I think it's a P-bass shape rout, and the piece of Ebony was just big enough. I actually spent more time fabricating distance pieces so the guide bearing and the bit would be at the correct height, than actually routing. Definitely one to add to the list of 'piece of cake with major effect'.
Next up was the template for the body. I've copied the major body features to a sheet of Perspex, and then drawn my idea of a body outline. It's roughly based on a J-bass, with the upper horn drawn a bit forward, the rear more rounded like an LP, and the lower horn turned down in the style of my Traben Torrent. I've started shaping the template using a belt sander but it's a b1tch... perspex powder is static as anything...
Next will be transfering the design to two wood panels that will serve as the actual routing templates, one for the body cavity and one for the exterior outline.
DangerousR6
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Looks like you got a plan there Rene, I like the shape and the cavity cover too... :icon_thumright:
Nando Vallart
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Reminds me the Warwick basses...
I'm more a traditional design guy (or boring, depending of the point of view :laughing7
, but looks nice! 
And the ebony cover looks very good! congrats
I'm more a traditional design guy (or boring, depending of the point of view :laughing7
, but looks nice! And the ebony cover looks very good! congrats
bpmorton777
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Im so glad you decided to make it unique. I was trying to figure out what you were smoking when you said it was going to be a j bass. :toothy10:
Brian
Brian
ByteFrenzy
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Yeah, well, 'roughly' does leave a lot of room for interpretation. I absolutely wanted it to be at least somewhat different from a J-Bass bacause otherwise what's the point of starting with a body blank? But also not too outworldish - I also wanted to keep it playable.
ByteFrenzy
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OK, time for another update... The body blank has had 8mm removed from the top and the outside contour has been routed. I'm going to have to do some corrective sanding because at one point the guide bearing slipped under the template and at another the template itself moved. Fortunately not irrecoverable. Previewing the post I suddenly feel compelled to add that I'm NOT building an upside-down JEM. Wonder why that suddenly popped up in my mind. Oh yeah, and I'm also not building a sitar. There will be a normal neck. I just used a bit of an old fretboard as a routing template for that bit because it was lying around.
Next will be routing the body cavities, then I'll be stuck until the top arrives. That is proving a bit taxing. I placed the order at Exotic Woods and got an automated confirmation but nothing else. I mailed them to ask for a status and got back a non-delivery report stating that the IP of the sending mailserver is listed on some anti-spam list. That's the mailserver of the third largest ISP in Belgium. Wow. So I put the same request in the contact form on their website and got an automated confirmation message. Again, that's all I got, but in the meantime the specific top which I bought can't be added to a shopping cart anymore, so maybe they're very discreetly processing the order anyway. Grrr....
Next will be routing the body cavities, then I'll be stuck until the top arrives. That is proving a bit taxing. I placed the order at Exotic Woods and got an automated confirmation but nothing else. I mailed them to ask for a status and got back a non-delivery report stating that the IP of the sending mailserver is listed on some anti-spam list. That's the mailserver of the third largest ISP in Belgium. Wow. So I put the same request in the contact form on their website and got an automated confirmation message. Again, that's all I got, but in the meantime the specific top which I bought can't be added to a shopping cart anymore, so maybe they're very discreetly processing the order anyway. Grrr....
bpmorton777
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Hey
sounds like their server was attacked and taken over by spammers. This happened to the small business that my mom works for. after their server was hijacked they were placed on an anti-spam list and all outgoing mail got bounced back to them.
Brian
sounds like their server was attacked and taken over by spammers. This happened to the small business that my mom works for. after their server was hijacked they were placed on an anti-spam list and all outgoing mail got bounced back to them.
Brian
Nando Vallart
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Looks nice!
What is the wood to the top?
What is the wood to the top?
ByteFrenzy
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Just for clarity, it's my ISP's address which is on the spam blocker list. To my taste it's another nice example of the shortsightedness of blocking anything on the basis of an IP address. Since the server is listed as mailserver for all domains which are hosted at this ISP, as soon as one domain is abused for sending out spam the wole ISP is blacklisted. It's a rather ineffective way of tackling the problem but it's an easy way to make money for the companies that provide these services.
ByteFrenzy
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+
=
No further comment. :sad:
Nando Vallart
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Cr@p!!! :sad:
ByteFrenzy
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In retrospect.. It hurt like hell the first ten seconds or so, then withdrew to that mildly throbbing "told you you were doing something UTTERLY stupid" level until the doc bandaged it up with some antibacterial goo, then it started hurting like hell again. In the meantime it's returned to just mildly annoying. The infuriating bit is that I was thoroughly safety conscious when I was bandsawing, thinking something along the lines of "how stupid it would be to take off some fingers and not be able to play anymore while actually building an instrument", and then get bitten by a stupid belt sander. Hell, you can actually hold your finger against the belt when it's running and it'll just be mildly annoying. I'm not even sure what would've happened if I'd been wearing gloves at the time. Gloves would have given it a lot more material to grab hold of. Oh well, at least my tetanus shots are up to date again. And anyhow, the project wasn't going very far without a decent top, which I'm still without much progress on.
