New Swamp Ash P Bass

[crunch777]

Just received a swamp ash p bass. Very excited to get started.

Night 1

• Mount eye hook on butt end, mount timber on the neck slot to handle the bass
• light spot sanding on a few shiny spots.
• Naptha wipe the body, allow to dry
• Wipe body with tack cloth
• apply think coat of Angelus Jet Black Leather Dye

The plan is to sand the black back and use blue leather dye.

More to come.

 

[Fat Pete]

Cool! Always interesting to see less common finishing techniques.

 

[musicispeace]

Very cool and coming along. What neck do you have in mind?

 

[crunch777]

I ordered a roasted maple neck after hearing so many great things about them.

 

[crunch777]

2 Evenings of sanding back most of that black dye. 220 grit for most of it, 120 on the really tough end grain spots. 400 grit at the end to get rid of the sanding marks.

If I were to do this finish again, I would reduce the dye by half. I really just wanted the black to lie in the deep pores and it really worked well. It we just a lot of work.

Cleaned it up with naphtha and a tack cloth.

 

[crunch777]

Reduced angelus blue leather dye 4 to 1 with denatured alcohol. In my testing last week and watching youtube videos where they used this on guitars, this brand of dye is very concentrated. I figured 4 to 1 would be a good place to start, can always add more, to take it away would require  more rounds of sanding. What you see here is 1 coat of that reduced dye. The pictures here are right after and still wet. I figure I'll be done here. It looks great!

 

[bagman67]

NIce!  Is that four parts alcohol to one part dye?  If so, that's mighty strong dye indeed.

 

[crunch777]

Yes four parts alcohol to one part dye.

 

[crunch777]

5 coats of finishing oil from Crimson Guitars. I did a mid rub down with the white 3M pads. Will do more as I add coats. The end grain needs more coats to build up so additional coats go on in between whole coats.

 

[bagman67]

That's a lovely color.  YOu might look into resizing your photos before posting, or hosting through a service like flickr or photobucket, though, because they're enormous.

 

[crunch777]

Thanks for the tip.

 

[crunch777]

While I wait for oil to cure, my parts arrived for the circuit.

 

[crunch777]

What I hope will be the final oil coat went on yesterday with 0000 scuff pad and rubbed off after tacky. That was the norm for this project. Now I will wait for it to cure a bit before scuff and waxing.

The aluminum pick guard came from tone-guard today so I had to see it on the bass. This is a quality product for sure. I hope it will look good when the roasted neck arrives but I'm a little nervous about that.

 

[Logrinn]

Blue body, roasted maple neck and a light colored pickguard = you can't go wrong
http://unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=26481.0  :icon_thumright:

 

[crunch777]

Thanks!

 

[crunch777]

Lots of updates. I put a few more light coats of oil and let it sit for a few days to cure a bit. Last night I scuffed it up with white 3M pad, spot scuffed some of the more gnarly bits with 15 micron paper. I then used turtle wax polishing compound to buff it a bit. Lastly, I used Renaissance wax. It looks great but the wax dries white in the deep grain, not sure what I should do.

 

[crunch777]

I moved on to copper shielding, running ground wires, installing the pickups and the bridge. My neck is coming this week so I'm getting close to the end.

 

[ninjachef]

Looks great...Angelus makes some great dye, but I also had a hard time controling the darkness of it. It works great for pulling out the figure on a sand back.  Great finish.

 

[crunch777]

Looks great...Angelus makes some great dye, but I also had a hard time controling the darkness of it. It works great for pulling out the figure on a sand back.  Great finish.

Indeed, great dyes. Next time around I would dilute them a lot more.

 

[crunch777]

This roasted maple neck is amazing. I burnished the neck with the 3M polishing papers all the way to 3 micron. The smell of the wood is fantastic!

Tuners are 3 of the Licensed Ultra Lites and a USA drop tuner. The finish on the pegs of the Licensed are different but I can live with it. The light weight tuners are necessary as the neck is beefy.

I played the bass last night at it's first gig. Was amazing to play. This bass pounds!