Build 2: 7 string bolt-on hardtail

[BlackMastodon]

Originally Posted by HaMMerHeD

Now to learn how to inlay..

Patience and the right tools. Lots of patience.

[HaMMerHeD]

Ripped and joined the purpleheart and maple neck pieces to thickness and glued:



They'll stay in clamps until monday when they go to be thickness planed.

[Caveman]

I planed mine and got it all even. and then thats where my neckthrough 7 baritone project rests till this day. hmm this is inspires me to get to work on it. I shall go get it start again.

[HaMMerHeD]

So the purpleheart isn't going to be usable. It's too wet...keeps changing shape. Maybe in a year or two it'll be stabilized. But for this build, I've got to try something else.

The guitarist likes the color scheme of my bass, so we're looking at wenge to go with the maple.

[HaMMerHeD]

The headstock veneer and the back wood arrived today.

Here's the veneer:



The 8x10" sheet cost $5.98 shipped from VeneerSupplies.com. I'm hopiong 8x10 is big enough to cover the headstock and rear cavity covers.

[HaMMerHeD]

I got some new sticks for this project today:

[HaMMerHeD]

Today I picked up the wenge for the neck:



Also pictured are some neodymium magnets for the electronics and battery cavities.

I'm going to get the wenge planed to thickness on monday, then ripped, jointed, and glued into a neck blank. It's going to have a 3/4" wide lamination of curly maple in the center.

[LolWotGuitar]

Love the inlay
Good band sir.

[wannabguitarist]

The Hipshot is a far better bridge dude

[HaMMerHeD]

Originally Posted by wannabguitarist

The Hipshot is a far better bridge dude

Perhaps, but he wants the Gibraltar bridge, and it's a good piece of hardware in its own right.

[HaMMerHeD]

I got the neck wenge planed and ripped today. Here's the ancient planer:



And here's the neck laminate in glue:



And here's my favorite bass babe, just because she's awesome:

[HaMMerHeD]

This is roughly the neck shape I am going for, in cross-section at the nut:



(drawing is actual size at 72dpi)

Sans fretboard, it'll be 0.6" (or ~15mm) thick at the thinnest point, and 0.75" (or ~19mm) thick at the fattest point.

[HaMMerHeD]

In spite of my most valiant clamping efforts, there was some slipping, so the neck blank wasn't flat. It's straight, but not flat. Luckily, I had the pieces surfaced with about 1/8" of wiggle room. I woke up this morning thinking about how to flatten the top and bottom surfaces, and came up with a jig for my wagner safe-t-plane. Well I couldn't wait, so I went into the garage and hooked it up.

Worked like a champ. I am now in possession of one flat and thicknessed neck blank. Next up...cutting the scarf joint. And I have a fresh new jig for that too, and it's pretty good. Hopefully, I'll get that done today.

[HaMMerHeD]

So I picked up a floor drill press today. It's much bigger and has much better capabilities than my old little benchtop model. I forgot to get pictures of the whole thing. It's a used drill. It has some issues which I set about fixing.

First problem: the plastic crank for the table height adjustment broke off.




So I had to make a new one. First, cut some steel:



Then, measure and drill some holes:



Tap holes for the handle and a set screw:



Problem solved:



There are some more fixes to come later.

I also cut the scarf joint on the neck blank. The jig:



And the freshly cut neck. Minimal planing was required to get the cut ends even and smooth:

[BlackMastodon]

Very nice jig, and congrats on the new drill press!

[7 strings of wonder]

Really awesome work man

[HaMMerHeD]

The body template shipped today from the CNC shop. Should be here soonish.

So I have to build a router table for this thing. For that purpose, I purcahsed a Craftsman 12A fixed-base router with 1/2" and 1/4" collets. It's pretty basic, but it will be dedicated to the router table. I got it for $81 at Sears, and they gave me a $10 Sears gift card. So that's cool.

Anyway, I got a steel tool stand for the table:



Yeah, the carpet's ugly.

It's about 32" tall, and the top is about 18x22" in size. The table surface will end up being somewhat taller. For that, I picked up a 2x4'x3/4" slab of birch plywood and a 1/4" thick masonite topper to make it smooth. The plywood will be cut roughly in half and glued together to make it double thick, about 1-1/2". There will be some overlap on the top piece to allow me to clamp a fence to the table. The masonite will then be cut to size and glued to the table top. I haven't done that yet. I'll be finishing that up this weekend.

I picked up a Kreg router plate. It's a 3/8" thick phenolic plate. I drilled and countersunk for my router, and...



In the box next to the router is a new spokeshave. It's a WoodRiver product from Woodcraft. I tested it out on an old shovel handle, and it makes muuuuuch smoother cuts than my old Harbor Freight one (which is a bad copy of an old Stanley design). It seems to be pretty sharp out of the box.

Next to the old one:

[BlackMastodon]

Awesome. I was planning on making my own router table too, didn't know that you could buy those router plates.

[HaMMerHeD]

It really makes it a lot easier. If you have a porter cable router, there are a lot of predrilled options. Just search amazon for "router plate".

[HaMMerHeD]

I did some more work on the router table today:



I changed the design a bit. Instead of doing a lot of cutting to make the table the same dimension as the stand, I just bought a second piece of plywood and glued it to the other one to make 24x48x1.5" thick slab. I need hangover length to clamp a fence down, and I wanted it to be big enough to work on a neck thru guitar some day. Then I glued the masonite on top and "clamped" it down.

That's about 300 pounds worth of steel in the form of two anvils and one swage block sitting on top of it. And some clamps.

When the glue is cured, I'll bolt the table to the tool stand and route for the router plate.

[BlackMastodon]

Old school anvil is incredibly badass!

[Kamin]

Looking good. Nice fix on the drill-press!

[HaMMerHeD]

Finished the router table today.

First, we cut a hole approximately the diameter of the router in the table top:



Then we routed a 3/8" deep recession for the router plate to sit in. We attached the table top to the stand with four 3/8"x1" lag bolts. Then I zip-tied a power strip to the "front" leg. Finally, installed an MDF shelf on the bottom supports, and attached it with 3/8" bolts.



I had get more pictures of the process, but they were super blurry. It's a pretty simple process anyway.

[HaMMerHeD]

I glued the scarf joint this evening:



Went pretty well, I guess...glue, clamps, swearing, wax paper, more clamps, more swearing, and finally it stays in place. When dry-fitting, everything goes swimmingly pretty much every time. Glue makes it 10x harder.

I glued the headstock piece a bit proud of the sub-fretboard surface plane. I'm going to level it with the router table.

[HaMMerHeD]

On my third build (referenced here), it looks like my mind has been made up for me. The guy I was going to build the guitar for says he is thinking about quitting guitar.

So...I'm not going to build that one for him. King V bass it is.