What are YOU up to, DIY/projectwise? Ask for help?

[VOLVO)))]

It all started here.


I found this...



Had these drums I didn't like too much...





Pain in the nuts. Finished one, and wasn't totally happy with the vinyl anymore.



So I grabbed the acetone, and wiped it down to remove some of that paint...









Also finished the strat neck:

[The Shocker]

Brilliant!

[VOLVO)))]

If anyone has any 12 inch/14 inch cast hoops laying around... they would take this kit next level.

[jibberish]

fuck those drums...LOOK AT ALL THAT WOOD and construction stuff in the back there.

[VOLVO)))]

lol, that's my shop, fool.

[jibberish]

heh.  ya I like shops that actually have stuff to play with.  these limp wristed clowns in magazine pictures with an immaculate workshop aren't real. gimme 10 pounds of assorted wood screws and I could build some shit out of all that.

edit: btw, wood isn't cheap.  I rarely throw wood away. even little pieces make good screw blocks and shims etc.

[Metal and Beer]

Does anyone have a 20" hoop for sale/trade? (two, ideally)...We've converted a 20" kick into a floor tub but the wooden hoop is a knuckle-cleaner 

[Jor el]

Sinking Feeling

[jibberish]

cheer up, help me concoct something to hang on the wall to hang cords and headphones. the more gothic the merrier..or something like that heh.

a nasty old half corroded Frankenstein movie rake would work heh.  long finger bones....ok run with it....could do a header board with something as pegs like std coatrack deal...but let's think creative before I ho num out and just do plan b : the pedestrian coat rack peg-in-a-header solution.


10' and shorter cords hang nicely.  I have a  tie rack hanger thing that would work, but it looks like "design by walmart" so..

no.

[jibberish]

well, I made 3 hangars. one each for cords, mic cables and headphones.   that happened because I found 3 little plaques I picked from the garbage, and decided to use those along with my piece of dead ash log. so I cut the original piece of ash in half, then went and cut off another one for the 3rd headphone hangar. I put some little branches below the headphone rack for when I am lazy and can just sling the cord mess there. rainy day=finish indoor projects

crappy 1 min video showing thenm on the wall and loaded up with the stuff.

[Discö Rice]

I see a stainless steel bass drum shell with no heads or hoops. I feel a little Lippy coming on.

[Corey Y]

I started making a pine P-bass body last week. Just wanted a project to work on that could potentially be finished (lots of cancelled band practices lately) and I've been wanting to try building an instrument for a long time. We had a big 16 foot length of 2" thick rough pine left over from a job at work, wide enough to make a one piece body. So just downloaded some plans, made a template and started doing it. It's been a learning process, lots of figuring out how to fix things I should have done better on a previous step. I'm a little rusty with a router too, it's been years since I worked in a wood shop full time. I'm waiting for more parts so I can continue, but it's coming out pretty nice so far I think.



I won't flood this thread with a ton of pics, but if you want to see some of the build progress you can check out the thread I started on Talkbass.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f57/first-build-pine-precision-body-979341/

[VOLVO)))]

Please, flood, if you will!

[Corey Y]

Please, flood, if you will!

Well, if you insist...


I printed out the full scale body plan pdf in four pieces. Cut them along the center lines, taped the quarters together and cut out the shape with a razor. Then traced it onto a piece of 1/4" MDF, rough cut on the band saw and shaped it down to the line on the belt sander. I had to get the inside of the cutaways with a dowel wrapped in sand paper and some hand sanding.




The first piece of pine I cut and ran through the planer had a crack right down the middle. So I tossed that one aside, looked over my lumber for a good section, then cut it pretty long (maybe twice as long as I needed) and ran it through the thickness planer down to 1-3/4". I marked out the imperfections and found a section that was appropriate for the body.




Then I traced my MDF template onto the pine with a felt marker and rough cut to the outside of that line on the band saw. That left me about 1/8" left to router off later. The less material to remove, the easier the routing would go. The marker line is on the back side, so it's not showing in the pic.




Then I got my template set up for routing. I found a strip of 1/2" MDF and cut it into blocks. Then I used double sided tape and attached them to the bottom of my template, with tape on the bottom of the blocks to attach it to my work bench. Since I was using a flush cut bit with a bottom bearing, the template needed to be on the bottom of the wood. I wanted their to be enough clearance so I wouldn't have to worry about the bit bumping against my work bench or anything.




I put some more double sided tape on the top of the template, laid the pine body on my bench and dropped the template down onto it, so I could line it up inside the marker line I had left. Then I stuck the whole thing down to the bench. I was really careful to wipe down every surface with a paper towel first, so everything would stick well. This tape works really well, so if anything I had to make sure to not use too much. Otherwise it could be difficult to pull the material up without snapping the template or ripping up the pine. Luckily I didn't have any problems with that.




Once I had everything in place I set up a 2" flush cut bit in a hand held router and got to making some sawdust. The amount of wood I had to remove was thin enough that I could do it in one pass. I ended up doing a few passes anyway though, because I was a little rough around the curves and still getting the hang of pivoting the router around the horns, to keep it balanced. A few passes and I had it nice and clean. However, it did reveal that my template had some bumps and ripples in it. So I ended up sanding it down with a dowel and by hand, until I got it nice and smooth all the way around. The 1-3/4" pine acted as a backer and allowed me to refine the template in place, then do another pass to clean it up. At that point I was only taking off thousands of an inch, it was more like sanding than routing. It reminded me to trust my fingertips over my eyes though. My father tipped me off to this trick and I'm glad he did. Even though it would have been easier to get the template right first, it was much easier to feel the imperfections on a wide piece than on the 1/4" template. If I do this again I think I would use a 1/2" template to make that a bit easier.




Next up was the roundover, with a 1/2" radius bit. I've read that the vintage correct radius is 7/16", but most people use 1/2" since it's a more common bit. It's what I had, so it's what I used. Before that though, I block sanded the faces of the body, then put it in a vice and got the edges. I worked it over pretty thoroughly until it was really smooth. At this point any imperfections in the sides or the face would probably just translate into the roundover and make more sanding work for me later. I took some of my dropoff material from the body and ripped it on the table saw, to make some blocks for around the horns. I saw this in a video recently and it seemed like a good idea. Adds some stabilization when going around the horns, so there's no danger of tipping the router and destroying the body at this stage. I fixed everything down to my work bench directly with double sided tape again. I started with the back side, so in case I fudged anything it wouldn't be obvious.




I found the roundover to be a lot easier than routing the shape. The bit was smaller, the speed slower and I used a smaller router too, so it was much easier to balance. I was able to make a quick, smooth pass with no problems and very minimal burning. I actually found I really didn't have any problems balancing around the horns this time (probably due to the much lighter weight and well blanced router, more suited for this task), so I didn't use the blocks on the front face.




So that brings us up to the present. All that was about an hour or so after work each day for 4 or 5 days. I made the template on a Friday, then worked on the body the following Monday through Thursday until I couldn't do any more work. I bought a Mighty Mite maple board P-bass neck from the TB classifieds, that's supposed to arrive today or tomorrow and then I'm going to make a template for that and route it out. I haven't ordered any other parts yet, so I'll probably wait until I have the pickups and pickguard before I route out the pickup and control cavities. I've started to think a bit about finishing. The wood looks so nice I think I'm going to do a transparent finish, I'm thinking I might go for a kind of amber/vintage yellow finish and black pickguard. An oil finish might be easier though, not sure what I'm going to do yet. I don't have a ton of experience with the finishing part of things, so I'm doing some research on that as I go.

[VOLVO)))]

Shit, Corey, that's good lookin'.

Anyone got suggestions for tutorials? Anyone want to donate one of those fucking Gopro cameras to me so I can film shit from my head while I work? A flip? haha...

[Corey Y]

Mail carrier just dropped off the neck, ahead of schedule.



Going to work on getting the neck pocket template made in a few hours, when I'm off work. Might even go ahead and route it, if I have the time.


Jake, what about a tutorial on changing a nut? Pre-slotted, presumably, because I'm guessing slotting a nut properly is a whole lot more involved.

[VOLVO)))]

The bane of my fucking existence is making nuts, because I'm too cheap to buy blanks, so I make my own out of corian (which for some reason is ridiculously awesome for making nuts. I stole a bunch from Lowes.)

Making the blank is pretty simple, cut one fat, sand it to fit the slot. Find you the proper radius (USA fenders have radius slots, which sucks because it's fucking hard to figure unless you have the gauges, or know off hand.) I use a series of files, and sandpaper for shaping. With corian, it is sort of difficult because the shit is legitimately fucking hard. Make sure you have something perfectly true to make the blank on. I use the cast iron on my jointer or table saw.

Measure out the distance you want the strings apart (I broke down and bought the stew mac nut slot ruler because I am a maroon, and sometimes my eyes bug out on the tape and I end up with fucked up slots.)

Once that's in place, score it with a scribe so you can have a decent spot for your exacto saw blade to follow.

The depth is the fun part, the standard way is to take a straight edge and a set of feeler gauges, lay the straight edge along the fretboard at the highest point on top of the frets. Take your feeler gauges and shove them under the SE so they fit just snug, not lifting the SE and not totally opposing movement. You take that measurement, and add a minuscule amount, (I use the tiniest gauge I have for this portion, it's super duper thin.)

Butt the gauge stack up to the nut mounted in the slot, cut until you hit the gauges. This will get you a fairly accurate depth, you can adjust with files afterward, once you string it up.

You must be careful to leave a solid break for the string, so you have to file your slots down toward the head stock at a slight angle so the strings don't break at the rear of the nut instead of the front. After all that shit, sand it smooveeee, add a little lubrication, and string up.

[VOLVO)))]

wow, holy fuck, at 1:30 in this video, this dude has the right fucking idea. This is an amazing trick that I am going to use from now on.

[Corey Y]

I've seen/heard of people doing that trick with a golf pencil, with one side sanded down flat.


I went ahead and routed out the neck pocket on my pine P-bass build last night. I couldn't manage to get a proper template made to match the exact radius of the neck heel, so I just did it the quick and dirty way and hoped the pickguard will cover the small gaps in the corners. I probably could have got it sorted out if I wanted to take a lot more time, but I didn't. Next time I try building a body with a Fender style neck I'll just spring for the StewMac Fender neck pocket template. If I ever make a scratch built neck I'll be able to get it to match perfect no problem, this method would be more ideal for that.

I made a center line on my neck heel and body, lined them up, clamped it down and traced the neck heel in pencil.




I lined up some pieces of 1/2" MDF to the inside of my pencil lines, stuck them down to the body with double sided tape and checked my neck fit again.




Then I brought the body over to the drill press and hogged out a bunch of material with a forstner bit, to make the routing go easier.




I used a 1/2" flush cut bit with a top bearing, cleaned up the sides from where I drilled material out, then took about 1/8" of depth at a time. Once I reached the depth limit on the hand held router, I took the template off and just ran the bearing along what I had already routed. This was a mistake, I should have just switched to a longer bit instead, because I didn't have enough material along the short horn side to exit the pocket smoothly and I took a little dip out of one corner. Live and learn, I'll know better next time, but it's still usable. This probably would have been a good time to use the blocks around the horns again, but didn't occur to me at the time because I was rushing.




You can see how my template method doesn't match up with the neck heel radius. Hopefully this gets covered by the pickguard (don't have it yet), but if not I may have to glue in a piece of drop off material and fix it up. The fact that it's a 20 fret neck with no fretboard hanging over the heel makes it a lot more obvious. Still, it fits snugly in the pocket.




It's starting to look like a bass...





I can't do much more with it until I get the rest of the parts in. I'm going to order them after I get paid on the first, so hopefully I should be back at it by the end of next week. I'm already planning out the next build and how I would do everything differently. Especially the order of certain steps. If I started over today I'd order all the parts first, make my templates differently, route the neck pocket first, then cut out the shape, then do the roundover. That would eliminate a lot of problems I've had along the way, I think. So far I'm just going willy nilly. No planning, working on whatever is on hand at the moment. Still, I decided to do it for the learning experience and it's been really productive for that.

[Jake]

Fuck. Yes. That rules.

Make me a J-Bass with a big ol' "mudbucker" pup, please. I'm thinking shoreline gold, big black pickguard, maple neck/board.

[Corey Y]

Fuck. Yes. That rules.

Make me a J-Bass with a big ol' "mudbucker" pup, please. I'm thinking shoreline gold, big black pickguard, maple neck/board.

All custom orders on hold, pending confirmation that anything I build comes out as more than firewood 

[VOLVO)))]

Im still pissed about the that pencil trick.

[AgentofOblivion]

Those drums are amazing...

[RacerX]

They do look cool. I wonder if the vinyl around the shell affects or compromises the tonality in any way.

[VOLVO)))]

Not really, no more than regular wraps or a sprayed finish. It may dampen them a little bit, but not much, by my ears.