Andyjr1515 Q1 '20 Challenge. A real one ;)

Andyjr1515

Never one to be able to resist a gauntlet being thrown, I accept @TTony 's and for once will be following the rules.  Yes - I know it's not my style but, heck, I suppose you have to try everything at least once  

So this one I will be actually starting in 2020 rather than just finishing it   Time will tell if it will be completed in Q1 but here's hoping.

Does anyone remember "Tom's African Build?"

To recap, Tom does a lot of work in Africa and got to know well one of the leading makers of traditional drums in The Gambia.  On one trip, they presented him with a 'bass body' made from drumwood.  Accepting graciously, he was thinking what I thought when I saw it..."you'll (I'll) never be able to make a bass out of that!"

Anyway - I did.  And three years later he's still playing it.  Here he is in Trafalgar Square at the Mayor of London Show:


So bringing everything up to date, on Tom's latest visit to Africa - yes...they presented him with another one.  But this time it is a decent crack-free, stable, hard wood AND it's almost an inch thick!  Trust me - that's LUXURY

It's actually nice wood and nicely carved:






So the challenge is going to be to do something with as many bits of wood and components as I can out of my or Tom's bits box and try to make a playable "Tom's African Bass II"









  


 

TTony

(to be completely honest, none of my Q1'20 challenge builds were  exactly started in 2020 - but don't let that stop you!)

Andyjr1515

TTony said:

(to be completely honest, none of my Q1'20 challenge builds were  exactly started in 2020 - but don't let that stop you!)

Oh, to be in the moral highground at last!  The air up here smells so sweet!

paulnb57

TTony said:

(to be completely honest, none of my Q1'20 challenge builds were  exactly started in 2020 - but don't let that stop you!)

Two of mine weren’t either, so crack on!

Andyjr1515

There is going to be a lot of pondering on this one before I start cutting anything.

First off is the neck joint.  The challenge is having a 25mm thick body and attaching a bolt-on neck that is not very much more than that, including the fretboard!

After lots of sketches and scribbling out, I came up with this concept (not to scale):




It's something I did on a 6-string bass for someone on Basschat who had a decent, but very slim, home-made body he wanted to have a bolt-on neck building for.


I went for machine-screw fit where the minimal heel was carved flush with the body and - for piece of mind as it was a 6 string bass with MAJOR tension - an unglued biscuit joint with a strip of ebony in the lower joint:






Produced a nice heel transition that turned out to be exceptionally strong:






So I reckon something like that

paulnb57

Sounds like a plan!

Andyjr1515

With the electrician in and no electricity for most of the day, I found a window to set up my drawing desk next to and drew up the preliminary design.  Nice and quick because I could use the actual body for my template!



As with the example above, the neck will be carved to merge with the body:



The headstock is planned to be the same as Tom's African Bass Number 1 :  


Oh...and I might go for multi-scale 33" to 31" 

TTony

I’ve heard that rolls of wall lining paper is good for drawing out full size plans - no need for any joins in separate sheets of paper ...

Roland

Lining paper is great, but goes yellow and brittle quite quickly.

That headstock looks very narrow. Is there enough room for the tuning heads?

Andyjr1515

TTony said:

I’ve heard that rolls of wall lining paper is good for drawing out full size plans - no need for any joins in separate sheets of paper ...

Well, join or no join, it's better than the toilet paper I used to use.    That used to have joins every 4" .  

Mind you, you didn't need to use a ruler.


And the designs were easily disposable.

Andyjr1515

Roland said:

That headstock looks very narrow. Is there enough room for the tuning heads?

Yes - it's the same as his original one:


I will maybe tweak the curve and positions of the tuners for this next one so I can get straight string runs.

KingSub

IKEA do rolls of drawing paper for kids that are nice and wide, and perfect for drawing out plans on.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/mala-drawing-paper-roll-70461088/

TTony

Nice find @KingSub ;

Andyjr1515

KingSub said:

IKEA do rolls of drawing paper for kids that are nice and wide, and perfect for drawing out plans on.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/mala-drawing-paper-roll-70461088/

Been up insulating the loft all day so apols for the delay.  Yes - great find!  Never knew they did that.

Having said that, the reason I use the artist cartridge pad is that it lays flat, it is big enough for a longscale bass, I can use the pad edge with my T-square but mostly, I can fold it back up and hide it behind the piano, thus avoiding the wrath of MrsAndyjr1515 (and she's a VERY scary woman).

Andyjr1515

Slow progress at the moment on this, but should start accelerating soon.

Materials-wise, a guy from one of the other forums sold me a nice piece of panga panga to use for the fretboard.  I haven't used panga panga before but it's a bit like wenge and, the main points, is also from East Africa and tones nicely with the body wood.


I also found a nice length of David Dyke maple neck wood that will do nicely:




Working on the basis of maximising the 'bitsa' theme, I rummaged though my bits box and found some unused Artec bass alnico V pickups I bought originally for another project.  I'll check with Tom, but think these would work well.  Bad photo, but it's a standard humbucker and a mini humbucker:

 


I might have some nice lightweight tuners that would do nicely too


The other thing I've suggested to Tom is that we go multi-scale.  His preferred standard scale length was 32" so we will probably go for a 2" spread at 33" bass and 31" treble.  What I really like about multi-scaling basses is that it tones down the too often metallic G.



To see how that might look, I amended my drawing - ignore that I haven't redrawn the headstock that will need moving a touch to the right:



I don't think it looks too bad.  

I've gone for a more conventional equal angle at the nut and the bridge (and therefore perpendicular at the 12th) than the piccolo bass I built a few years ago for our band's bassist, Pete, which had the perpendicular closer to the nut (2nd fret) and angled from there but where there was only a 1" difference between the two scales.  The other reason was that I hadn't told him I was doing multi-scale and didn't want to frighten him too much.  The reality, of course, is that multi-scales feel surprisingly 'normal' in most cases:






So, I've pretty much run out of excuses.  Bathroom's finished, loft is insulated, Ciara-blown electrics are back on...

Better start cutting some wood, I suppose... 

TTony

Andyjr1515 said:

So, I've pretty much run out of excuses.  Bathroom's finished, 

We've got one here that needs starting if you're looking for excuses ....

Corvus

Interesting stuff as always. That body wood, I like how the grain lines fan out from the pocket sort of area.
Re bathrooms I have form - started one when we moved into a house, only finished it when we wanted to sell 10 yrs later..

Andyjr1515

Spent most of the day on the fretboard.

First job was to plane the sides straight and level.  Panga panga really is very wenge-like  :

 

 

There is a mystique about multi-scales but the only complicated bit (unless you have some VERY fancy kit) is that you have to cut the frets the 'old fashioned' way - that is, with a perpendicular block, some clamps and a fret saw.  This is because at the angles you need to get to, you generally can't use a standard carpenters or luthier mitre-block.

Basically, you mark out the fret positions of the longer scale at one side of the board, mark up the fret positions of the shorter scale on the other side of the board and just cut your slots between each pair of marks  

So first I stick a long steel rule to the fretboard with 2-sided tape, and use the Stewmac calculator to give me each position relative to the nut and then press a tiny indent into the board with a sharp-ended punch:

 

I then reposition the rule to the other side of the board, inset it by an inch and repeat using the fret spacings of the smaller scale

Next, I clamp a perpendicular block with it's square face lining up with each pair of indents, ensuring that the sawblade, when pressed against the block face EXACTLY bisects each indent: 

 

I start off the slot gently, holding the saw blade against the wood block.  Once I have the start of a slot - enough to hold the blade in position, I can be a bit more energetic.

The perpendicular block has been cut to a height so that the spine of my saw rides along it once I've reached the depth of slot I'm planning to go to: 

 

Then I unclamp, move the fretboard forward, align the block between the next pair of indents, reclamp and repeat. Three done, 21 to do  

 

And continue until they are all done!

 

And by the magic of mathematics, if the fret positions either side are correct, then the fret positions of anywhere across the fretboard are going to be correct, whether that is 4 strings, 5 strings or 6 

AustrianJohn

KingSub said:

IKEA do rolls of drawing paper for kids that are nice and wide, and perfect for drawing out plans on.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/mala-drawing-paper-roll-70461088/

Excellent, thank you. I already have a trip to IKEA planned for next week, so I’ll add some Måla.

WezV

I tend to use lining paper for walls when drawing.... Bit sturdier than the IKEA paper so can be cut out to help make templates and such like

Andyjr1515

I always agonise over investments in tools and facilities, but having decided that hand radiusing hardwood fretboards is the road to insanity, I built myself a radiusing jig a few years ago.  

While it worked well, it was a bit inconsistent and quite difficult to setup.  So last year I bit the bullet and went for the G&W (Guitar & Woods) unit with a couple of extra radii formers.  And boy, am I glad I did!  It does the job quickly and efficiently - but more to the point, accurately.




Took 30-40 minutes total to get the router out, tape the fretboard with 2-sided taped to the jig, set the router to the correct height and do the job.  Then 10 minutes of finish sanding with a sanding block to get rid of the router lines, a quick initial wipe with tru-oil and here we are:





Not sure how well it comes out in the photos, but while being very wenge-like, the panga panga has some orange in it which is perfect to tone with the body wood.

I'll check with Tom what nut width he wants, cut the taper and then I can start on the neck.