Flying V bass build (luthiers look away now!)

[Woodmonkey]

I'm just starting this project and thought I would share it on here as I haven't posted anything for ages.
This will be my first attempt at building a musical instrument, namely a flying-v bass. The neck and body will be mahogany and the fret board is an ebony substitute which looks like ebony but is more sustainable, it's made of wood but mixed with some kind of black resin. I started by very carefully marking out the fret positions on the fret board.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Now the frets are marked with a knife line I use a simple jig which helps keep the saw square to cut the slots.

A bit of tape tells me when to stop.

After about 45 minutes and a stiff neck we have a slotted fret board.

More to follow (assuming anyone is interested!)

 

[Setch]

Self confessed guitar builder looking forwards to more!

 

[profchris]

Ok, looking away, but ...

Two tips:

You'll probably be too scared to take enough wood off the neck first go. I built essentially square necks for my first 3 or 4. So carve the neck, then keep playing air guitar on it for a few days. Then carve away the wood that's in the way for playing. I've never built a bass, but you'll be relying a lot on the truss rod to keep it in shape so buy a good one.

The one thing you *must* get right is the geometry of fretboard plane and bridge placement. If your neck bolts on you can adjust with shims, but you still want to be close. I do the maths, but always check with a straight edge to make sure I haven't added where I should have subtracted. At least with an electric instrument the hardware gives you some adjustment, but not enough if you do get the maths wrong!

Good luck, and you'll need to ask someone else about wiring, a complete mystery to me

 

[Woodmonkey]

Thanks prof, I have drawn out a full sized rod so *think* it should all work out right! And I'll be copying the profile on my existing bass neck which I know I like so shouldn't be an issue. It's sure useful to have an existing instrument to refer to, although I have made the scale length slightly shorter on this one to hopefully reduce the neck dive that v basses are known for.

 

[profchris]

Good move.

Do you know how compensation works? This might be important because you're changing the scale.

Simply, in theory the 12th fret should be half way between the nut and the saddle. But in practice when you press down a string you stretch it, so the note it plays rises. To compensate you move the saddle a little way towards the tail.

The scale of your current base is nut-12th fret x 2. Same for the new one. But 12th to saddle needs to be slightly longer. You can get a rough idea how much by measuring your current bass.

Shorter scales need more compensation so plan that in. I'd guess that whatever the compensation is on your furthest forward saddle (1 mm?) needs to be .5mm more, and 0.5-1mm on the others. But my numbers could be wildly out - just measure and guess you'll need a fraction more. Set your bridge so that at that point you have a little forward movement and lots of backward movement.

Or, if you're making the neck first, you could even bolt it to the body, put a string on, make a saddle from a scrap of wood and by sliding that back and forth work out empirically where to set the bridge.

 

[Woodmonkey]

I've used the stewmac online scale calculator which even tells you where your screw holes go if using a fender style bridge (which I am) so I think it's fairly idiot proof (famous last words). There is a lot of adjustment in the bridge for intonation anyway, at least 10-15mm.

 

[OscarG]

Another guitar builder here (well i've built one! took me a year) will be following this with interest.

If I can offer you one bit of advice, I wouldn't drill the bridge holes just yet. I'd finish the neck (doesn't have to be carved but the heel correct size), rout the neck pocket, bolt in neck, put in a temp nut, (assuming you're doing a 4 string bass) thread just a thick E and G string only, place the bridge loosely on body, you can then attach those 2 strings and move the bridge about to accurately set both scale length and how close you want strings to fretboard edge. Then when you're happy clamp bridge down and drill that sucker!

Hope that all makes sense!

Edit - When I was building mine, this guy's (Fletcher Handcrafted Guitars) excellent youtube videos became my bible -> https://www.youtube.com/user/fletch123 his strat build is excellent and might help you a lot.

 

[RickG]

This is all looking really good to me, as a bassist and budding-builder looking for ideas.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Managed a couple of hours on this last night. Firstly unfortunately I noticed that when I cut the frets I was pushing too hard on the saw against the jig and actually deflected the blade so some of the fret slots were slightly bowed in the middle (homer)

You can just about see the bow here. Some were worse than others, whether this would be enough to affect the actual intonation I don't know, but to be on the safe side I glued some strips of veneer into the slots and re-cut them.
I then cut the taper on the fret board using the track saw, luckily it's the same thickness as a piece of scrap 9mm ply so i could use this to support the rail. The fret board is temporarily stuck to the bench to keep it steady.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Next I roughed out the back of the neck and the headstock on the band saw.

I then planed the headstock flat. The rider plane is not not mine, but I like it!

 

[Woodmonkey]

I finished work a couple of hours early today so I made a bit more progress with this. First up is marking and drilling the fretboard for the mother of pearl dot markers. I managed another Homer moment when the drill wandered a tiny bit, you can see here the two dots on the 12 fret are not quite in line so one of the holes had to be filled with a mixture of sanding dust and ca glue and redrilled.

Second time lucky and the dots went in without any more drama. Here is the fingerboard with the dots after a rough sanding.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Next up is routing the channel for the truss rod. The truss rod is important as it counteracts the pull of the strings to keep the neck straight and can be adjusted with a nut accessed at the headstock.

Here is the truss rod in place. You can see I have also enlarged the area around the nut a little and glued a small block which keeps the truss rod in position. This will all be hidden later on under the head stock faceplate.

Now the fretboard can be glued onto the neck. I used two small panel pins snipped off as locating pins so that the fretboard wouldn't slide around when glued.

Then the glue up, might have got a bit clamp happy!

 

[Woodmonkey]

Jig making next, I need a jig to rout the cavity for the pickups. Initially I thought I could jigsaw it out and then tidy it up but it came out rubbish.

So a bit of head scratching and I realised I could piece it together separately giving me nice straight edges and right angles, except for the curves which matched a 12mm forstner bit.

I then made a template for the main body, this gives an idea of how it will look.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Managed a bit more after work today, shaped the neck and headstock with a flush trim router and hogged out the control cavity with a forstner bit.

I'm undecided about the head stock, I think it may be a bit too long but I need to see it with the tuners on and then will decide if I need to shorten it a bit.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Still plugging away on this, I carved the back of the neck this afternoon using a mixture of spoke shaves and rasps, didn't remember to take many photos but here's a shot of the head as I'm working the transition from neck to head.

I also drilled the holes for the tuners and couldn't resist loosely fitting them to see how it would look, I'm still on the fence but thinking I might take an inch off the end, opinions welcome if anyone out there is still watching!

 

[profchris]

It does look a bit pointy!

But I'd want to see it attached to the body to express a firm opinion. Maybe it needs that extra length to work. I've seen quite few guitars which to me looked unbalanced because the headstock was too stubby.

 

[Woodmonkey]

You're right, I will wait until it's all together and the body has been shaped to decide.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Yep it's two frettings on the same day! Must be something in the air.
An unexpected day off work allowed me to crack on with my fretboard today. First to put a radius on I knocked the corners off with a plane and then used this radius block to sand to the desired 14" radius.

I started with 80 grit and once I could see I was sanding the center of the board (periodically checking along the length for straightness) I worked up through the grits right up to 1200.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Now onto the frets. I bent the fret wire using this sophisticated fret bending machine.

Then cutting each piece slightly over length starting filling the slots (ooh er misses). Most were a nice tight fit not requiring any glue, a couple of looser ones got a bit of thick ca glue. Once they were all in I snipped the ends close and then used a bit of coarse sandpaper glued to a flat piece of wood to flush the ends to the neck.