selecting wood

Now that I've figured out what I want to make I can go ahead and start collecting wood and other materials.  Since I have been planning this for a while, I have had time to scout for wood.  I've been going into Macbeath hardwoods in San Francisco (thats where I live)  every couple of weeks to see what stock they have coming in.  I originally wanted to make the neck through body out of maple and the body out of Walnut.  Maple because that seems to be the traditional choice for guitar makers for neck wood and Walnut because Macbeath had a good selection of it and I thought it would complement the maple nicely.  From what I've read about guitar making and from experience as a carpenter, the best wood for a guitar is quarter sawn.  This means that the board is cut perpendicular to the grain, as close to the true radius as possible.  This is kind of hard to explain.  imagine the cross section of the tree as a pie.  Quartersawn pieces would radiate out from the center.  A slab sawn pie would have the cuts all go across the pie parallel to each other.

Quartersawn wood is much more stable and less likely to cup or warp over time.  Unfortunately it is more wasteful and less efficient to mill.  Therefore it is much harder to come by.  After digging through piles of maple and coming up empty handed,  I decided to roll the dice and order some lumber online.  Luthier's Mercantile International carries lumber for laminating neck through body neck blanks.   I figured since they are guitar building supply house,  the wood they sell will be the right kind of wood to do the job.  So I ordered 2 pieces of 3/4" x 5" x48" pieces of maple and a 1/4" x 5" x 48" piece of wenge to act as accent lines.  I'm going for that racing stripe look.  I also ordered a piece of ebony for the finger board.  I did come up with something from the local supplier though.  After almost giving up completely I found a beautiful piece of Bubinga (African Rosewood).  I decided that this would make an excellent body for the guitar instead of the walnut.

So while I was waiting for the lumber I ordered I cut he bubinga into shorter lengths for the body pieces.  I then took my drawing and cut out the two body pieces with a sharp utility knife and transfered it to the wood.  I then cut out the shape with a jigsaw.  I stayed pretty far outside the line because a jigsaw can be hard to control on a 2" thick piece of hard wood.  The blade can be difficult to keep cutting square to the top.  I  did not want to accidentally cut past the line on the bottom without noticing.  I figure I can clean this up later and slowly bring the shape in to where I want it.  I have found that it is better to cut things long and slowly whittle them down than to get greedy and lazy and cut something too short.

Then the Lumber came.  So the pieces of maple were pretty nice.  They were nice clear wood with perfectly flat top and bottom.  This saves me a lot of work in the process of laminating the neck pieces.  They are ready to be glued.  They weren't however quartersawn.  So I don't know if this will be a problem but I'm moving forward with it any ways.  The Wenge did not come and was backordered.  I don't want to wait so I took my Bubinga and ripped some 1/4" pieces since I had plenty left.  I ripped the maple in half.  I need 3 so I have one extra.  I might need this later to build out the headstock.  I used my small makita 8" table saw to rip these pieces.  These saws have been around for a long time and are easy to get used.  I got mine for 50$.  The neck will consist of three pieces of 3/4 maple with two strips of bubinga sandwiched between them Once I had my pieces I started gluing.  I used titebond II wood glue.  Mostly because I had a bunch of it.  I lined up the pieces as close as I could and clamped in up with what  was a available.  Lining up the pieces while gluing was a lot harder than I thought.  Next time I will prepare myself better for what a pain in the ass It might be.

Next I will start making the neck.  I included a photo of most of the tools I'll use during the process of building the guitar.  Here's a list.  Saws-Regular hand saw, I like my Japanese pullsaw, a gent saw, table saw, chisels, planes, spokeshave, rasps, drawknife, square, measuring tools, utility knive, xacto knife, clamps.  There are more I am just not thinking of it right now

Bass build, the beginning

I have been thinking about building a guitar for a long time before I began.  I bought two books that I thought would help me get a grasp on where to start.  Build Your Own Electric Guitar,  by Norman Hiscock and Making an Archtop Guitar, by Robert Benedetto.  I found both of these extremely helpful and would not be attempting this without at least this much instruction.

The first thing I did was decide exactly what I wanted to make.  Since I play bass in a gigging act, this seemed like the logical instrument to make.  The temptation of course is to try to make the most amazing, tricked out axe possible with every kind of pick-up, made from some wood that I can't pronounce the name of, that will play so well that I'll have to quit my job and become a guitar making rockstar.  Of course this is not a reasonable expectation.  I want to make a guitar that looks and plays nice.  I'm sure that this being  my first time, it will not be perfect.  I'll be happy if it plays in tune and is not visually offensive.

I'm going to build a through neck style 5 bass.  Through neck means the neck of the bass will carry through the body with the body pieces laminated on to the neck.  I guess this style has some tonal impact, maybe more sustain.  I believe the tone is mostly produced by the pick-ups and am not sure it really makes a difference. I'm choosing this style because I think it will be easier than cutting the mortise and tenon that attach the neck to the body on a traditional style of guitar.  Besides that, I think it looks really cool.  I've always wanted a five string bass and I figure it won't make it any more difficult to add an extra string (except for maybe more tension on the neck).  Other things to think about are what kind of pick-ups to use. I haven't decided yet and since I am buying small pieces at a time,  I won't need these until later in the process.  It's good to think about though and incorporate it into the design.


Next I got some big quadrule paper and a french curve and started drawing full size guitars.   I drew several different Ideas and blended different aspects that I liked in some, shifted necks up and down till I came to one that I liked.  Its a pretty traditional single cutaway with a a slightly asymetrical skew to it.  The next step for me was has been the wood selection and procurement of materials.  I'll get into this later.

First blog/ bass build

So I've decided to build an electric bass guitar.   Building my  own guitars is an idea that I've toyed with for years but have never gotten the courage to pull the trigger.  This is for several reasons-  The materials are too expensive, it was beyond my skill level as a woodworker,  I didn't have the time, I had no place to do the work, bla bla bla bla.   The fact is these excuses don't apply to me at this point in time so there is no reason for me to delay.  I am ready to give this a shot.

Here's a little bit about me.  I have been playing music for the better part of my life.  Although I dabble with other instruments my primary tools are bass (electric or upright) or guitar.  I play bass for a fairly active band in San Francisco called Guella - www.guellamusic.com.  I have been playing on the same Fender Jazz Bass (Japanese model) since I was 15.  I upgraded the pick-ups some years ago and the guitar has treated me very well over the years.   Recently, I bought an Ampeg svt 7 amp head.  Instead of buying a new cabinet,  I built my own with a beautiful 15" Celestion  600 watt driver.  This set-up has a monster crystal clear sound in a small, relatively lightweight package.   This project inspired me to look into building an actual guitar.

At this point I should mention that I make my living as a carpenter.  Generally,  I work on houses doing both rough and finish carpentry.  For the most part, working on homes is nothing like building musical instruments.  However,  there are occasional fine finish jobs where we really start to gain an understanding of wood and the nature in which it behaves.  It was these jobs that made me believe that I could successfully build a guitar.  Another advantage of my profession  is that I  have been collecting tools for some time now. It would be very difficult and expensive to go completely from scratch to having the tools you need to build a guitar all at once.  I also have access to power tools although I would like to build most of this by hand.  A table saw can rip a piece in 15 seconds where as doing this by hand would be inaccurate, time consuming, and exhausting.  So in the name of actually finishing an instrument I decided to use power tools where it seemed so obviously advantageous.

So in closing for now,  I do have the skill set required to make a bass successfully as well as the tools.  As for the materials being too expensive,  I have slowly collected what I need over time in order to ease the pain.  Overall I think I've spent about as much as you'd pay for a middle of the road new instrument, probably nothing american made.  Keep in mind that this is my first build so I've had to acquire tools.  I would say that to build a second instrument would be very cheap relative to a high end production guitar.
I recently moved into a place with a garage where I've set up a workspace so I can't use that as a reason to stall anymore.  As for not having enough time,  well I think that's just a lame excuse.

I'll post more later with some pics.