Below 265 SQ/FT Vertigo Cycles Frame Shop Fix Up

[Vertigo Cycles]

A while back I cut out some body shapes with templates but they've been sitting without progress for months.

IMG_1398 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

On my birthday a few weeks ago, my wife worked from home to give me the day off from playing stunt teacher and rather than ride my bike, I took the time to make some progress on a bass. The bass was chosen because despite its size, it's the instrument my wife feels is most approachable. She taught herself how to play the ukulele a few years ago, started learning chords on one of my guitars this past year but sore fingers hasn't helped her motivation much. Hopefully she'll feel inspired to play this bass more often than the guitars.

With no space to store a router sled, the path of least resistance is to cut carbon rod and truss rod channels on my mill. Only the table isn't quite long enough for a bass neck

IMG_1541 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

...so I stopped when I maxed out the travel...

IMG_1540 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

...what the Deckel lacks in size, it makes up for in versatility. The tables are removable and are keyed into the built-in vertical table. In this case, all that was needed was to slide the table to the right about six inches

IMG_1542 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

to complete the slots

IMG_1543 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

then the carbon rods are epoxied into place

IMG_1545 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

after slotting the fret board, marking out centerlines and cutting it it slightly oversized, it's ready to epoxy onto the neck.

IMG_1546 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

No photos of a lot of the little but important steps, most of which were done during a week long bout of insomnia. It's nice to be productive when I have to move silently through the house but I have to be careful because I'm much more likely to forget an important step....like creating some fallaway in the fretboard....which I forgot to do.

But I managed to get the frets in, as well as the dot inlays and with a borrowed spoke shave, I hogged off the majority of the waste on the neck

IMG_1555 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

With some adhesive backed sandpaper on a slab of aluminum plate that I machined perfectly flat, I do a bit of sanding on the neck to ensure that there aren't any dips or ridges, without sanding so close to the heel or neck that I'd bork up the crisp transitions

IMG_1557 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

These carving knives are the most enjoyable tool I've ever used, period.

IMG_1560 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

transitions blended

IMG_1561 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

Yesterday I finish sanded the neck, drilled tuner holes, cut the arm bevel, belly bevel, some horn beveling for high fret access and then a little epoxy pore filling and then assembled it just so my kids could roll their eyes at yet another thing I've made and am excited about. At what age do they understand that turning a couple of slabs of wood into something is pretty great?

From here on out, there will be many hours of sanding, pore filling, sanding some more, sealing, sanding and then more sanding. Then shooting a little paint, clear and yet more sanding. I'm going to go ride my bike now, maybe wear the dog out in the process. Maybe have a BBQ with the neighbors tonight and then get started on that sanding.

 

[Vertigo Cycles]

most of what's going to follow has been done in the middle of the night while I've been dealing with a bit of insomnia. One of my favorite things about taking on projects is that in addition to learning from the zillions of process related mistakes, I get to learn about how I handle them and recover from them.

When I built my first guitar, I took great care to check for flatness at various stages of neck construction. One thing that I didn't know to do, was to add a little fall-away on the fretboard from about the 15th fret towards the 21st fret. I knew better this time around, but didn't do it anyway because I was doing this work from 2-4AM because I couldn't sleep but wanted to use the time productively. I learned that while I might be an uber-spreadsheet-list making-hyper-organized type A guy during the day, in the middle of the night when my brain wants to be asleep but my body is in too much pain, all of the over-analysing and hyper organization isn't worth squat.

I managed to get the fretwork done without anything bursting into flames.

IMG_1574 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

And sanded the neck out to 3000 grit. I was going to spray a very thin coat of nitro, but I liked this so much that I'm going to roll with it. It feels like a 50 y/o handrail at a national park

IMG_1575 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

I couldn't remember how I cut the nut slot before, and happened upon a 1/16th endmill that I had forgotten was in the drawer so why not?

IMG_1572 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

Unfortunately no more photos, but once I cut the nut slot, thinned the bone blank, installed it and set it up, I built up the bass in the white. I don't have pickups yet but unplugged it was very loud, very resonant and clear as a bell BUT, I didn't like the way the neck felt. I left it a full 1" thick over the length of it which made it hard to move around quickly up near the nut. After taking it all back apart I spent a good part of last Saturday thinning it out by 1/8" at the first fret and feathering it down to the 15th. I'm sure it's old hat to real builders, but I found this to be more difficult than shaping it this way straight away.

added more taper towards the nut by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

I also ordered some 3m polishing paper that goes up to 8000 grit. This neck feels outrageously good.

Next time I post, I'll tell you about how I drilled through the back of the body while drilling from the pickup pocket to the control cavity

 

[burger]

The video didn't work yesterday. Let see if this works.

IMG_2230 by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

edit: bummer. you have to click it.

Hello Sean,

Bringing up an old thread that somehow I missed and am reading for the first time. Thanks for posting this broaching video! I've heard the process described but it never quite made sense to me. The short video made things click.


Ed