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Had a good week, working from home due to high tides making my office an island. That meant I got to spend a good bit of time in the shop.
started with a rough billet and a glued-up block of cherry: Was feeling good about machining, so was able to get the shaping of the headstock, neck relief and face complete: And did the rough weight relief on the back. This operation takes forever, so figured I'd just do what I can for now, until I get final measurements/bridge placement. And got the body cut and shaped: Last but not least, had a body not work out- so patched it with CA and sawdust and will make a DC body with more weight relief for the prototype neck

Those look amazing. Well done.
Do you have any sound samples of the bass?

fantastic work!

andyman wrote: Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:16 am Those look amazing. Well done.
Do you have any sound samples of the bass?

I'll try to record something this weekend. It sounds fucking huge- not the least of which because the customer asked it be set up for C# standard.

Been a hectic week. But on the up-side, I scored a 4 foot by 8 sheet sheet of plate aluminum...should be enough build 40+ instruments.

Here is the new body for #7 on the left. On the right is the fucked up body that is going to be the new home for the prototype (note the shorter receiver route). And got a start on shaping the neck. 1st step is always running a chamfer bit to knock down the corners and reduce the amount of material I have to shape. 2nd step is to start the distal taper from the heel .625 to nut .5-ish

with a 3 day weekend I was able to get quite a lot done- Neck is shaped and I've started the sanding process. Think I got to #220. Hope to have it to #2000 this week, with drilled tuners and mounting holes. Got the body weight relieved, sanded and the first coat of finish on it. The first coat is sacrificial,asically just showing me where I missed spots in sanding, etc. Hopefully will have the body finished this week.

Garth wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:55 am you hit on a serious consideration w/ aluminum vs wood that I hadn't thought of before. W/ wood, you could always fill a hole w/ a dowel and re-drill. This doesn't seem feasible w/ aluminum...

I can't speak to the particularities of machining an aluminum guitar beam, but generally speaking it's pretty easy to drill out a hole and add a threaded insert/helicoil/whatever.

mdc wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 9:30 am

Garth wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:55 am you hit on a serious consideration w/ aluminum vs wood that I hadn't thought of before. W/ wood, you could always fill a hole w/ a dowel and re-drill. This doesn't seem feasible w/ aluminum...

I can't speak to the particularities of machining an aluminum guitar beam, but generally speaking it's pretty easy to drill out a hole and add a threaded insert/helicoil/whatever.

based on all the shiny hammered aluminum foil ball videos I've seen, that's probably the route I'd take personally lol

actually going to probably build a guitar out of aluminum foil brb

Garth wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:55 am you hit on a serious consideration w/ aluminum vs wood that I hadn't thought of before. W/ wood, you could always fill a hole w/ a dowel and re-drill. This doesn't seem feasible w/ aluminum...

As a side note, I found out the answer to this is in this video (spoiler alert: "tig welding" who knew):



Anyway, the cast aluminum in this looks cool, I think maybe would have ended up cooler on the body if it were left w/ just a bit of those voids maybe idk. Anyway Chris, maybe you could take what you learned from the big fuck off stump burn and melt down a bunch of cans if you need a cheaper source of aluminum. I'm sure this is way more cost-effective

There was a guy who built a metal bass with a cast neck on the old forum. I don't remember much about it, but I remember the discussion about cast vs. machined aluminum.

hope the aluminum can guitar is strong enough to stay in tune and not bend over time.