Rounding Off The Edges

I spent a couple of hours yesterday with a file, rounding off the square edges that the rasping created - reasonably easy going although obviously a fair bit of care required. I'm very happy with the results, in a little over two hours I managed to do all the bits round the front of the body:

The back of the body will have to wait for another day, and clearly it'll all need a bit of tidying up with various grades of sandpaper after that, but the main part of the job (on the front at least) is done. Still finding my way with all this woodworking stuff, but I'm really happy with how it's going so far!

Taking Shape (part 2)

So I've been a bit quiet on the blog for a while - sorry about that!

Life has got in the way a bit lately, but I have managed (in a couple of goes) to finish hacking off the bulk of the wood I needed to lose to achieve the shape I want. It's a slightly odd and unconventional shape, but I like that and I like how it's turned out.

It needs a bit of tidying up obviously as the rasp leaves it pretty rough, and I'll need to shape the edges to recreate the curve that the rest of the body has.

I've also not managed to remove much weight this way, as I kind of expected - it's down to just over 2.6kg (from the original ~2.8kg) but I'd like to lose a bit more. I could try to carve the shape of the body down a bit more, or maybe flatten off the sides all the way round (also removing the need to re-create the curved edges) but I don't think that would remove much weight so might be more hassle than it's worth. I'm now seriously considering creating a cavity or two in the body somewhere, although I haven't yet figured out where to do it without losing either the structural strength or balance of the body. I might also carve down the rib and arm cuts a bit, which won't gain much but might help with the general comfort of playing.

But whatever I do from now, I'm happy to have it looking, shape-wise at least, how I had intended!

New Neck

Perhaps getting slightly ahead of myself since I'm not quite ready for it yet, but my birthday present from my wife arrived in the post today - the new neck for the Marlin! I bought it from Dangleberry Music, it's a fairly standard 20-fret bass neck but with a lovely-looking maple fingerboard, which should contrast quite nicely with the black finish I'm planning for the body. Here are a couple of pics:

Nice shot of the grain (worth clicking on to see full size):

Not bad for £56...and kudos to Dangleberry Music on the rapid delivery, ordered Monday evening, arrived Wednesday morning.

Taking Shape

On the advice of Jim Fleeting (see comments on my previous post, Plan B), I bought a rasp this week, and attacked the Marlin with it this afternoon. It was fairly hard work, possibly because I'm in no way used to such manual labour - but the results were pretty satisfying. Here's a pic:

As you can see, I've taken it fairly close to the line all the way round, so it's really starting to take the shape of what I hope to end up with.

Here's the pile of wood dust I ended up with:

There was some splintering but that's probably inevitable, and it doesn't really matter at this stage. I'll have a go at the top of the body in a few days' time, and probably try to get a bit closer to the line round the bottom too.

Plan B

Had a go at using a spokeshave to start carving the body yesterday...bit of a disaster really! The spokeshave barely made an impression, it was like trying to carve rock. I suspect that the glue between the layers of plywood is simply too hard for it, so I need to come up with a new plan. I think that my next attempt will be to try using the power sander on it, with some coarse paper, and see how well that works.

More reports once I've actually made some progress!

Sawn-Off Horn

No, I've not branched out into illegal ivory trading - I sawed a chunk off the lower horn of the body on Sunday, the only part of the body where I was able to quickly remove a decent-sized chunk of wood.

First I sketched onto the body the design I posted last time, with two lines - one to indicate where the edge of the body needs to be, and one where the edge of the top will be, since there is a curve to the profile of the edge of the body all the way round. I may yet decide to flatten off this curve all the way round the body as recreating it consistently on the bits I'm reducing may be rather tricky, but that's a debate and decision for another day.

I was expecting the plywood to splinter quite badly, so I decided to saw off a small piece from the end first, so I could gauge how close I'd be able to go to where I need the end of the horn to be without the splintering going into the bit that I need to keep. However, as you can see, there was almost no splintering at all:

I then sawed off a second piece, as close as I dared go to where my sketched line was, while still giving myself a bit of leeway:

And here they are, lined up on my design sketch:

So that's it for sawing - next will be shaving, carving and filing to get the body down to what I want. It'll be a time-consuming process I expect but I'm willing to take my time in order to try to achieve a good result. I'll post updates as and when I make progress!

Last of all, since the idea of this is to reduce the weight of the body, I weighed the two chunks I sawed off - put together they're 75g! So I've not lost a lot, but it's only the beginning.

Paper & Pencil

OK, so it's been a couple of weeks since I updated the blog - but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about the next step!

I've decided that I want to cut down the body to a new shape, even if it's not a drastic change and may not lose me enough weight. I like the idea of ending up with something a bit distinctive, so this is the way to achieve it, although it's somewhat daunting and a bit risky. But then so is all of this, so nothing ventured nothing gained :-)

A few days ago I spent some time with paper and a pencil, sketching some possible new shapes for the Marlin on a traced outline of the original shape. After a few different attempts, I think what I'm going to go for is something fairly subtle, slightly offsetting the waist but without bringing it in too close to the strings. I'm also going to remove a chunk of the lower horn. Here are a couple of photos of the "final" sketch, with the original outline visible (if you click on the images and view them full-size) and the darker sketched line being what I'm going to go for:

Lower horn:

Upper horn:

One or two earlier sketches involved taking rather more from the waist, but then it ended up looking rather too pear-shaped and somewhat ridiculous. I also looked at taking even more from the lower horn, but I need to retain some balance in the shape, and enough of a curve in the waist that I'll still be able to play it while sat down. I've considered reducing the upper horn too, but I think that gives too much risk of ruining the balance of the bass when hung from a strap playing standing up.

I'm going to shave down the arm-cut a bit as I suggested previously, but that won't remove a lot. I suspect that this shape may not really remove quite enough weight, but better that than something too drastic that looks ridiculous. If so then I might have to attempt a cavity or two - another daunting prospect but what the hell!  I'll cross that bridge when I come to it though - get the shape cut down first, then weigh it and make a decision then as to whether I've gone far enough.

I'll have to sketch the final design onto the bass itself before I start cutting and carving, so at that point I'll really know exactly what I'm going for.

The next thing to do is to make a trip to B&Q this week to get the appropriate tools, and then get started. As usual, any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!

Sanding Finished...For Now

I'm a bit late posting this but I spent some time sanding down the body by hand on Sunday afternoon, to remove the last bits of paint from inside the horns and to try to remove at least some of the white residue that was still there over most of it. The paint actually came off more easily than I expected, with a left-over piece of coarse sandpaper from the power sander and a bit of elbow grease. I'm really glad I didn't try to do the whole body by hand though!

The result looks like this:

Still a bit of the residue left in there but that's OK for now.

I then got my sanding block and some coarse sandpaper and went over the whole body bit by bit just to give it a once-over; it seems to have helped a bit, and although it's not all that easy to see from the pictures I definitely managed to get rid of some of the whiteness. It's probably more noticable in the rib and arm cuts, and round the edges, due to the darker colour of the edges of the plywood.

Back:

Front:

It's a long way from perfect, but it's better than it was and that's all that matters for now. I had planned to spend some more time sanding it down, getting it into an even better state, but then I realised that there's not a lot of point at this stage. Once I'm done cutting/carving down the body to lose some weight, I'll have to sand it all down properly ready for painting, both the bits that are modified and the bits that are unchanged, so it seemed a little unnecessary to go through it all at this point.

So the next task is to figure out and design exactly what I'm going to with it, and then actually start some woodworking. The really daunting stuff begins here :-)

Since I already posted about some of my ideas regarding what I could do, I'm going to work a little on refining the plans (and picking exactly which idea(s) to go for) over the next few days and then hopefully post something a bit more definitive soon. Something of a plan is already formulating, but as before, any ideas and feedback would be appreciated!

Nineteen Layer Cake

This picture illustrates very nicely the layers of the plywood - all nineteen of them:

You can also see a few dents in the edge of the body - somehow these dents (which were clearly visible in the surface before I sanded the paint off) have had the paint pushed into them, rather than the dent going through the paint to the wood like most of the other dings and marks that were in the body. I decided against trying to sand the paint out of these with the power sander as that would've created a horrible flat patch in the edge of the body, so I'll see what comes off when I sand the body down by hand, and may end up having to paint over them to some extent.

I'm hoping to have some time this weekend to sand off the remaining paint inside the horns, and the remaining residue over the whole body too. Then it'll be time to start seriously deciding what I'm going to do about cutting down the body - I already have some more concrete ideas and plans than before, and even some "sketches", so maybe I'll post them up here at some point and ask for comments :-)

Stripped

Finally found the time to finish the sanding today - by taking this afternoon off work. Another 4hrs today to add to the 4hrs last week, and the body is now almost completely free of paint. Thankfully I didn't have to buy a new filter for the sander to get it usable again, I just had to glue the filter down over the air outlet to stop the dust bypassing the filter.

Like last time there were no major hiccups, although as expected there were a couple of bits inside the horns that the power sander simply couldn't reach; actually in the end I was pleased with how much I was able to do in there. The front of the body was pretty easy to finish, the sides (being curved) were a bit fiddly in places but not too much trouble.

A few pics, the first one is after an hour or so, the front of the body now paint-free but the sides still not done:

Secondly, a "during" shot of doing the end of the body:

A couple of shots of the remaining paint inside the horns, first the upper:

...and secondly the lower horn - somewhat more paint left here due to the tighter nature of the shape of the horn:

Lastly, a picture of the whole body:

I might post a couple more pics at some point in the next few days, especially to highlight the plywood!

Next task will be to sand off those last bits of paint by hand, then sand down the whole body to get rid of the white residue that's left over most of it, which I assume is remnants of whatever primer/sealer/undercoat was used beneath the paint.

Enter Sandman

Spent this afternoon sanding the body - had no idea how well it'd go, but in the end I had a pretty successful day. The Bosch sander is really good, and with careful use of the vacuum cleaner there wasn't too much dust flying around. The results also came out as well as I could've expected; it'll need to be sanded down by hand after I'm done but the exposed wood so far is fairly smooth, not too much in the way of unintended contours left by the sanding.

I've managed to do the whole of the back (started there in case I made a mess of it!) and about half of the front. Here are some during/after pics, starting with before - with appropriate kit:

During 1 - the back part done, and a pause for lunch:

During 2 - the back completely done, including the rib-cut:

After 1 - the front half-done:

After 2 - close-up of the rib cut (another clear view of the plywood) and of some of the grain in the back.

Need to get a new dust filter for the sander, and then I should be able to get the rest of the front and all the edges done in one more session. Not sure I'll be able to do the insides of the horns with the Bosch, but if I have to do a little by hand then so be it. But I'm very happy with how it's gone so far!

The Shape of Things to Come

Since I don't have much to post about while I'm waiting to start sanding down the body, I've decided to post some info about what I'm thinking of doing in order to cut down the weight of the body. Each idea has its pros and cons (the cons often related to the potential problems of woodworking with plywood!), and I may end up with some compromise between more than one of them. So, in no particular order...

1) Simply make the body thinner. Shave a thin layer of wood from the back of the body, possibly even a whole "ply" of the plywood which would make it easier to achieve a flat, consistent-thickness result. Like most of these options though, I'm not sure how the plywood will react to being planed/carved - I don't want it splintering everywhere, although that may be unavoidable regardless of what I do! Also I wouldn't be able to take much off without risking a reduction in the structural integrity of the bass as a whole once I get a neck on it and it's under tension from the strings. Another consideration is the hole for the jack and the strap button holes, as these would all no longer be exactly centered within the thickness of the body - especially a consideration for the jack. Lastly, the cover for the electrics cavity is neatly recessed into the body, so I'd have to re-do that recessing once I'm done, while still retaining the depth of the cavity that's needed to actually house everything. Tricky.

2) Trim down the shape of the body. Remove a little wood most of the way round, while still keeping the basic body shape - a good example of this is the Warmoth "Dinky P" body shape, for which they have an excellent little diagram showing the difference between a standard Precision-style body and their "dinky" version. Possibly quite tricky from a woodworking point of view, and I'd have to be quite careful not to end up with something bizarre-looking! Strap buttons are again a consideration, especially the one on the top "horn" of the body. Also the body has slightly carved/curved edges all the way round which I'd have to re-create once I'd cut the shape down, as the bridge end of the body would probably remain pretty much as is, so I'd have to keep that carved edge consistent all round.

3) Deeper arm-cut. The rib-cut on it is already pretty deep, but the arm cut isn't at all, so although it won't remove a lot of wood this is a pretty obvious way to gain a bit.

4) Cavities. Basically create one or more cavities in the body. A simple way to remove sheer bulk of wood, but one I'm reluctant to go for since it'd be risky for the structural integrity of the body, for the resonance of it (yes, I know it's only plywood!) and also from the point of view of the balance of it. I'm also sure that adding a laminate to cover the cavities would be beyond my woodworking capabilities, and I'm not too sure how exposed cavities would look even on the back! Some level of contouring of the back of the body (rather than blocky cavities) may be a possibility though, although it would probably look rather odd.

5) "Carved-top" look. Enhance the carved edges of the body from the small curve that's already there into something deeper and more akin to the PRS-style "carved-top" type of guitar. Probably beyond my woodworking skills, as it'd be difficult to achieve a result that's consistent and looks good all the way round a very curved shape. Also not much could be done behind the bridge as there's not a lot of wood to spare back there.

6) Drastic change in body shape. For example removing and rounding off the lower "horn", like with a Fender Jaguar. A risky strategy due the possibility of ending up with something that looks, well, ridiculous :-)

There are probably other options too - any suggestions and comments would be gratefully received, so please feel free to add them using the comments functionality below this post!

Workbench Delays

So no sanding this weekend after all...bought a workbench from B&Q on Friday evening in order to have something stable to use to support the body while sanding, tried to build it on Saturday only to find that one of the parts was faulty and I couldn't put it together.

I'm going back to B&Q to take it back, get a refund and a new one (going to get a better one too as the one I got seemed a bit flimsy) tonight, so hopefully should get onto the sanding next weekend - bank holiday weekend plus a day off work on Tuesday so there ought to be plenty of time for it!

Might take a look at woodworking tools while I'm getting the new workbench too, since that'll be the next step - still not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it to try to take some weight off, but I have a few ideas. Perhaps that can be a topic for another post this week, since I won't be able to make any actual progress until next weekend...

Paint Removal Machine

Weighed the body tonight, it's ~2.9kg with everything now stripped out of it. That'll be an interesting checkpoint for me to refer back to once I'm trying to trim some weight off it. I already have some ideas for that, but no concrete decisions yet as I have other things to do first.

Which leads me onto the other point of tonight's post - the subject of paint removal.

I ummed and ahhed about how to do this, and did some research online to help me decide between the two possibilities, either sanding or using some sort of chemical paint stripper. Both would be messy and have their own particular drawbacks, but in the end I've gone for sanding, largely because I wouldn't have known where to start with buying paint stripper. I have no idea what type of lacquer/paint was used on the Marlin, so choosing which type to get would've been pure guesswork - and I read a forum post online somewhere in which someone described the experience of trying 5 or 6 different kinds before anything made the slightest impression on his guitar, which didn't appeal to me! I figured sandpaper would work on anything :-)

Hand-sanding it would be time-consuming and doesn't really appeal though, so I've bought myself a Bosch hand-held sander which should make the job even easier. There might be one or two awkward bits that I need to do by hand but it should take care of the bulk of it, and I'm not bothering to do the insides of the pickup and electrics cavities as I don't really see the point.

I'm hoping to have some time to make a start this weekend, obviously any progress (and photos) will be on here as soon as I'm done!

Removing the Electrics

The last post brought this blog up to date with everything I'd done back in May, so I figured I'd better get on and do some more work on the Marlin so I'd have something to blog about!

Therefore, tonight's task was to remove all the electrics - here's a "before" shot:

Once I'd removed the screws holding the jack and pickups in place, there were only five wires to cut to be able to remove everything - one from the jack, and two from each pickup. The switch and pots will stay connected to each other until they go back in as there's no reason to disconnect them, it'd only give me more to do when I put everything back. I've made plenty of notes and taken plenty of pictures to (hopefully) remind me how it all connects up when the time comes to put it all back.

Here's all the bits laid out on the floor, ready to be put neatly away somewhere (no, really - I used sandwich bags):

... and the body itself, now completely bare of everything:

Next, the somewhat daunting task of removing all the lacquer and paint, but more on that another time.

Plywood. Hmmmm...

Additional info to the previous post - on closer inspection of the exposed wood in the neck pocket, it would appear that the body is made of plywood. I'll leave you all to make your own conclusions as to what that says about the quality of this bass...

Also, a pic of the wonky jack cover with its one odd screw! I think this bass was a bit cobbled together as one of the machine heads was an odd one out too.

Next thing to do, take out the electrics.

Dismantled

Right, so the Marlin has now been dismantled, everything except the electrics anyway:

One or two minor hiccups along the way - the neck was not only bolted on but had some glue as well, nothing that a little brute force didn't take care of though! A couple of the machine head screws were almost impossible to remove too, in the end one had to be simply levered out of the back of the headstock. Turns out also that the neck is not only curved, it's twisted slightly too - hopefully this photo shows that:

I've weighed a few of the bits for reference, and to help figure out whether there are any other ways to save weight. The neck doesn't seem unduly heavy at 850g (although I have nothing to compare it with) and although I plan to replace the bridge and machine heads I know I won't save a huge amount of weight there.

However, the body (with pickups and electrics still in place but no other hardware) weighs ~3.4kg out of the ~4.9kg total weight of the bass. Compare that to my Aria 5-string which weighs in at 4kg for the whole bass, and it's clear that the body is definitely where the maximum possible weight loss can happen :-)

A couple more pics

A couple more pics of the Marlin - firstly a better view of the body, showing off the colour better. It's a nice finish so it's a bit of a shame it's got to go, but I can't keep it and trim the body down.

Secondly a pic of the logo on the headstock...although everything in this picture will be gone by the time I'm finished!

Project #1 - Marlin Sidewinder

My first project, the one that's inspired me to take up luthiery, will be to renovate my old Marlin Sidewinder bass. It was my first bass, which I was given when I was about 14 - soon to be superseded by my Aria Pro II 5-string a couple of years later. The Marlin was then lent to a neighbour and promptly forgotten about, only to be returned by the neighbour out of the blue last year. Unfortunately it is - and frankly always was - pretty much a piece of crap, so it needs a fair bit of work to get it playable!

The main problem with it is the neck, which is warped enough to make the action terrible, and adjusting the truss rod makes no difference to the curvature of it. In fact, there's even a small crack in the fretboard by the nut, right above the truss rod. So, a new neck will be needed!

The second problem is that it's very heavy, making it uncomfortable to play. My plan to reduce the weight (at least a little) is to strip/sand all the lacquer and paint from the body, carve/cut/trim down the body a bit to reduce the sheer volume of wood, then re-paint it before attaching the new neck. As yet I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'm going to do design-wise with the body - but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it so more on that later. I doubt it'll be anything particularly adventurous for my first project!

The electrics should hopefully be fine, but the hardware is probably going to be replaced - the machine heads aren't great so that's an excuse to get some new lightweight ones, and I'll probably get a matching bridge too.

The Real Intro

Welcome to my blog - I've decided to take up luthiery (that's building/restoring/maintaining stringed instruments to you and me, specifically electric guitars in my case) as a hobby, and I'll be using this blog to post updates on my progress.

Updates might be rather sporadic, as they'll depend on when I have time to work on my current project(s), but I'll try to keep this blog updated with descriptions and photos of what I'm up to. As much as anything this will be a tool for me to document my projects, but I hope that it might interest a few people out there to see how I get on.

Pre-intro Intro

Right, I've been meaning to set up this blog for about 3 months, but life has kind of got in the way, as it does!

The first few posts will document some things I did back in April/May - they were written in a couple of quiet, offline moments but I never had time to actually set the blog up and post them. That's finally happened, so I'll be posting them over the next few days to get the blog up to date, then I can start doing more stuff and posting about it.

I'll probably end up tinkering with the layout etc. as I go along, but I may as well get started. Now that's out of the way, time for the first "real" post...