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!