One man's trash is another man's trashy Dolphin Nose bass

[guitarbuilder]

So I spent a couple hours messing with the computer. I thought I'd re-do a fretboard scribing program since the weather is supposed to be kind of record breaking tomorrow. Well, I spent about an hour trying to find how to convert arcs to lines in Cambam. I finally found the hidden location. There's something to be said for a concise manual in one's hands... which wasn't the case here. So getting frustrated, I am just putting together the program manually by using my Gibson file and changing the fret locations. I got one done for 23 frets and then realized that this Dano has more than that....24 plus a bit more, so 25. So I have to tweak it a bit and that won't happen today.

I found my rosewood blank and also found my walnut turning square, so I ripped a 3/8" walnut fretboard off of it. No holes this time but it does have a curl in the middle of it.

I also thickness sanded the poplar neck blank but didn't cut it shorter yet.

 

[guitarbuilder]

OK... a busy day today and I managed to get a bass fretboard started. As I didn't have any gcode programs for this scale length ( 29.5'), I had to do it all from scratch. I had already developed a program to scribe the fret locations. I needed a program to drill the holes, radius the fretboard, and taper the fretboard. I have all these done for Gibson and Fender fretboards, so I used the same kind of process. First I drew the fretboard in Rhino. Then Isolated the dots and perimeter into two separate drawings. I used Cambam to create the gcode for that. I used Meshcam and Rhino for the fretboard radius surface. I did a test run on the radius with the board extra thick, so in reality I did this step twice. The first one took off about 1/8" as a proof of concept. What you see here is the second attempt to make it a bit more than 1/4" thick. I think it took about 15 minutes each time to radius the board.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Next was fret scribing in the radiused fretboard.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Then hole drilling with a 1/8" bit to make 3/16" diameter holes.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Next the taper step. Normally I don't cut it at the extreme ends by the nut and fret 25, but I decided to try it here.

 

[guitarbuilder]

And the last step today, I made a couple shallow cuts to mill the edge parallel to the centerline. This will give me a nice edge to put against the slotting system fence.

 

[guitarbuilder]

This is what the result is and I'm pretty pleased. I still have to get used to GRBL syntax which is a bit more complicated than Mach Syntax. Yeah...same picture as above.

 

[crazydave911]

That is a beautiful fretboard

 

[guitarbuilder]

That is a beautiful fretboard

Thanks! I had the dot and fretslot experiences today. Photos forthcoming. Let's just say..." you can never just do something".....

 

[guitarbuilder]

Dots and slots....sounds easy enough. I got my dot material which is the leftover pickguard material I save.

 

[guitarbuilder]

I got my punch set out. I made about a dozen or more dots. I have cardboard on the back to make the point of the punch to create less distortion on the dot. These are really sheet metal punches and you want the hole more than the dot. I'm using it backwards I guess.

 

[guitarbuilder]

I glued the dots in with duco. I needed a hammer to get them in there...

 

[guitarbuilder]

I used a scraper and trimmed off that little excess ( about 1/64") on the edge that'll be against the fence. Then I used double sided duct tape strips to tape it down to my riser block.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Now remember, I don't have a template for this scale. I lined up the blade with the scribe mark which is a tiny V shape. The blade kind of just drops in. I hold it there in place against the fence and pull the saw back.

 

[guitarbuilder]

And probably did about 2 slots per minute.

 

[guitarbuilder]

And in about 10 minutes...we have slots.

 

[guitarbuilder]

I filed and scraped down the dots. I removed the waste with a saw and little stanley thumb plane.

 

[guitarbuilder]

So today I cut down the neck blank and printed out a peghead on the printer. I checked my truss rods and have regular or bass ones. I decided to just buy a 22 inch one from Bitterroot on ebay. Hopefully it'll be here this week, but I won't get my hopes up. He is a fast shipper though.

I think the truss rod is just a one direction double rod type welded at the far end as opposed to a stewmac Hotrod -like rod which actually bends in both directions. I'm fine with that. Danos had two steel bars embedded in them at a slight taper. I did that kind of neck on a dano project a few years back. There's nothing wrong with improving the bass with a truss rod and solid wood over masonite and steel reinforcements. I'm not trying to clone the thing.... just get close.

Anyway, today I glued on another piece of poplar to the core because the bridge mounting holes are wider than I thought. I also started to cut up some trash poplar for the inner body parts. I'll have to check the garage for more of the recycled built- in poplar parts.

 

[Captain Nutslot]

Awesome build Marty!
... Remember that rosewood gibby fret board ya gave me awhile back?
It's getting put to good use! I'll try to dig up a couple pics

 

[guitarbuilder]

Awesome build Marty!
... Remember that rosewood gibby fret board ya gave me awhile back?
It's getting put to good use! I'll try to dig up a couple pics

Thanks! ...any use is good use of that stuff I say.