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Hi,
This is just a little page to share the making of my rag-bass (rag- prefix, made from refurbished material)


The project :

Open your notebook and write...

Problem statement:
- Mr O. is broke, temporarily hopefully
- Mr O. is itching to build guitars despite the above statement
- Mr O. owns Jim Harley Jazz Bass he got for $ 30 (including the hard case - shocking !) 2 years before, a bass that features a pretty decent neck, that is, a neck to be refurbished
- Mr O. owns a 17 mm-thick piece of plywood that used to be crate
- Mr O. owns a 5 mm-thick piece of plywood and has no clue where this comes from
- Mr O. owns other things that are not worth mentioning here

Calculate the probability to achieve Figure 1, if proceeding as in Figure 2.


fig.1



fig. 2 - back and top with 5 mm plywood, 2 inner slices with 17 mm plywood.
Dark areas will be scooped out.

The making :

The wood:


Well, when refurbishing plywood, you might have to scrap away some foam.


cutting the body with the jigsaw


scooping out the inner layers with the jigsaw


Gluing the inner layers and pressing using the heaviest crates (that is the "could-be-useful" crates)


Cutting the cavities and the groove for the wires. I intend to use one single pickup but I'm cutting a second groove for a potential second pickup


cutting the electronic cavity lid :


gluing the whole thing :


pressing the final sandwich :


Hand-sawing to facilitate the routing :


routing the body:


The neck pocket:


making a sanding cylinder:

pretty darn useful

After inserting the pickup, it made its first cry.


Daddy's so proud

Gluing the binding:


Sound holes:


Plywood isn't the easiest thing to make a nice finish so I had to use some filler:


After sanding, one layer of white primer and then the final paint. Since I'm trying to minimize the investment, I just used what I already had: acrylic paint.


Acrylic is not the best choice, but I think I did a decent job.
The varnish, a poly-urethan.


Et voilà:


Since this picture, I modified the electronics with an active circuit, a volume knob, a tone knob, and an active/passive switch.