Eric Wimsatt - Luthier, Tech, Father

Tim's Bass, Condensed

2009-09-02T15:11:00.003-04:00

I wanted to put all the pics of Tim's Bass in one post for the people that aren't on facebook to see the updates. Once I get the next and last rounds of pics, I'll just edit them on to the end of this post.

The first thing to do is get a scale draft of the finished piece.

66

The next step is wood selection

Then I rip the neck-through section and joint everything.

I glue that section together

Then I make a bunch of this

Until it looks like this

Next I plane, joint and glue up the wings. How do you like that fancy glue spreader? ;)

Clamp it all up

Clean the edges up to save time on the jointer

The inside edges ahve been jointed and each wing has gone through the planer so that they are the right thickness

Then I ripped apart some fingerboard candidates to see which one fit best.

Next I do a rough cut of the wings

At this point, I am missing some pictures. I have no idea where they are. I'm afraid I may have lost them during a computer death we suffered a while back. The missing pictures are slotting the fingerboards, slotting for and installing the truss rod, gluing the fingerboard to the neck, cutting the scarf join for the headstock angle and gluing that on, gluing on the wings, and shaping the neck. There are probably a few other steps I didn't list, but those are the big ones.

Here is the shaped neck where it meets the headstock

Blending the neck curve into the body section and wings.

The customer wanted the horns to come to points, but after talking about instrument balance and strap button placement, we settled on the top wood coming to a point over a round horn.

Route for the pickups and electronics cavity

Money shot up the front

A shot of the bass with the first coats of oil on it. That wood is really soaking it up!

Kevin Got Wood

2009-02-13T15:17:00.001-05:00

Kevin Jensen's beautiful piece of quilted and burled maple arrived just now. pictures don't do it justice.

Testing

2009-02-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

Testing to see if i can post from my phone. also here is a picture of maggie just before bath time.

Home

2008-12-21T13:23:00.001-05:00

This is what my home looks like. How about yours?

A Flake Or Two

2008-12-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

So we have been getting a flake or 2 of snow. The first image is my 6" work ruler. The second is a pic taken down the hole it went into which was the ruler plus the length of my finger. the thrist is a pic across the street. I took a bunch more but all that took were just the flash lighting up the snow in front of the camera. We are at about a foot with 3 days of snow to come.

YAY

Tim's Bass Part: 4 - New Jointer - Work continues

2008-12-10T18:45:00.000-05:00

Got the new jointer in, YAY! Now I can start working again. Today I jointed all the glueable edges and bandsawed out the rough body shape. Tomorrow I hope to cut the truss rod slot, fret slots and glue the fingerboard to the neck. Here are the pics of the rough cut body next to the neck through section.

Cut the Fingerboards

2008-12-01T20:45:00.000-05:00

I cut the fingerboards for Tim, Jack, Ron, and Kevin and still have enough material to get 2 more fingerboards. Yay for good machinery!

Tim's Bass Part: 3

2008-12-01T09:52:00.000-05:00

Both wings are glued up now as well as the neck through section. Next I have to plane down the wings, shape the wings, glue the wings to the neck, slot the fingerboard, cut the truss rod channel and install the truss rod, glue on the fingerboard, and fret the neck. But until I can do most of that, I have to wait on the jointer I ordered to arrive.

Here are some pics of the wood parts laying in the proper position.

Jack's Guitar Part: 2

2008-12-01T09:50:00.000-05:00

I got the scarf joint glued up.

Jack's Guitar

2008-11-28T19:54:00.001-05:00

I went ahead and started Jack O'Shea's guitar. It will be a single cut-away guitar. I planed the neck and cut the scarf joint. I will sand the joint smooth tomorrow and glue it on. Here it is clamped up waiting for glue.

Tim's Bass Part: 2

2008-11-28T19:50:00.001-05:00

Did some more work to Tim's bass. I glued up the other wing. I also figured I'd go ahead and post the sketch of what the finished bass will look like.

Tim's Bass Part: 1

2008-11-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

I am building a bass for Boston resident, Tim Dunn. It is going to be a 4 string neck through double cutaway. The Neck through section will be made of walnut, purpleheart, and maple veneer. The body wings will be a zebrawood top and back with a wenge core. The fingerboard will be cocobola.

Here are some shots of the first part of the build. Tim helped with some of the planing, sawing, and gluing.

We drew first blood on the project.

The cool thing about wood working is you can tell how much work you've done by how much saw dust you made!

Cat and Mouse

2008-11-07T12:21:00.000-05:00

The Martin Project

2008-09-10T17:55:00.000-04:00

I currently have a nice old Martin in the shop that needs a little TLC. The pickguard had lifted at the edges so it needs to be replaced. The bridge has pulled away from the body so it needs to be pulled and reglued. There is also a small crack in the top that needs to be repaired. Here is a log of the repair.

First I pulled the pickguard. I don't have pictures of it, but the process is to heat up the pickguard and slowly lift it off the soundboard. Once that was removed, I turned my attention to the bridge. Here you can see that it was lifting off the soundboard.

There are two ways to remove a bridge. One way involves wedging a chisel under the back and beating the handle with a hammer until the bridge pops off. The other is to gently heat the bridge to loosen the glue, then seperate the glue seam to ease the bridge off. I elected to go with option 2 ;)

Here is my heating blanket on the bridge held in place with a clamp and caul.

Once the bridge gets hot enough to loosen the glue bond (and release the beautiful scent of hot rosewood!), I use a metal spatula that has been sanded sharp, then the sharp end removed with a buffing wheel so that it won't hurt the soundboard to seperate the seam.

Once the bridge is off, I scrape off all the wood on the bottom of the bridge and the glue left on the soundboard. I need it to be as smooth as possible so that the bridge will glue back down into place (and hopefully hold for another 40 years). Here is the bridge glued back down in the correct place. I use 2 Sloane Clamps with an adjustable clamping caul. Using 2 clamps allows me to regulate pressure on each side of the caul.

So now on the the pickguard. I have been very disappointed with my suppliers on this point. This is an OM Martin which is smaller than a standard D. No one seems to sell this pickguard and when I finally got someone to send me one, they just sent me a pickguard for a D-28. The customer has been more than patient with the timeframe I have spent with his guitar, but I need to get this back to him. When in doubt, do it yourself. I am going to make a pickguard. My first step is to make a template of the old pickguard. I do this by taping off the bottom and trimming it to size.

Once I have that done, I transfer it to the pickguard material. Then I bandsaw out the basic shape and clean it up on the belt sander. Tomorrow, I will post the pickguard being made and repairing the top crack. Hopefully, I will also have some sound clips of the finished guitar.