Monday 10th September '07

As ever Monday is a day spent mostly on administrative boredom.. but I managed to get that over and done with by lunchtime and had a very productive, and messy, day!

during lovingly tending my veg patch I found this lovely caterpillar.. turns out it will turn into..

an Elephant Hawk Moth.. beautiful.. I really miss the variety of wildlife I grew up with in Africa..

The Crimsonn Helmet #2 ready for sanding and all the finishing touches.. unfrtunately it's too early for the sun to be out properly and I can't see the sanding marks yet!

so, on to building a full template for Charlie Jones' next installment of his signature bass 

the battery for the drill is now charged and I drill all the wiring holes

and also the bridge and tailpiece positions..

and then spend an hour sanding

aluminium is being used for the inlay which is marked out

cut

and installed... you've all seen this process many a time!

the back plate is cut out of a chunk of mahogany

rasped and filed to size

and checked for fit prior to being

carved and sanded to match the curves of the back..

finally, after another hour or so of sanding the edges are all rounded off by hand

and the first section of stain is applied.. much more will be done on this tomorrow once she has dried fully

headstock..

looking quite good really.. just a bit too bright, we need a darker more 'punk' guitar..

the template for Charlie's bass is cut to size

the body section is routed using a bearing cutter and the original body template

and the neck and headstock is rasped to shape by hand.

frets etc are marked on her so that I can find out where the fret markers will be, these will mask the holes I need to drill through in order to fix the template to the chunk of Acrylic

Jasper very carefully nicked this bit of wood, and then made a racket chewing it.. cute!

the template is screwed in place and the first routing is performed.. I can only take the router down by 2mm at a time so it takes nearly two hours just to cut this out!  And my back bloody hurts now!!

It also looks like a snowfield here.. the shavings are static too and stick to everything!

but here we have the whole beastie cut out.. tomorrow I need to go around again with a bearing cutter which will get us right up to the template.. then we are done!

and I figured a pic of the first prototype would be a good idea here...

All my best till tomorrow..

Ben