Wednesday 17th October '07

another day in the life of a custom guitar builder... I'm dreaming of acrylic now!  I need to finish these beasties!

The bass begins the day with the back having been rough carved

and is labouriously scraped and sanded

and then polished.. the middle section here is polished up and the rest left to show the difference..

and here she is, the polishing is by no means perfect yet but is good enough for me to see how everything within the guitar is related.. right at the end I'll re-sand and polish the whole beast again..

the inside of the pickup and control cavites are scraped clean with a sharp chisel

and I pause to look at the lovely view from my new window.

I then carefully chip out the bottom of the cavities..

from the back it looks like this.. though it's much more impressive in the flesh

the headstock and back of the neck have yet to be cleaned up..

and the ends of the frets are profiled at this juncture too

more sanding and polishing... my fingers always end up looking like prunes at the end of a day polishing acrylic..

the template is brought out again to mark out the tuner placement

and these are drilled out rom both sides.. this stops any chipping as you go through the headstock

the tuners are installed and I mark around them so that I know where I can carve.

and she ends up here.. a much slimmer looking profile even though the meat of the headstock is still very substantial..

the back of the neck is polished..

as well as the headstck... by this time the lighht is failing and it gets too diffincult to see the minor scratches created by the wet and dry papers..

still, she really is starting to look the part!

Tomorrow will be a slightly attenuated working day as, right at the last minute, I was informed that i have to pick my sister-in-law up from the airport.,.three hours away.. there will still be a rather substantial diary as I only leave late in the afternoon..

Till the morrow,

Ben