First cuts

I got over to my father's workshop today to start the bass build. These first cuts are the most stressful, ah what am I saying, all the cuts are stressful.

First we put the neck blank through the sanding planer to get two square edges and remove some imperfections, then I cut the angle for the headstock.

I wish there was a better way to cut it, I just used the bandsaw, which had no problems with the wood, but its not very accurate. It just means a lot of sanding to get it perfect.

Next we cut the slot for the truss rod, a few small issues, but nothing a little shimming won't take care of. With the two ebony stringers in the neck blank, I really doubt I even need a truss rod, but man it would suck to have this thing built and find out I did need one. The depth of the channel for the truss rod is 7/16" and the neck is only 5/8" or so thick at the end, so there's not much margin for error there!

I will need to figure out how to expand the hole at the end of the neck to be able to put an allen key on the truss rod nut, but that's down the road.

Probably no more time this weekend to work on it - I have to figure out how to shape the neck, there's a lot of really hard wood that needs to be removed. A saw sounds like a good idea, but I think I'll be using a planer of some kind. There will be a lot of staring and comparing going on this week.