Pickup Cavities

Despite many distractions I got 3 hours in on the bass today. It felt like progress.

I re-made the template for the pickup cavity, shortening the distance between the two pickups. The bass with the template on clamped on (this is before I reduced that middle section:

I made two passes with the router - this put the router bit down as far as it would go - probably about a quarter inch into the wood.

Then I used a Forstner bit in the drill press to make the cavities deep enough for the pickups, looks messy eh? Notice there are not wiring channels in sight. It gave something to think about for a few moments, but I knew where it was.

Then I took a hand held roto-grinder (not sure what this thing is really called - kind of like a really powerful dremel tool) and ground out all the extra material. My first thought was to use a chisel to do this. The chisel works great on the walnut, but that maple and ebony is tough, so I reverted to the roto-grinder. I ran into the wiring channel and tested to make sure it was big enough to get the wires and the connectors through. Now the cavities look nice and clean:

And test fit the pickups:

I also got the string holes drilled, but I didn't take any pictures of that - this bass will have a through-body bridge - you feed the string through the back of the bass and through the bridge. Its supposed to have magical effects on the sustain of the bass, I just like the way it looks. I also took a little off the headstock (again no picture) and sanded down the whole body again - its really starting to come together. 

Next I have to put in the wood in to make the fretlines. I can go either dark or light here - someone warned me not to use light wood because it gets dirty and loses some its contrast. I think that might be ok. I'm leaning towards maple right now - I could use that anigre for a dark black line. I also found a piece of really yellow wood in my Father's shop, I tried a piece of that, but it just looks weird. There is this stuff called bloodwood that is dark red, that actually might look good as the fretboard has some reddish tones in it. I guess theoretically I could finish the rest of the bass before I put the fretlines in, but that's just procrastinating the decision, I'm not above that, but... 

Here's the maple, after looking at the picture, I think that's the way I'm going: