H's JBA-4 Fretless

[UpperCaseH]

My plan was to install the stock pickups then maybe upgrade later depending on how they sounded.

BUT installing the pickups is a long way off yet so who knows? Maybe I'll decide to get some new ones. I'm going to keep an eye on second-hand sites for pickups for this and the tele.

[UpperCaseH]

Body sanded to 320 ready for staining. Head all shaped and sanded. Just waiting for the Dingotone to arrive now!

[stan]

yeah, nice, this will looks awesome

[Zandit75]

Looking great H!!

[UpperCaseH]

I ordered a 12" radius block I found cheapish on ebay and I'm gonna make sure everything's super smooth before I start the finishing.

Got this done today. Doesn't look any different, but feels smoother.

I'm not sure it actually started with a 12" radius, but it's got one now, so hopefully that works out well.

Tomorrow arvo I'll probably get a chance to start the CA finish. That's making me a bit nervous, but so far on this and the tele my experience is that you'd pretty much have to be trying to make an unrecoverable mistake, so I'm sure I'll manage.

I'm planning to mask the neck completely, and make a tape "dam" to stop the glue running off the top of the fingerboard. Plan is to keep the CA finish just on the face of the fingerboard, and then finish the fingerboard sides in a neck clear coat or even just wax or oil. I sort of want to CA the sides too, but I can't think of a good way to actually do it.

[wazkelly]

CA on the edges of the FB is hard to do as the stuff is so watery and will easily run all over the place. On mine I masked off the line where rosewood meets maple and didn't even need to try and coat the edges as that sort of happened in one way or another. When sanding back and doing final polish I was more worried about the face of the FB as the edges were always going to be waxed after doing the whole of the back of the neck with 0000 steel wool to give it a very slippery satin finish. The wax was only used to seal those rosewood edges.

[UpperCaseH]

CA on the edges of the FB is hard to do as the stuff is so watery and will easily run all over the place. On mine I masked off the line where rosewood meets maple and didn't even need to try and coat the edges as that sort of happened in one way or another.

That sounds like a better idea, I'm gonna do it that way instead


Edit: Working like a charm. Didn't really "run everywhere", but it wasn't that easy to get it to stay in the center of the fretboard. Pic's from about half way through the process, I had to keep going back and adding a little more here and there as suface tension broke and it ran from the center or made holes. but it wasn't the hardest thing to do and it's looking pretty great.

Whoever said "ventilated area"... I'd go a step further and say "do it outside". I did it outside, leaning over the neck. Just before the pic was taken I realised my eyes were starting to sting a little, so I did the rest of the job at arm's length with a bandana over my nose and mouth. It doesn't really smell strong, but it's obviously nasty stuff.

[UpperCaseH]

Haha, I messed up pretty bad.

I clearly put way way too much glue on the fretboard. It was still not dry or even close to dry after an hour and a half - still moving slightly when I'd tilt the neck slightly. "No problem, I'll just scrape the excess away while it's wet". Nope, because it's semi-dried into a weird gel that makes a huge messy problem when you touch it. Obviously.

Guess I'll wait for this stippled/rippled/bumpy mess to go solid and then get sanding while repeating "why am I an idiot" over and over again.

[wokkaboy]

bummer H, that neck was looking sweet as in the pic above. If it was a thick coat of glue I would have left it at least 24 hours to fully cure. Hope you learnt your lesson !

[UpperCaseH]

"Don't touch it, it's still wet!"

-My dad, circa early 80s, teaching little me the very first DIY lesson I ever got. Apparently I didn't listen then, and obviously nothing's changed.