I've been having too much fun working on (and playing!) my new bass to update the blog...

It's since been torn down for more carving on the front and back and the neck, and installation of the preamp. I'm hoping I can carve off a pound or so, it's pretty heavy. It was around 13 pounds in this picture.

Here's the sides gluing on, I left some flat spots on the body lines for clamping. The gluing went pretty well, though there is a slightly visible glue line on the back on the leg and electronics side at the neck end.

Here's the routing template for the electronics cavity, I almost got away with using all straight guide pieces for the super-template but the curved area just wanted to be a curve...

Here's the subtemplate with bumps for the brass inserts and an offset for a lip all around the edge.

And the finished cavity:

Side rails and body

 I got the purpleheart side rails glued on, using 1/4" fluted dowels to keep them aligned. The dowels go through the rails and into the neck and protrude enough from the rails to also align the body sides.

The fret ends are looking nice in this picture as well!

Here I've traced the full-size body drawing onto the wings so they can be roughed out before getting glued on.

I've left flat areas at a few points to make clamping easier...

Before gluing the sides on I'll rout out the pickup cavities and a 1/8" recess for the bridge. The template for the surface routs is all ready to go. I did the layout in qcad and printed it, then used adhesive spray to stick it to plywood. The lines served as guides to align strips of plywood which I then screwed down for use as template ring guides - a template for the template. There's a 1/8" offset from the template to the cut line, so the template template is offset 1/4" from the eventual holes in the instrument's surface.

The template will be held to the surface of the bass with double-stick carpet tape, which is basically the best thing ever for holding flat things down without clamps.

This is starting to look like a bass!