Part 7f - Refinements 5 - The headstock dilemma

What to do about the headstock? How to carve a headplate to match an already-existing headstock? (the headplate is the veneer-like facing on the headstock, for those not in the know about these things, including yours truly.) The easy steps in this process are to trace the headstock onto the headplate and rough-cut the headplate around the tracing. To do that, all I need to do is to remove the tuners, trace the headstock, and start sawing. The challenge happens after that, in boring the tuner holes. One way is to glue-tack the headplate to the headstock, and then bore the tuner holes through the headplate full-size, using the existing holes in the headstock as guides, and the 9/16" spade bit. A danger here is that if the bit goes wild, it can bore out the existing tuner holes in the headstock, so that the tuners will no longer fit. If this happens, it's Game Over for the neck. Another way would be to glue-tack the headplate, and drill guide holes through the headplate from inside the tuner holes. Then, use the Dremel tool to carve out the headplate holes to match the tuner holes in the headstock.

Part 7e - Refinements Pics

The new tailpiece. I've outlined the basic shape.


The bridge trench.


The greatly-relieved string angle between the tailpiece and bridge.


The neck, after shaping and rough sanding. Smoooooooth...


And lastly, the three-dollar endpin.

Part 7d - Refinements 4

After this week's play test, the fingerboard sounded like it would need less smooth-sanding than I originally thought. If I say so myself, not bad work with just a plane so far.

This afternoon, agonized over whether or not to stain the body and/or neck. I've decided that I'm going to stain the back of the body a red mahogany, and leave the quilted maple face natural. A real trick will be in the border work, between the back and front of the body. I have a plan for that too...

Tonight, sanded the neck down, smoothing out the rough shaping from last week. Also smooth-sanded the fingerboard.

Took the tuners off, and smooth-sanded the headstock. I ordered some birdseye maple headplate material, and so I'll be sanding the thickness of the headstock down by another 1/16" to 1/8". A nice plus is that along with the birdseye headplates (I got two), included in the sale is a fingerboard blank of the same material. Electric viola, anyone?

My motto on this is, if this project is going to fail, it will not have failed because I've not pushed the envelope far enough. Pictures tomorrow.

Part 7c - Refinements 3

This weekend's tweaks:

1. I did some shaping on the back of the neck, to round it, which turned out pretty well. The neck is pretty nicely rounded off all the way up to the butt, but it could stand a little tapering off at the headstock end.
2. Trimmed the fingerboard edges to meet the neck. Much nicer looking, and coupled with the neck shaping, improves playability greatly.
3. Made an endpin. I had ordered one from Zeta, and since they didn't know when they would get spares in stock, their Customer Service guy and I discussed ways to work around it. One way was to cut down one of those extenders that you get for paint rollers, and a rubber furniture foot (as in the feet that you see on crutches). So I did that, and after wrestling with the dilemma of "$99 to buy, $3 to make," I went with the $3 solution. Best three bucks I've spent so far.
   
4. I think I found the source of the buzzing on the F string. It appears to have been the string itself. When I took the F string off, and moved all the other strings down, and put on the high E string (from when I was in 6-string mode), the buzzing went almost completely away. There's still a little buzz, but I've isolated that to be in the nut, which isn't completely glued down. (I don't want to glue it securely, because I want to remove it when it comes time to finish the fingerboard.)

So, for the time being, this is going to be a 5-string cello with the range extended upward, instead of downward. I was really resistant to this idea, being a bassist, and therefore looking forward to a range extension downward into the bass range. After playing the E string, though, I must say that it has qualities of the harp and even the koto (to my ears) that I find intriguing.

Low notes? I've actually got plenty, between my fretless P-Bass (with an extender key on the E string that takes it down to a D), and my Stick (whose range extends to B below the E on a bass).

Part 7b - Refinements 2

Carved a new tailpiece, "carved" being a loose definition. Okay, I finally found my cross-cut saw and sawed off a piece of maple, drilled some holes, and fitted the new tailpiece behind the location of the old tailpiece.

The angle betweeen tailpiece and bridge is greatly relieved, and will be more so with some refinements.

Unfortunately, now I have to track down the source of a nasty buzz when I play the F string. I know (or at least I think I know) that the buzz is either in the bridge trench, or between the body and the new tailpiece, because it happens no matter where I fret notes.

So, this weekend will be spent doing detective work. No pictures yet, haven't had time.

Part 7a - Refinements 1

I need to carve a new tailpiece. The one that I've got now is too high for the bridge.

I've got some ideas, and should have a new one carved by the weekend, I hope.

Part 6 - The Patient Speaks

This weekend I carved a rosewood nut, carved the trench for the bridge, and bought a bow.

The nut needs some work, but the first pass turned out a serviceable piece for testing the rest of the instrument. The bridge trench brought the action down to a much more playable action.

And then the Patient spoke.

Right off the bat, I know I have more carving on the back of the neck. When I say "right off the bat", that's what the neck feels like. It's not rounded nearly enough, and it feels, like, well, a baseball bat.

The fingerboard has fewer problems than I thought it would, but I haven't brought the action down quite enough to know for sure. I need to deepen the grooves in the nut a little bit more, and perhaps use a slightly thinner piece of wood under the bridge. The action is currently about 1/4" at the end of the fingerboard, ideally I'd like that to be between 1/8" and 1/4", bearing in mind that bowing makes the strings vibrate much more than playing pizzacato. So, I will likely be playing with a slightly higher action than on my fretless P-Bass, but that's how the world works.

Up next: shaping the neck to round it off, deepen and fix the grooves in the nut, and more fingerboard testing, with and without the bow.

Pictures to follow.

Part 5b - a brief recap

I haven't updated the original steps in my project in some time. I'll do that now.

1. Settle on a design - DONE
   
2. Acquire the various parts for the body, neck, etc. - Done, except for the transducer bridge
   
3. Mark the neck design on the neck blank - DONE
4. Rough-cut the neck - DONE
5. Rough-cut the fingerboard blank to fit the neck - DONE
6. Do the fine carving and finishing on the neck
   
7. Cut the holes for the tuning machines, and fit them - DONE
8. Install the truss rod in the neck - DONE
9. Do the initial carving of the fingerboard, for the radius - DONE
10. Glue the fingerboard to the neck - DONE
11. Finish-sand the neck and fingerboard
12. With the neck attached to the body, take measurements for the bridge template - DONE
13. Cut a tailpiece template (if I can’t find a 5- or 6-string tailpiece that will work) - DONE
14. Cut a bridge template - DONE
15. String up the cello for a play-test - DONE
16. Assuming that the play-test works out, order the transducer bridge - should be done soon, within a week or two.
    
17. After the transducer bridge arrives, install it on the cello.
18. Install a preamp for the bridge. Most electric instruments of this nature have some sort of preamping, and I’m assuming that mine will be no exception - I doubt that this will happen, or if it does, the cello probably will not have the same type of preamping as found on, say, an electric bass guitar.
    
19. Final play-test.
20. Assuming the final play-test works out, disassemble the cello for final sanding and finishing.
21. Final sanding of the neck and body.
22. Finishing of the neck.
23. Finishing of the fingerboard.
24. Finishing of the body.
25. Reassembly.
26. Done!

Part 5a - Bridge, Tailpiece, Play Test

Another big step forward. A lot of HSMs occurred this weekend.

First, I carved the bridge template and rough-cut the tailpiece yesterday. The bridge template took longer than I thought it would, since I was carving a 1x2 maple block down to a piece that's about 3/8" thick, and 1-3/8" tall. Lots of sawdust everywhere, as you might expect.



The tailpiece was rough-carved from a 2x2 piece of red oak. I chose red oak because I couldn't put my hands on a piece of maple of the same size. Again, lots of sawdust, and lots of noise. The holes for the strings didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, note the angle of the lower string, as it passes through the bridge, and then tilts up to the bridge. During finish-carving, I want to even that out. I'll probably turn the hole into a slot to relieve that pressure. That's the kind of pressure that snaps a string off, usually in the middle of a performance or recording session.



I want to take a moment here to thank, profusely, my better half, the inestimable Mrs. Jimbug, for putting up with all the sawdust, and especially the noise. Imagine having a dentist's drill in your mouth, and a mosquito buzzing in your ear. Off and on, for a month. Picture that, and you have the sound of a Dremel tool carving maple, mahogany and rosewood.

Still, I am pleased with the results so far. I strung it up, and did the first play-test.



The objective of this first test was to find out how the tailpiece and the neck would react to the stresses of 5 strings under tension. The neck held up beautifully, and is straight as an arrow (thanks to that steel truss rod). The tailpiece lifted slightly under the pressure, but I'm going to add two screws to the three that are currently holding it down.



As you can see from the picture above, the action is still way too high to play-test the fingerboard. I'm planning to carve out a trench for the bridge to help with this. This trench will do two things, first, provide some stability for the bridge, and second, lower the action to play-test the fingerboard (and generally play the instrument, now that I think of it). The trench will also hold the adjustment system that I'm planning to cobble together, er, use. You didn't think I'd go all this way and not have an adjustable bridge, did you?