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.