First and foremost, the wenge splinter has now left the building. It took two weeks to work its way out! I managed to oik 2-3mm out not long after it had happened, but the remainder was stuck in too deep. The last 4mm came out today (during dinner, what good taste). I now have a hole in the side of my finger, but I am sure it will sort itself out given enough time and cups of tea...
The F wordFretboard, fingerboard, I am sure they are the same thing - unless you're making a fretless ;-). The f-board started out as a sawn plank of ebony around 3/8" thick. It needed to be thinned down to around 5-6mm so out came the trusty plane again.
Planing the edges was no problem, but the top and bottom surfaces were not so easy. It could be because the wood is wider than the plane blade and so it starts to tear at the edges. I spent some time resharpening the plane, but it still caught and gouged out nasty holes here and there.
I eventually trimmed the width down to around 1mm over the finished size and it is now mostly flat. I was impressed with the feel of the wood, it doesn't have flakey fibrous bits hanging out of the end grain - it almost seems like a plastic and can be finished off very neatly.
Planing the edges was no problem, but the top and bottom surfaces were not so easy. It could be because the wood is wider than the plane blade and so it starts to tear at the edges. I spent some time resharpening the plane, but it still caught and gouged out nasty holes here and there.
Once it was close enough to the finished thickness I carried on with sandpaper around a block. This covered up most of the plane incidents like a spokesman for the aviation authorities.
The biggest problem with the fboard is getting it flat. I must use the plane awkwardly as the smooth board was straight along each edge, but had a definite twist along its length and would not sit flat on a surface. I had not planned on making a torzal twist bass!
I had to selectively plane and sand more material off in places to achieve reasonable flatness (not perfect, but close enough for jazz...) and hope that when it is finally stuck on the neck it will all come out alright.
I eventually trimmed the width down to around 1mm over the finished size and it is now mostly flat. I was impressed with the feel of the wood, it doesn't have flakey fibrous bits hanging out of the end grain - it almost seems like a plastic and can be finished off very neatly.
Another fancy of mine is that I don't want fboard dots. I like them on the edge (so I can see them), but I don't want them on the fret surface. I quite like triangles & squares, but not dots. Everybody has dots. Dots are everywhere. I suppose a 12th fret marker would be nice, but not a dot. Not two dots either. Don't even think about colons:
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