Back To The Ibanez

I haven't done much to the Ibanez bass since the fboard was sawn off a few months ago. The fboard itself was quite fragile, and the neck was quite warped. In fact the neck was so warped if it was thrown in the air, it would have probably come back again...

The top of the neck was planed straight again which removed a fair bit of material. The back was sanded to remove the mess left by acetone and old cracked paint. It is amazing how much wood isn't there! As the neck thins down near the headstock, the large 1/2" wide by 3/8" deep channel doesn't seem to have a great amount around it. It is only 15mm deep around the first fret. Blimey. It is not surprising that heads snap off on occasions...

Talking of snap off, the fboard did actually fall apart. The saw got a bit close at the 19th fret and was just held by a few hairy bits of rosewood and some finger lint. It didn't last long.

The back of the fboard had to be carefully sanded to remove the worst of the saw marks and to give a suitable surface for gluing. I had some walnut left over from my sandwich making a few weeks ago and managed to whittle it into a (slightly larger) similar shape. It was planed down from 6mm to around 3mm and then the large part of the fboard glued onto it.

The following day the last part of the fboard was also carefully glued into place now that the main part was unlikely to wander. Once dry, the walnut was then sanded back to the outline of the original fboard and the dot holes redrilled.

The next stage for this fboard is to receive some LEDs. These need to fit in the 3mm walnut zone and have clear acrylic dots covering them in the fboard before it can be reunited with the trussrod. 3mm should compensate for the sawing, sanding and planing that the neck has had to endure in order to sort out the original duff trussrod problem. Well, I hope so...