French Bass full restoration

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Matthew Tucker

Yes well my instinct was to change that single brace to a more "italian" style of cross bracing. I was also wondering whether by doing so the "integrity" of the "french" bass would be compromised. But this is not a museum piece, has no makers label, and is being restored to play.

That's interesting what you say about the bandsawn linings - I was wondering how on earth you could BEND a 12mm strip around that sort of radius! I'm inclined to leave the other linings as they are, though ... I can't see much to be gained by lightening them.

Arnold the stop length is 570mm. What does that tell you?

The Stop length plus the neck length plus an inch tells the approximate string length which would come to about 41.5". The Neck from heel to nut would be about 18" for a D-neck heel.

The Linings should all be replaced. The larger linings inside stiffen the ribs and hinder vibration.

Label or no Label put a normal center Brace and a lower and upper brace as well. I think 3 braces are fine regardless of pedigree. My Mougenot has the same single brace and it's coming out and most likely just what I told you for braces. If you like, my bass will be done before this one and I can tell you what was done, if you like.

Ok? ok..

[Ken McKay]

Matthew, since you are on the other side of the planet you should have taken the back off first, oh well too late now.

Fine looking bass there! Good luck with her.

To carve the back brace out it shouldn't be to difficult. You might be able to get some controlled splitting and remove the big chunks first, then once down to a bit thinner, you can plane it or keep using a sharp thin headed gouge, finger planes and then wet the last slivers with a damp cloth to remove the splinters and clean the glue off.

[Craig Regan]

Looks like a nice project Matthew. Give it your best!

[Brian Gencarelli]

Looks like fun! Love the photo essay! Keep it coming- if you have the time, please!

BG

[Pino Cazzaniga]

Thank you for sharing, Matthew, nice instrument and a lot of work to face!
Did you measured the stop length from the end of the heel or from the upper edge of the front?

[Matthew Tucker]

Edge of the heel

[Matthew Tucker]

Here’s a summary of the ironwork I’ve removed from this patient to date:



I had a look to see if the tuners had any identifying marks, but nothing exciting to report. Some of the brass plates are worn at the bearings, but the brass cogs, spindles and the worm gears are perfectly fine. We’ll have to decide whether its worth getting the bearings rebuilt, rebushed or just get new tuners. I’m not a metalworker.



Here’s another bit of fun for later :-(



I started gluing some of the newer and cleaner cracks first, and cleaning up glueing edges.



My “in situ” lamp is very useful.



Here’s a horrible mess to clear up. Nails didn’t help at all.



Here’s a closeup of one of the crack edges. The wider part is where the crack sits just below the FFs and the thinner part - about 6-7mm - is the lower bout.
I have had to break the longer cracks right open in order to properly clean the gluing surfaces, which are contaminated with varnish and dust and goo. And what looks like read lead paint in places!



This is a dry run of the first big crack clamping setup. It gets tricky near the FFs where the wood has twisted under bridge pressure. It’s going to be interesting getting this to clamp up tightly.