French Bass full restoration

[Thomas Erickson]

Nice - thanks for keeping us posted.

That's a beastly looking chisel!

[Matthew Tucker]

The chisel is the one I use for mortising a neck block, and I like its weight and the fact that it holds a razor edge really well. Not sure it's perfect for the job though - I'd be interested to see what other luthiers use for this task. I have a feeling that a paring chisel with a short wide blade would be even better.

[Thomas Erickson]

Personally I think a long, well balanced paring chisel would probably be choice; but like most things whatever is comfortable and sharp is going to work best, even if it isn't by the textbook...

[Matthew Tucker]

Back to purfling repairs. Here are the main tools I use:



The job is exceedingly tedious and performed under a powerful magnifier; the original purfling is very brittle and has to be cut back to a suitable point, then the new beesting is cut following the original purfling lines ... and guessing a bit too.



This is the first one I did, and I changed the way I do the scarf joints after this one. But it's OK.





This is more like dentistry than luthiery!

It is difficult to match the edges of the purfling invisibly, even using a scarf joint. In this next corner I decided to make the joint in the purfling coincide with the grain lines; one is almost a butt, the other is a longish scarf.




I think, under varnish, all these repairs will be virtually invisible.

Ah the varnish. How the hell am I going to save the varnish? That's another problem.

[AndrewHamilton]

I've been following closely to your project. I think after all this work anyone would be lucky to have this instrument... Looks beautiful.

[Matthew Tucker]

Its been a bit slow progress on this bass, as I've had a bunch of repair work on lately. However, the cleating is now finished and I've started to fit the bar.