Post 21: Starting to think about the 12 Strings Bass

     I just ordered some black Bass Tuners, some black Guitar Tuners, a set of flat wound bass strings, two sets of flat wound guitar strings, and two soap bar humbucker pickups. I am pretty much out of large aluminum pieces, so I am going to go by the Metal SuperMarket to check prices and see what is available on their scrap pile at a discount. The length of the shortest string will determine the length of the neck. For the guitar to be playable, I need the shape of the neck to be similar to a regular wooden neck, not just be plain square or round aluminum tubing. An option might be two side by side round tubes with a wide flat piece on top for the fingerboard and another narrow one under to place the thumb. I tried different arrangements, then realized I actually had a piece of 2" aluminum pipe with thick 1/4 " thick walls and an outside diameter of about 2 3/8". Now, that's about what the neck is supposed to be at it's widest on most 12 strings basses, narrowing to a tad less than 2" at the nut. If I cut that tubing at a slant, it would be just about perfect. It could be filled with a half-round piece of wood to create the fingerboard.

    So I sliced the pipe lengthwise on the bandsaw, sanded it even, and cut a piece of padouk I am going to carve to fit inside:

     The carving was difficult, and I ended up wasting some wood, but I finally got it to fit well enough, and used plenty of epoxy to attach the wood to the aluminum. I camped it tightly overnight:

     Then, looking at some 12 strings bass on the internet, I ran into the image of a few brass adjustable bridge/tuner set up that doesn't use standard tuners with a knob, but something similar to what I did on that first "homemade guitar" I built when I was a kid using bicycle spokes as tuners.  This is even more basic actually, and I think I could design and make something similar that would look a little slicker...

   I went to the hardware store to look at socket screws and figured out I would need M3 Metric 3 mm screws, some long for the tuners, and some short ones for other adjustments and assembly. So I ordered an assortment of long ones and an assortment of short ones with nuts and wrench:

      

    I worked out the basic dimensions from the photograph above: