We started with a basswood/purple heart body and engraved this damask skull pattern I created
Next step was rasping out the belly cut and fret access around the horn
Rasped areas cleaned up and smoothed with 150 grit sand paper
We decided to remove a bunch of weight so a ton of meat was removed from the back cavity. Now we can see where to carve our neck relief
Using a scrap piece of purple heart from the project, I created this gramil to cut the binding channel. From the forest comes the handle for the axe!!
Here, I'm scoring the binding channel before chiseling out
Binding has been pre heated and shaped to match the body to prevent any snapping, then taped down and glued with acetone. Acetone was preferred since it won't interfere with staining the body
Since this is a guitar themed after assassins, we've got to add some assassin stuff. Like a throwing knife!
To add some weaponry theme to the front we are going to surround the knobs and kill switch with a brass knuckle casting
Carefully cutting and filing out the slot for the throwing knife.
Here we're drilling out the maple headstock. I sandwiched it with purple heart as an inverse to the body and to get my full width
For the fretboard we opted for a dark rosewood that we'll try to ebonize with india ink. This is how they start....unradiused rough planks. We do a lot of sanding and planing by hand!
Next step is to cut the fretboard to match the neck. Everything is still pretty rough at this point
Here we use a special jig to add a 9.5" radius to the fretboard
After radiusing we mark the fretboard based on the desired scale length and cut fret slots before applying a matching side binding
Black stain was applied to the back and the John Wick Blood Oath Marker symbol was engraved on the upper horn
Here is the knife fitted in the slot. We plan on securing it with a set magnet
Sanding the chiseled nut slot out. If you're curious about the close placement to that first fret....this bass will have a zero fret! Super jumbo for zero and medium jumbo stainless for the rest of the fretboard