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Yesterday I hired a router from a local tool hire place, and this morning i spent some time reading up and watching YouTube tutorials. After getting an idea of how to work (feeding the woods in from the router’s Left at all times) and putting on my goggles and earplugs, I practiced on the scrap pieces first:

I went around the whole bass in a few passes, getting deeper each time, and ended up going out to buy a bigger roundover big- the ones I had were all too small and might look ok on a Tele but were not smooth enough for a Jazz bass.

After a few hours I had this:

-pretty happy with most of it, except a few spots on the horns where I didn’t keep the router level:

I used a belt sander, surform rasps and 80grit sandpaper to shape out the arm and tummy contours, and sanded out the gouges on the horn and generally blended the shape.

Tomorrow I’ll drill all the cavity links, drill the neckplate and position the bridge, before spending the next week or so working on the finish- sanding to 220 or 300 grit, then doing Danish Oil over the course of a couple of days before I can out everything together. I also need to cut control cavity covers and drill for the pot and jack positions

damnn, looking good - waiting in anticipation for the danish oil coats!

    a month later

    Body has been sanded, oiled, and the pot, pickup and jack holes drilled- hanging up for the night- neck, neck plate and bridge to be done in the morning- with a bit of luck I might be able to play it tomorrow!

    That looks awesome! Love the fretless fingerboard into the raw wood.

      That is shweet..
      Well done.. hope it brings you years of joy

        a month later
        10 days later

        RodneyVikens
        thanks! I'm trying to sort out an electronics problem (lots of hissing, popping and dropouts) that makes it pretty unpleasant to play plugged in at the moment- looking forward to being able to record it.

            16 days later

            So I heard from my local guitar tech today that he has re-wired the bass and solved the earthing problem, so I’ll be picking it up from him tomorrow morning, audio clips to follow this weekend ?

            Tuckstir
            Pretty good, thanks- it has great sustain, I think partly because the neck is quite thick, and partly because the neck joint is a tight fit.

            It's pretty comfortable to play but I noticed that I was working quite hard to 'fret' the strings- it could probably do with having the action lowered now that it's working. I brought it to rehearsal on Sunday afternoon and ended up playing it in the service, so it has been a fairly natural transition - I think keeping the same body shape and scale length as my fretted bass might have helped

              peterleroux please excuse the intonation:

              No need to, you're fairly good already! Lots of fretless goodness in them slides ? Some big low end too, very nice!

                peterleroux nice to hear it! It almost sound like the sound has been reversed (beginning of recording) or a reverse sound effect has been applied. Is that just the sliding? Very interesting sound indeed.....

                  RodneyVikens Hi, thanks! One of the things about fretless is that the note attack isn't as sudden as a fretted instrument- the notes 'bloom' rather than 'jumping' in, so they sound a little bit like they are reversed or have some kind of effect on them.