paper (I am kidding, kinda)
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ahhh my bad - i did not even see those other clamps! that was a pre-coffee reply, please ignore my post 
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I made a lot of sawdust today…
After some time trying an electric hand plane, a router in a sketchy jig a friend was helping me with, the top surface was all kinds of jacked lol, but I had more material the needed to come off, so I went with the planer again and then used my orbital to smooth it all over and (mostly) remove tool marks, and pretty pleased with the results
I didn’t glue the top on yet because I am pretty tired after all this faffing about, and I’m not in a rush. This is absolutely not a “true” piece of wood (some of the boards on-end look like trapezoids lol) but all I wanted out of it was one flat surface and I more or less got that.
Next step is to actually glue the top wood on, draw and cut out the body shape, and make an unfinished body out of all these tree carcasses.
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Nice progress!! And mess to prove it! This is going to be interesting.
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if it wasn’t for the darkness of the 2nd board from the right, it almost looks like one solid piece.
(and that spot on the lower left where I f’ed up gluing XD)
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One little trick is to fixture the board on a flat piece of plywood to use as a base as you run it through the planer or drum sander. That way, you get one “true” side, that enables you to plane the remaining one, using the first as a reference/base.
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I’m hoping to find a 5-string neck, they seem a little trickier to find especially with blank paddle heads. As much as I want maple fretboard, I wouldn’t kick this out for a four string build…
I also found a 4-string 35" scale MIJ neck off some bass that I could use for a BEAD tuning…
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Well, I came across a cheap tool to steal the soul of sketchily copy my Schecter’s necks…
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I use these for tiling floors. They’re absolutely amazing.
For the neck… Well, if the contour gauge ends up not being ideal, you could always scan and print the contour 1:1 or scan it, then build it into a solid in a cad program, and then print out a routing template, like this one:
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FYI the darker wood normally comes from the centre of the tree or the heartwood (if it’s the same species of tree).
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I fit that role, but not so much for my specialty in engineering, more the other things in my life.
Don’t kid, that would be so cool.
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As promised the good folks at Thomman (who seem to contract with Santa Clause for 2 day delivery) came through and she arrived today. Yesterday morning at 9:20am German time she was still in Germany, and hit my stoop at 6:15 eastern. Insane.
Haven’t played it yet but at first glance it’s built just fine. Better look at it tomorrow and play it a bit while scheming the 2-string slide mods needed.
Ps. That pickguard has to go…what color?
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Actually I don’t hate the tortoiseshell there. That color at least is great in this case. If you replace it I would consider dark red.
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A Carbon Fibre wrap? Or a matt mid grey?
Like this?
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It’s a crazy, crazy world. I was just playing my Harley, she is a fine bass. If I gas anytime soon it will be for schnitzel and a bass. I don’t see how Thommann can do it.
Really interested in how she plays and what a two string sounds like
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Did she glue the top wood to the pressboard, too? Did the top wood slide around while clamping it all down? What does yellow pine or fir, Titebond, and epoxy resin sound like as a tonewood? 
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Inquiring minds want to know…
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Tomorrow I’ll remove it all and see what’s what. The next step is to cut out the body shape I have yet to actually draw in any form, then do one layer of epoxy resin to “seal/fill” the old weathered wood, then after that pour at least one more epoxy resin layer because I’m thinking it can/will “level” the top, so to speak, and iirc there is 4-5 days curing between layers; I don’t have the instructions handy…
Of course, then I have to maul it so it isn’t super glossy 
But then will I see the wood well? 
I also want to make sure whatever bridge I get has screws that are long enough to get into the meat of the fresh wood beneath the topwood, just in case. I’m sure it will all be plenty strong between all this glue and epoxy, but it can’t hurt to play it safe as I’ve never done anything like this before.
A standard “Fender shape” would be easiest… 
mainly for finding a ready-made neck. Or at least use a Fender neck pocket. Or, y’know, add that to to my list of “Shit Emily Doesn’t Know But Needs To Figure Out” 
Finding a 5-string and 35" scale neck seems even trickier
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Sounds like a lot of effort 
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I saw some posts about making a flat surface from a body blank. here is a router sled that I built for the purpose of removing a flat surface. here it is a Telecaster body that I’m converting to a Thinline.
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