now that i am done with my MFA i am of course noodling with building a bass. came across this really excellent series of 3 videos from tchicks guitars - an amateur Belgian guitar maker. this series is really clear and helps you understand all the steps and all the tools you need. he is focusing on guitar but 99.9% applies to bass:
Hey Mitch, one inexpensive way to get started on this process could be to build a kit bass.
You get to work on your soldering etc and if you wish you can learn to spray the body from a can like I did on my cheap short scale.
You can also modify the kit by swapping in higher quality components.
If you want to learn to paint, apply a water slide decal to the headstock etc this is one of the best tutorials
for sure! kits are an excellent way to go for a beginner, but at least in my case i do have the skills (and most of the tools) to do this from raw wood which for me would be way more satisfying (and difficult).
Cool. It’s just that if you don’t do it for a living there are always little things that’ll trip you up along the way.
But that’s how you learn, by screwing things up.
I trust you’re doing it during university time 
I love your style. @mgoldst You and @Barney probably made more mistakes than what many our collective knowledge about wood combine, lol.
I’ll watch those vids.
I 'd like to do one from scratch but don’t think I could right now.
I did turn this:
into this:
I was considering this bigger CNC but settled on a smaller one. If/ when I’m comfortable with the CAD/CAM software.
A few weeks back, I was wondering how would one go about making an beautiful instrument that is functional. I decided to let chatgpt provide a few answers 
Heres some of the more interesting ones it kicked back.
Like much AI art, some of those are hideous nightmare fuel, but unlike a lot of AI art, these are nightmare fuel in a good way
That last one in kinda cool
