George, unless you've been blessed with great vision beyond 40 (I haven't) you know it's the eyes that will give you the most problems staying outside the lines. When cutting that close to the line, I cut VERY slowly!

Pat, that's a very nice bass you built! It looks like it was one piece, not always easy to find. Thank you for the information and links you provided. It is all very helpful!

I bought JBE 4000 pickups from John. My SO and I heard a lot of different sounds produced by different pickups and it was a toss up between Fralin and Joe Barden. After discussions with John, we settled on the latter. We're going with Hipshot tailpiece and tuning machines in gold. It's tough to find gold hardware for the Ric bass. I ordered a wiring harness, mono jack, knobs and nut from Rickenbacker. The only thing I can't find is gold pickup covers. Pick of The Ricks shows them on their website but when you click on them to load into the cart, nothing happens. Rickenbacker is out of stock. If I can't find them, I'm thinking of making covers out of ebony.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I'll put access to the controls from the back. I have slices of the body I cut off in taking the 8/4 stock to 6/4 so I can pretty closely match the grain. The only way I wouldn't go that route is if I made a cover out of ebony, which is tempting me a lot lately. I'm just not sure what thickness I'd have to make it for it to work. Maybe I'd have to back it with sheet metal to keep it from splitting?

On another note - Woodcraft is having a 15% off everything you can fit in the bag sale today and I filled the bag, mostly with finishing products. One of the things I picked up is Behlen sanding sealer. I'm guessing I'll need it for the koa. I already tried mahogany-toned Behlen pore filler but it's pink and dries pink. If the sanding sealer alone doesn't fill the pores, I'll have to mix something up.