Gary has been working on splitting a massive section of a 140 year-old maple to be cut into quartersawn wooden billets and eventually used as book matched bass backs. In this video, Gary explains the first steps in the bass-making process,
starting with the tree!

You were probably taught as a child to count the rings on a tree to tell its age, but as luthiers, we pay attention to the rings for other reasons too. When cutting into a log like this, we cut into the rings at a 90 degree angle, which creates quartersawn wood.

As each wooden billet is cut from the log, great care is taken to match the pieces into sets. Book-matching uses two side by side pieces that share a common ground. Each piece in the set is a near mirror image, and they are joined together in the middle to create the natural symmetry that you find on the bass top or back.

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As one of the only true double bass workshops remaining in the USA, we take our work very seriously. Did you know that EVERY wooden part of every bass we build is handmade by Upton Bass luthiers in our workshop?

We carve our own tops and backs from the same types of booksets that you see in "From Tree to Bass." We hand carve our own necks and blocks, and even press our own plywoods from single veneers.  UB instruments are made from our own private holdings of tone woods which we have selected from around the world. At any given time, Upton Bass String has quantities of tone woods that would allow for the making of over two thousand instruments. This stock has been built over many years, and we continue to procure both green and lofted lots that meet our rigorous quality standards. And hopefully in the future, we'll have a few tone wood offerings of our own too.

The UB workshop is a like a dream-world for bass lovers. Come see for yourself, and you will quickly appreciate the quality of work and passion we invest in EVERY double bass we make.

Read on at UptonBass.com...