Throughout my senior project experience, I found myself returning to my initial question as well as my inspiration and intent for this project.  chose to build a bass using nonelectric tools for my senior project because it combined many of my passions. I started playing bass over 6 years ago and have been playing ever since. Music has always been a passion for me even before I started to play bass. Bass has let me interact with music and let my passion for music grow.  My love of playing bass eventually grew into a love of all instruments and how they were made. I started teaching myself instrument repair and researching luthiery over the past couple of years and already knew basic woodworking.  I wanted to build a bass without any electric tools because it forced me to slow down the process and not rush through it. I believed that doing all the work by hand would also create a personal connection that would be stronger than if I used electric tools. 

I first got interested in guitar repair and building after watching countless videos on youtube of luthiers making and repairing different instruments. Many of the techniques and stylistic choices I used on this bass were influenced by many of the instruments the luthiers I watched as well as the different basses I have played in the past. For the overall look of the bass, I was heavily inspired by Thinline Telecasters and hollow-body Gretsch guitars. I feel that the final product that I’ve built is just as much a piece of art as it is a functioning instrument. Throughout the process, I had to find a balance between form and function. During the initial planning stages, I had to do multiple revisions of my design trying to find this balance sacrificing certain design choices so it was both practical to play and to build with the tools I have limited myself to. I also needed to make sure that the features, designs, and materials that I wanted to use came together coherently and fit a similar feel and aesthetic. 

I tried to push both my technical and artistic skills during this project by pushing my technical skills to accomplish an aesthetic design choice. During this project, I wanted to greatly expand my skills with traditional woodworking tools, and definitely have. By limiting myself to nonelectric tools it forced me to learn how to be the most efficient with my technique, and also gave me hours and hours of practice using certain tools. 

By far the moments that have taught me the most were the challenges and mistakes I was confronted with along the way. Learning when to take a different approach to solve a problem or get the work done faster was key to being able to get all the work I needed to do done on time. I was constantly playing with different methods and tools to try to get the same job done, experimenting until I found the best way. I made mistakes constantly throughout the process which taught me how to be more precise and deliberate with the tools I had. The few big mistakes I made where I was convinced I ruined everything taught me how to work with what I have and come up with inventive solutions.