the Art of James Möbius at MöbiusBandwidth.com

Möbius art Studios 3-D works

I sometimes work in 3-D. I have designed and built musical instruments, furniture, and all sorts of things. Anything I need I tend to make myself rather than buy whenever possible, if not always practical. Since I made a new luthiery page, I'll be clearing the musical instruments off this page as soon as I get photos of some of my other 3D works.

I always wanted a 'Space-Ace' costume, having one made for me would'be been expensive I'm sure, so I made my own. Never made anything quite like it before, I just figured it out on my own. The entire thing was made by hand and won 2 awards at Noreascon, the world sci fi convention in Boston. The boots are made from bedroom slippers, wood, denim, foam and silver fabric with velcro closures. Each one weighs 5 Lbs. I have to walk very carefully in them. Costume originally designed by Ace Frehley. My friend Deb helped with a little of the sewing.

     This is a Bouzouki I built, a traditional Greek folk instrument, favoured for the last few decades by Celtic musicians as well. I have to remake the saddle. I used rather non-orthodox luthiery techniques, I was after a natty "rubber bands on a cigar box" sort of tone, and I achieved that. The body of a Bouzouki is normally tear drop shaped, but I designed my own, including the moon and star sound holes, because that's how I roll. The neck on this instrument was originally a guitar neck which I think came off a cheap guitar someone gave me, my only expense was buying 8 tuning pegs. the rest was made of recycled and leftover wood.

click thumbnail size pics to view larger images

This is a 3 stringed fretless guitar, which I like to call a Cellolaika, it's sort of like a cello, it's bowed, with a very rounded radius to the fingerboard, but has 3 strings like a Balalaika. It was a guitar, modified by Scott Dakota, I built a new bridge support for it with a clover motif, out of a hunk of maple, the original one was lego, which worked but I thought this might have a better tone and offered to mill it for the instrument's owner, Sharynne NicMhacha.

This is a project I'm working on now, (2/11) I call it the Bat Bass. I bought a used Memphis 4 string bass in a thrift store in JP for $60, it only had 2 strings on it, but I am going to make it into a Mark Sandman-style 2 string slide bass anyway.
     First I took off the bridge and neck, then I ripped out the frets, the strings will never touch them again, but I didn't want them shortening the life of my table saw blade (worth more than the bass by $10), as I then ripped the neck down by half an inch of width, then shaped and sanded the back of the neck. I then chopped the bridge down on my metal saw and shaped it with a grinding wheel. In the picture after that you can see the blueprint for the new body, super Goth-tastic bat design I came up with, the original Fender Precision bass shaped body, which is made of plywood, is pretty useless, so it is now decorating my shop. I like having musical instrument parts hanging in my shop. Better than throwing it in a landfill I think. It might seem cruel to do this to an old bass, but it really was junky. The neck was decent, actual maple, not exactly cup-center line cut, but good enough. I eyeballed it in the shop to see if it was warped or bowed, but later realised it wouldn't matter if it was bowed since the strings will never actually touch the fingerboard again. It will be played with a brass slide, like a lap pedal steel guitar. Buying a neck blank would have been more expensive, and making one is far too time consuming, I know how to do it, but I really don't have the time so I prefer recycling necks.
    Stay tuned for updates as I will be photographing this project at all phases. Up next, I have to buy some wood! and a pick-up.

Click this image to see my new Luthiery page with updates on this project.

Tattoo Portraiture Illustration Murals Paintings Digital photo-manipulations Luthiery 3-D works Sequential art Sketchbook Photography