Building necks Part 2
 
In this blog will go through further aspects of neck building. These are my methods and work for me, hopefully you can get a little something out of it to help your own project along. The tools and resources available in your workshop will determine how you build your own neck. These methods have been gleaned from many different sites plus more than a few developed here by the empirical try and fail or succeed method.

This is a shortscale tele neck made from local quarter sawn ash with a Cooktown ironwood fingerboard. I have showna few pics of processes not shown on necks 1 page.
 
 
After cutting the truss rod slot a plug is glued into the end of the slot and and the adjustment port is cut. The end of the slot needs to be widened slightly to allow a large enough plug to be fitted. Dont expect the adjuster to to be perfectly in line. You may find it is a little off line requiring a larger hole to be cut so that it rotates without binding.
 
 
The jig I use for this job
 
 
Fingerboard slotting set up. I use the stewmac slotting blade and set it up as above. The use of the square ensures the slots are correctly cut at aright angle to the board. The fingerboard [unradiused] sits at the back of the saw with the stewmac template stuck to it with double sided carpet tape. nce the fence is squared with the blade the slot depth is set and the board simlpy ran through the blade in forward direction for each click. I dont brag it back across the spinning blade or cut the next slot dragging the board backwards.
 
 
Here is the neck with the headstock cut with the transition curve, fingerboard glued down and slotted.
 
 
Time for the back carve. I have marked a center line and the curves into both headstock and heel. At this stage you better know how much wood you can carve away before the truss rod peeps out of the back of the neck. When that happens it is time to start over from scratch.
 
 
probably a good time to get the markers in. i used knitting needles for this build.
 
 
You will be trying real hard to get these inline as much as possible.
 
 
i use a little japanese flush cut saw to nip these off.
 
 
Start by cutting trench to almost the finished thickness of the neck. Leave a bit for tweaking the shape and for finish sanding.
 
 
It is really just a matter of hacking whatever doesn't look like a neck away. I use a combination of spokeshaves, rasps, files and grades of sandpaper from as coarse as 40 grit.
 
 
takes a bit to get those transitional curves right at the headstock and heel.
 
 
Finally it all comes good. The final part should be done over a couple of days. When you reckon it's right leave and go back the next day with fresh eyes and check the lines and feel for lumps and bumps.
 
 
finally the fingerboard radius is cut. i like to do this last for a couple of reasons. The unradiused fingerboard is easy to clamp down tight so you can have a decent whack at the back. Also the fingerboard may develop a slight bow after the carve. This is easily taken out in the radiusing process. I swear I am going to build a router driven radiusing jig after doing a couple of these ironwood boards. They are as hard as the hobs of hell.
 
 
There she is bolted onto the body that was sent down from sydney to have its new neck built and fitted.
 
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