Preliminary work is now complete and the top surface is machined flat ready to accept the fingerboard. CAD cutting files have been sent off and the templates should be here in a few days.

The tuner holes are punched through and at this point the head stock is almost complete. The face needs glueing down and an inset cut into the back for the tuner plates. I see so many broken headstocks in the workshop for repair here I always do my best to engineer the weak point at the truss rod adjuster slot is as strong as possible. This hopefully avoids any of mine suffering decapitation.

The neck headstock angle of 11deg is shallower than the big G and I have two veneer plates on the rear plus the ebony plate on top. These plates make it very tough at its weakest point the truss rod adjuster slot. I also use a volute to strengthen things up even more. Not suggesting it cant break but it will need a much stronger whack than any gibson or epiphone before it will fail.

I've seen a headstock break from the case falling from standing on its edge to flat on the floor. The way Gibson designed it is about as weak as it can be and I guess they reckon to sell more guitars that way.

The glue up and the build phase of this neck is almost complete. Next job is to taper the fingerboard and add the side markers. Then comes installing the frets and it is ready to be installed into the body.

A few calculations and measurements need to done to obtain the correct angle of the mortise in the body and once thats done I can cut it and glue the neck in place.

This blog acts both as a log for the owner of the guitar but also a record of methods of construction which I refer to. There are blokes out on the internet looking for these types of resources and mine are freely available to any one.

The workflow and methods are constantly being refined whith each build as new and easier [hopefully] methods are added into practice. Sometimes ideas don't work but they often do. Here I'll post up the current fingerboard glue up routine which is a crtical process and one I have in the past experiemced a problem or two with. This time new procedures were successfully used and I'll note them here.

ensure neck top glue area freshly sanded and level
lightly sand glue surface fingerboard
drill pin holes 3 locations 1st 9th and 3rd back from end [use a 1" brad as a drill and pin]
line up center lines
clamp fingerboard in positionwith using long caul in center
tap steel pins well in either end 1st and 3rd back from fingerboard end
clamp both ends short cauls and remove long caul
tap in center pin [9th]
Remove cauls
remove finger board with pins still in
ensure pins are into neck far enough
do a test test fit ensure you can locate holes and everything lines up center
apply glue
fit fingerboard on and tap all pins home
cut off center pin flush and drive just below fingerboard surface
long caul clamped down with 3 clamps
pull both pins either end [I did it this way so only one pin to deal with afterwards
if your chicken cut and tap in both end pins just below surface
clamp down end cauls clean up ends squeeze out
Check for center - easier to pull it off now than after the glue goes off
add extra clamps final clean up

Frets trimmed, filed flush and bevelled. Edges of the finger board have been lightly rolled. I am thinking ill do the level, crown, polish and detail after the carve and before its glued into the body. Hate having to mess with frets after the finish is done. Last build everything was done including setup and nut etc before I applied finish. Once the finishing was done I just clicked everything together and after a few tweaks it was ready to roar.

I've decided to carve before glueing in thiis time and its just a matter of building a long overdue carving jig which will take an hour or two and that will make things go a lot easier than carving it in the body or for that matter clamped to the bench with frets in like I usually do with bolt on style necks.

Each build the workflow goes a little differently and it is a constant search for the easiest method which I find is usually the most successfull method.

Pretty much time to pull this out of the jig and move on. I'll go over it with finer paper and refine the curves a little more but at this point the main job is done and its time to move on.

The build is almost done and it wont be very long and I'll have that neck glued in and doing a dry run with set up before I get into prepping for the finishing phase of the job.

Out of the jig and a couple of hours refining things and it is pretty much ready for the next phase. It is finished at this point although there will be the odd lump and bump spotted over the next week which will be fine tuned as I go.

The biggest part of the job is in the neck and it soaks up at least 80% of a solid body build I reckon. Had a mishap with the truss rod on this job and the fingerboard had to come off which lost me some time. Luckily I was able to obtain one of Mark Blanchards excellent truss rods locally in a big hurry to replace the broken one. First time I've used one of his and it will not be the last. A most excellent piece of work.

Finally the solution to a problem that has been bugging me from the start of the neck build. The chosen tuners have short shafts and designed for a different style of headstock. Tried some Grover keystones which had a longer shaft but they looked crap. I devised the idea of a tight 2mm rebate that drops the tuner plate just enough to give me the the right height on the face and puts the plate flush with the back of the headstock. Took a deal of fiddling getting the cutting file right and a lot longer than the actual job itself.

Looks neat.