ADFinlayson

Some modest progress on the tele neck. My first effort with the fretboard was a failure - I started off trying to route the little recess of the wheel and I also to it down to final taper. The routing process went badly, the template slipped and I took a hair more off that I wanted to. I went with it anyway and stuck it on using a couple of locator blocks superglued on to the side of the neck (as pictured). This method actually worked really well, except for the fact that it was executed by a cretin - I didn't realise the clamps weren't properly tight when I knocked the blocks off, so when I did tighten them, I got slippage that I wasn't able to correct, so I pulled the board off before it was too late and walked away - If I hadn't I probably would have thrown it at the wall. Take 2... This time I started with a fresh fretboard blank at correct thickness, use a router to cut a perfect square end, then I marked my cut lines and just did the recess cuts with my new inlay saw. Much better results and kicking myself for using a power tool for a job that I can to perfectly well with a hand tool. This time I tapped in a couple of 1mm pin nails to the neck blank, snipped them off just proud and used them as locator pins pressed into the fretboard, clamped down to make sure then glued - something I haven't done since my very first neck build. This was a much more successful glue up. Trimming the fretboard flush was not as straight forward as my usual builds given that the fretboard overhangs by about 15mm. So I used the flush trim bit to get close then a hand plane to get the very end of the board true with the rest of it. Then the most tricky part was the binding channel. - I cut the fretboard 1.5mm shorter than the end of the truss rod wheel to stick binding onto the end, so that was easy. But I hat to rebate as much as I could with the guide, then I carefully took the rest of with a sharp chisel. Now I need to figure out if I am going to cut the round section off the nut end and cut extra thick binding to cover the nut/headstock join, or if I'm going to try and bend the binding. Currently I am leaning towards the latter, might look a bit swankier and I've got plenty of walnut to try with in case I mess up. Fortunately all is not lost with the dead fretboard, It will be ok for a 22 fret gibson/prs style build as long as it has a bound fretboard. I now have the tuners and bridge in my position so I can get the tuner holes drilled and get rid of the excess thickness from the headstock. Then it's on to inlay which knowing me, I'll put off for a few months while I work on something else.

I live on the wrong side of the pond

That purple on the body looks fantastic, it will look nuts with a gloss clearcoat over it. Nicely done. Have you had any issues with the stain soaking into the edge binding? I used to scrape the edge after sealing with a razor blade, but lately I've found the best results come from letting the stain fully dry then sanding over the edge with 150 grit, that gives a nice definite line between the maple stain and the edge.

Getting glue on the truss rod isn't what I'm concerned about, clearance of the fretboard over the truss rod wheel preventing the fretboard glueing down properly is the main concern, that's why I'm contemplating pre cutting that part of the fretboard

I don't think you're miss-understanding the problem, I'm leaning towards cutting the slot for the wheel prior to sticking the fretboard on - the top of the wheel is about flush with the top of the neck so I don't want it to get in the way of the glue up. I think I need to sleep on it.

Glad to hear he's bought a decent bridge, they're pricey enough Yes the true to the original comments were sporadic and conflicting in places. There was talk of a scratch plate at one point, but I pulled rank - scratch plate over the walnut would be sacrilege IMO. I went out to the garage this evening to trim the skunk stripe flush. One thing left to another and the neck is shaped and ready for a fretboard and tuner holes. As you can see, I made a decision on which truss rod to use. You can probably see that I had a little wobble with the fence while routing the truss rod channel, fortunately it happened during the first pass so only about 1mm deep, even more fortunately this didn't happen while routing the skunk stripe, or it would have been new neck blank time. Skunk stripe came out really well, couldn't be happier with it. Though I am planning to use a plug cutter to make a little walnut down to drill and glue into the heel end of the stripe to tidy up the the little filler piece I tapped in. It should look like a faux truss rod anchor plug to go with my faux skunk stripe Routing the headstock shape was pretty scary, in fact I used the bobbin sander first to get it to a hair from the final shape before touching it with the router. and I didn't route the very bottom of heel either, I just shaped that with the bobbin sander to avoid tear out. Need to figure out how I'm going to do the fretboard/binding etc now as the truss rod wheel is going to make things awkward. I don't really want to slot/shape the fretboard prior to glueing because I don't have a visible centre line at the heel end like I do on my PRS style builds. But I think I'm probably going to have to get it at least cut to the correct length with the little truss rod recess cut prior to glueing. Any advice in that department would greatly appreciated.

I guess it's duluxe of sorts, he's having a fender wide range neck pickup. Then the bridge is going to have a seymour duncan hotrail with a pushpull coil split which will be mounted into a Babics bridge, I've never heard of them before but it looks pretty cool, shame about the logo though. So I'll be using the neck pocket and the bridge pickup route from the tele templates, but I'll place the humbucker route to suit once the neck is made using one of my other templates. I won't have the bridge in my hands until Sunday so I'm not sure if I need to do anything regarding break angle yet or what to do about neck pocket depth. It's not having a scratch plate so I'm conscious that fretboard sitting high above the body might look a bit weird. My method was pretty similar, I put a few facets in with a sharp chisel then used a file to round it over until it looked correct. I starting off trying to shape it on the spindle sander, but it turned out too brutal for that job.

Done a bit of work on the Tele neck: It's been flattened and I've drawn a load of lines on it.. I cut an offcut from the body on the bandsaw to about 8mm then sanded it down to 1/4" then I used a 1/4" router bit and fence to to route a channel all the way through the neck blank.. This is very much a faux skunk stripe, for decoration only. Matt originally wanted 2 walnut contrast stripes going all up the neck, but I said he would have them visible in the headstock and I wouldnt be able to use the body walnut because it wasn't long enough. But he was also talking a fair bit about keeping as much as possible true to the original guitar, so I suggested a skunk stripe. I cut it just slightly under the length of the channel thinking it would be a PITA to get both ends perfectly with a 1/4" radius on each end. It was a PITA to get one end perfectly at 1/4" radius The fit was so that I could push it in with my fingers, which I was concerned might not be tight enough, but when I glued the sides, I had to tap it through with a hammer, so I'm not too concerned about fit now. I also cut another small square of walnut, glued and tapped it in at the other end and it worked to push the main piece right to the end of the channel at the nut end which will hopefully result in a neat glue joint. We'll see though because I'm making this all up as I go along The joint doesn't look perfect from the front, but I'm not too worried about that as it looks spot on from the back which is where it will be visible. BTW, this is a right-handed neck and will have a reverse strat headstock - just incase there is any confusion over which side is which... Once it's dry and Ive trimmed it all back down, the plan is to route the truss rod channel through the skunk stripe. But I am still undecided upon whether I'm going to do a wheel rod with the adjust must at the bottom or use a standard truss rod with the adjustment at the nut. A wheel will look neater I think, but he want's 22 frets so there is some more complexity around fretboard overhang, the wheel going parsed the back of the neck pocket, butting it all up nicely to the neck humbucker ring, and he want's walnut binding.

The walnut is already split bud, look at the posts on page 1. Also I think you might be looking at the walnut blank above in the pile, the body in question are the 2 pieces below it and they're pretty much quarter sawn by the look of the endgrain. That walnut blank above is earmarked for a suhr modern carve style guitar which I'll be starting later in the year. It's going to have a carved maple top so I'm not planning to split it but it will need to be thicknessed down to about 30mm. The only thing I will need to consider with that in terms of stability - is whether to take material from the convex side of the grain pattern or the concave side.

not sure bud, his latest couple of videos go in quite some detail into the trials and tribulations of carving necks with CNC. It seems to be one of the hardest parts of guitar making with CNC. I am no expert though. Members like @MiKro will hopefully chime in and share some knowledge for you.

I've been watching Two Cherries on youtube, he's an acoustic, violin etc maker and does a lot with CNC and he talks a lot about the CNC process, some very useful info in his videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCudSjpTvNt2KN5jVRmhKAGA

Looks more like a work of art to me bud.

The bed of the drum sander is just about wide enough to get a double cut/strat style body through sideways so no need for a sled of any kind, I haven't yet made an adjustable angled router sled yet anyway because I avoided using a router for these jobs - I don't particularly like using routers and avoid where I can. The angle/shim size was easy to calculate in this case - The shim would normally go at the bridge position which is about halfway up the body and about 6mm high to create a 2-2.5º break angle when using a hand plane, so in order to maintain the same angle with the pivot being twice the distance away, I just had to double the height of the shim and place it at the very front of the neck pocket.

I made myself a very crude jig to route the back of the neck closer to the dimensions that I want to carve from, got the neck taper to about 22mm including the thickness of the 6mm fretboard, about 21mm by the time I've radiused the board and down to about 20mm by the time I've carved the neck, touch wood. routed the binding channel, there is a hairline of ebony still there, not sure whether to sand it off the a straight bar or just leave it. The binding is going to be maple and ebony with ebony on the outside anyway so it probs won't be visible. I also did a bit more carving of the top which I apparently forgot to photograph, pretty sure my previous faux pas has been rectified. Then I was going to plane in the break angle with the no7 like I normally do, then I had an epiphany - Had to work out the distance and angle to get my shim the right thickness to create the correct break angle in the top given that the pivot point would be on the back of the body not that scale position, but it worked like a charm. For the record this is no quicker than using a hand plane, it did involve 10 minutes of just feeding it through the sander, but it certainly is more precise and removes any risk of tear out of figured tops. Now that I've got the angle in, I'll get the neck pocket routed before I carve the rest of the top. I was originally going to use the angle grinder but I've started down the road of gouges now so I guess I'll carry that on. I might switch to the orbital sander with a heavy disc instead pf thumb planes and scrapes though. There has been a fair bit of movement in the walnut for Matt's tele, especially the top - glad I decide to leave it a while. I also decided to unclamp it, it's well oversized at the moment and the last thing I want is for it to split while fighting clamping pressure. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I needed the clamps to glue on Imrie's top.

That's flippin' cool, how thick is the top? Are you going to be bracing it or doing any kind of reinforcement under the bridge? Looking forward to seeing this one come together.

fantastically well done, looks like a one-piece now

Drilled some tuner holes this evening and roughed in the headstock shape, the holes are only 8mm as I don't know what tuners he's having. I'll just ream up to the correct size when I have them. And trimmed off the end of the fretboard, managed to scuff the end slightly with the saw but fortunately this is well above where the radius will go so it will disappear. I also sanded the end of the tenon to the template. I discovered long ago that I don'y like routing the end grain on neck blanks, especially not on maple. I'm waiting on a new rebate cutter from radian tools to arrive, then I'll cut the binding channels and radius the fretboard.

Uhuh I’ve still got blisters on my hand a week later. I need to get myself a decent saw that doesn’t have an awful rubber handle. It is a lovely piece of wood though, I’m not sure if the average Janka rating of Eastern European walnut, but it’s a damn site harder than any American black walnut I’ve used. I’ve got a similar neck blank too which must be up there with Ovangkol

You mean you've been winging it all this time like I have?

I'm not into those dating sites where everyone has wood, but each to their own. Did you mistake Project Guitar with Project Grindr?

Thanks for the input, my rationale for using titebond 2 is that it has a higher mosture resistence than titebond original, I use titebond original for glueing on the fretboard and the neck joint, because I want those joints to be easy to unset if needed, but I don't want the headstock veneer or the body cap to be affected if I do either of those things. Enough steam to unset titebond original is not enough for 2 and 3, so I should be able to remove the neck without causing the seam on the maple cap to open or the veneer to come away.

Yes I've already employed that trick on the new PRS build I'm working on, worked great. No I didn't do any squeegying because last time I squeeged, I found that the grain wasn't "full enough" and had to repeat the process. It didn't take long with sand it off with the random orbital though.

yeah my dad had a similar situation this week. They've just changed their car, they give my sister their A3 and have advertised her little VW Up thinking it would be easier to sell as a first car. Had a couple of messages saying "will you take £x or £y?" before evening seeing the car. One of them was taking the piss and the other one he said ok to. So they showed up to view and then said would you take even less. He told them to do one

I use danish oil for necks on my builds (only the builds I make for myself because I don't think it provides as much protection as others) I personally wouldn't recommend it for finished a stained flamed maple top - reason being that it requires a lot of rubbing away of excess and that has a habit of taking the stain with it, it's also very good at turning blues into greens. I've also found the lack of protection against plectrum scratches, finger nails etc soon gets through the finish and stain. Obviously do a tester and see what results you can get, but I've never had any success with it and stain. If you want to get a vibrant finish for a stained flamed top, I would recommend sealing the colour in with a spray can sanding sealer, then use a wipe on poly or acrylic which you could then buff to a gloss. You could then sand back the sides and do your danish oil on the rest of the neck body.

Some more progress on these 2, couple of updates in the medium of youtube and some pics. I made some mahog control covers. This is prior to learning about @Prostheta's awesome method to route around and saw off a grain matching cover so the grain direction is vaguely correct but the covers are unfortunately from a different piece of mahog. Got the whole thing filled with walnut grainfiller after spending an age taping off the neck binding and body faux binding. I've sanded the body and covers back so far, still got the neck to do. I really like this colour and unfortunately the sanded back filler is nowhere near as dark so I'm currently weighing up the pros and cons of staining it brown. The cons being that I don't particularly want to mask all the binding off again.