Neck Thickness

[Duff Beer Man]

When you guys are starting a project how thick is the board you use when you start. Im looking at some flamed maple on ebay and its 3/4 inch thick. Just wondering whats the thinest someone has used and had it turn out nice?

[thegarehanman]

3/4" is fine if you scarf the headstock and use a fretboard(or a skunk stripe). I don't think you can get away with a fender style neck with a 3/4" board, although I've never had the urge to build a neck like that, so I can't speak from experience. I have one neck I made that's a hair thicker than .75" thick. Although, that neck has a normal single action truss rod made from a piece of metal rod, so it doesn't require as deep a route as a hot rod. Normally I aim for about .8, unless I want a baseball bat for whatever reason.

Edited February 1, 2006 by thegarehanman

[Duff Beer Man]

Yeah i use scarf joints, and i was thinking bout skunk striping it with some babinga, but havent made up my mind yet though. I use martin style truss rods, i have used hot rods but they require quite a deep channel.

[thegarehanman]

Just figure out what all of your thicknesses will be(ie fretboard, neck wood, truss rod), and allow at least 1/8" behind the truss rod. Just have a thickness calipers handy while you're carving. The martin style rods are the halfround pieces of pipe with an internal rod, correct? How well do those work?

[Duff Beer Man]

Correct, i like mine, saves a couple of 1/16s of an inch with the shallower channel, so allows for super thin necks. Im very happy with mine so far. Where do u get yours from Lmii?

[thegarehanman]

I've used the hotrod before, but I like the fact that lmii's has a flat upper rod and that it's 1/16" thinner.

[Mattia]

3/4" stock (planed and flat) is even fine for a fender-style neck with a seperate fingerboard. Scarf optional.

[erikbojerik]

My guitar necks usually check in at 0.88 to 0.9 finished thickness (neck + fingerboard).

Neck thickness is a very personal thing, so go find one you love, measure the thickness, and shoot for that. As long as your fretboard is thick enough, you can certainly use a 0.75" blank for the neck.

[Southpa]

I made a tele neck out of 7/8" stock then add 1/4" fretboard AND installed a biflex Hotrod. Thats about the minimum thickness you can use if installing the Hotrod.

[Mattia]

My latest pair (a strat and a tele neck..well, both the same, really) used HotRods and 3/4" thick stock. There's absolutely no room for error with stock that thin, and no extra wood to remove if it's not quite straight, but coupled with a 1/4" fingerboard, that worked out just fine.

[Duff Beer Man]

what do u guys use for neck carves? Rasp? Routers? Spoke Shave?

[thegarehanman]

I taper the neck with a template and router, rough in the and fine tune the heel and headstock transitions with various half round rasps, then connect the two carves with a spokeshaved. Then I breifly go over the whole thing with 180 grit sandpaper by hand or an orbital sander to smooth it out and get everything even. I do any final fine tuning with various scrapers. You don't need all of these tools to make a neck though.