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no tutorial for neck thrus???


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I think it probably is simpler than most guitars. you have a neck. you put 2 wings on it you glue it. shape neck shape body.

Thats definately not true. Did you ever build a neck-through? It is definately more difficult than a bolt-on. I am not the only one with that opinion. In the book "Build Your Guitar" the author confirms that theory. If you have a jointer and a planer, then it is not much more difficult than a bolt-on, but without these tools it is very difficult to plane the wings and the necks 100% perpendicular and even. Another thing which makes the neck-through much more difficult is the fact that you cannot allow to mess something up. If you mess up the neck, then you have to throw away the whole thing. With a bolt-on you can build the neck and the body seperately and if you mess one up you can simple start over with the part in question and do not have to build a new guitar. Additionaly the handling of the neck-through during building, finishing and fretting is much more difficult, because you always have to deal with the whole guitar.

Just my opinion though....feel free to flame me....:D

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My previous guitar was a neckthrough. I guess its pretty fundamental when building a straight neck, but things get a little hairy with an angled neck.

I started with a 2"X2"X40" block of mahogany.

I cut my 3 neck angles (top and both sides) with the Skilsaw in my back yard allowing for a little room for shaping and sanding.

You can pretty much get an idea that those faces weren't perfect cuts so I borrowed the use of the large belt sander where I used to work and rendered those faces perfectly flat and true.

I didn't bother with an angled headstock. Instead I opted for the Strat headstock side profile and carved that out with rasps.

The rest of the neck was shaped and formed with handsaw, spokeshave, rasps and sandpaper.

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I think it probably is simpler than most guitars. you have a neck. you put 2 wings on it you glue it. shape neck shape body.

Thats definately not true. Did you ever build a neck-through?...

... If you have a jointer and a planer, then it is not much more difficult than a bolt-on, but without these tools it is very difficult to plane the wings and the necks 100% perpendicular and even....

Just my opinion though....feel free to flame me....:D

not trying to flame you or anything, but i thought about it since the discustion about this in the other thread,

if you're talking about making a bolt on neck AND body, you're still going to need a jointed to square off the 2 halfs of the body blank, unless you pay 20$ extra and buy a pre glued blank, in which case you could just ask the supplier of the wings for a neck thru to joint one side for you which may or may not be free but i can't see something like that being more then 5$ extra,.....

so my point is you need an jointed wings wheather it's a 2 peice body you're glueing or 2 wings for a neck thru...

make sense? lol i guess i just like neck thru's B) but they are a bit more cumbersome when fretting, but like i said, the lack of a big heel and the solidity makes up for it IMO

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i will document my next thru neck...it is VERY easy.all you are doing is building a neck which just happens to have a "heel" that extends through the body.you build the neck completely first,then you build the wings and glue them on.the toughest part is to rout the neck pickup,and you can make that easier by shimming up the router above the fingerboard with extra pieces of wood.

then finishing.you have to mask everything well and hang the guitar from a hook by the tuning peg holes,then spray.i will be starting one in the next month or so and i will take careful pics of my progress and maybe brian can put it in the tutorials.

it is just a different method,that's all

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you put 2 wings on it you glue it. shape neck shape body.

I think it makes more sence to shape the neck first, then add the wings...or at least for the way I shape necks, on the idle drum of my belt sander.

yeah i agree...i really think if you don't complete the neck first you are asking for trouble

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planer, jointer, what the heck are these? tools?

sorry lol

Seconded!

The guy off New Yanky Workshop (discovery H&L) has loadsa fancy tools and he always put boards through his surface planer or jointer. How do these differ? Is it that the jointer will make 2 sides a square and the planer will only do one side but take off more material...or....no i'm guessing, i have no idea

Chris

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It is much harder to build a neck through.

1 the wings need to be aligned perfectly with the neck

2 the routing of pickups has to be done with a fretboard in the way

3 you have to lug that neck around everywhere to work on the guitar, eg: drill press, bandsaw, etc Imagine cutting the body shape with a neck attached!

4 more difficult to finish and buff

5 More difficult to assemble, the neck gets in the way.

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planer, jointer, what the heck are these? tools?

sorry lol

Seconded!

The guy off New Yanky Workshop (discovery H&L) has loadsa fancy tools and he always put boards through his surface planer or jointer. How do these differ? Is it that the jointer will make 2 sides a square and the planer will only do one side but take off more material...or....no i'm guessing, i have no idea

Chris

took a quick look at a pic of a jointer (didn't know what the hell it was either and the dictionary wasn't helping).

the way I understand it, a planer makes two opposite sides flat and parallell to eachother. a jointer is a variation of the planer where a support allows you to get the sides of your body-blank perpendicular (at 90° angle to the face of the blank).

so with a jointer, you can make a completely square piece of wood. with a planer, you can make a piece of wood where at least one side is flat (and depending on model, probably two sides are flat and parallell to eachother)

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The guy off New Yanky Workshop (discovery H&L) has loadsa fancy tools and he always put boards through his surface planer or jointer. How do these differ? Is it that the jointer will make 2 sides a square and the planer will only do one side but take off more material...or....no i'm guessing, i have no idea

I think the planer only takes off one side. You then flip the wood over and pass it through again and take some off the other side (this helps to stop the wood from warping).

I've got a jointer, it's called Tom and sits in the workshop making joints all day long :D . Actually, I've got no idea about the jointer, but I want one.

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planer, jointer, what the heck are these? tools?

sorry lol

Seconded!

The guy off New Yanky Workshop (discovery H&L) has loadsa fancy tools and he always put boards through his surface planer or jointer. How do these differ? Is it that the jointer will make 2 sides a square and the planer will only do one side but take off more material...or....no i'm guessing, i have no idea

Chris

The guy from the New Yankee Workshop is Norm Abrham! Master Carpenter and inspiration of Millions of Lumberjack Shirted Woodworkers the world over! hehe :D

Norm is brilliant. The tools that have been refered to are as follows.

Jointer - Allows a single surface to be planed dead flat at 90 degrees to the sides of the material so that the wood will be squared to the sides. Useful for preparing boards for gluing together so that you know the surfaces are dead flat and exact.

Surface Planer/thicknesser - Allows the exact sanding of a surface of material across its entire width, so for example, you would use this to sand the face of a board to make it flat and remove material to get exact thicknessess of the board.

Norms stuff is expensive and industrial. Smaller versions exist and can be purchased from most big DIY stores, like B&Q in the UK .

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I dont know what you guys want to call them over there, but where i come from, this is what they are:

Surface Planer/Buzzer: Planes one side only, to be true and flat. Once one side is flat, you can use that side against the fence to achieve a 90deg flat side.

Planer Thicknesser: Once a piece of board has been "buzzed" with the surface planer, you can use the thicknesser to trim it to final thickness. It is useless to thickness a piece of wood that hasnt been "buzzed" first, because the timber wont be flat on the bottom edge (a thicknesser cuts the top off). The equivalent machine, but using sanding belts, is called a Drum Sander.

You cant use one machine without the other. Using both machines, is called "dressing" your timber.

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It is much harder to build a neck through.

1 the wings need to be aligned perfectly with the neck

2 the routing of pickups has to be done with a fretboard in the way

3 you have to lug that neck around everywhere to work on the guitar, eg: drill press, bandsaw, etc Imagine cutting the body shape with a neck attached!

4 more difficult to finish and buff

5 More difficult to assemble, the neck gets in the way.

1 Yeah. Not that hard...

2 You can always glue the fretboard after the routing.

3 I usually cut the body shape on the wings BEFORE glueing them to the neck...

4 You're right. Actually you don't know how to hold it while spraying.

5 It isn't that difficult.

Uh at the time we're making two neck-throughs and we're taking pictures...

If all the pictures are good maybe I could write a tutorial...

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