Getting the neck blank right for neck through

[djobson101]

I'm trying to figure out how you get the right shape for your neck blank for neck-through construction. The area up near the high frets meeting the body wings being the one in question -

Well I guess this raises another question anyways - I guess most importantly, 1) should the overall width of the neck blank be equal to the widest dimension of the fretboard? 

And then, 2) 

That little tiny sliver that is the difference between the taper of the fretboard and the straight line of the neck blank. What would a good approach be to tackling an area like this? Should the blank be left square and worked on after gluing up to the wings, or would you leave the extra material on the body wing with the neck blank already trimmed flush with the fretboard?

Edited December 3, 2016 by djobson101

[Skyjerk]

in all my previous builds I almost always do neck through. I take that farther making my neck blank a 3-piece laminate and add carbon fiber rods.  I previosuly always made the width of the neck blank equal to the widest point on the fretboard.

The only exception is my most recent build which is detailed in the "in progress" section, called "22 Magnum" where I went considerably wider

 

Both ways will work fine structurally, but the reason I tried going wider this time is because when you go with a fretboard width blank, the posts for the bridge are actually in a separate piece of wood separated from the rest of the neck and the nut by two joints, one on each side, and my picky reasoning was that having the bridge in the same piece of wood that is the neck would be better transmitting vibrations because there are less joints between the bridge and nut.

Is that actually true? I dont know. I make good joints so I'd say their impact is minimal, but I figured it couldnt hurt to get rid of them

The downside is you'll have a bit more waste making the neck blank wider.

[djobson101]

I could get on board with the idea of having the blank wider as to have the posts live on the same piece of wood as the nut. I'm only as far as trying to figure out an order of operations with the neck through process because it definitely seems like it could be easy to get in a pickle by overlooking a small detail like this. I guess what I'm worrying about in my head is getting the surfaces accessible enough to work inside the horns when it came time to shaping, if that makes sense? 

I'll be perusing through your thread for sure though, thanks  for a prospective 1st time builder, it seems daunting but I feel up to it. Definitely going to make a couple dummy guitars to experiment with. I am interested in trying the idea you mentioned.

[pan_kara]

The one time I did a neck-thru I kept the neck blank at the width that it had when I got it (minus whatever I sanded off to get good glue joints for the wings). If the blank is more narrow you can go more narrow, I'd just keep the gluing surfaces straight. Other than that I think it's a matter of preference:

- you can just extend the fretboard taper to the thru-body section (though non-parallel glue surfaces will make the wings want to slide more when gluing)

- or trim the width to the widest part of the fingerboard, keeping the sides parallel (so a tiny wedge of neck wood will appear next to the fingerboard in the upper horn for example)

- or (IMHO simplest) keep the blank slightly wider, the shape is anyway routed after the wings are on.