ihocky2 Posted January 16, 2019 Report Share Posted January 16, 2019 I've been out of the game for some time and after building a guitar for a Christmas present I have the bug to start building again. I have a few plans in mind to try and have ready to paint when the temperatures warm up. At least one of these I want to be a neck through, which I have never made. I am unsure how to go about handling the width of the neck, I've seen two viable options but I am not sure if one is better or easier than the other. If there are any other ideas I am certainly open to all of them. Neck blank the same width for the entire length. The appeal of this is easier glue up to the body wings and aesthetically the neck width through the body is the same the entire way. I don't know if I should make the blank the width of the fret board at the widest point, or if I should make it wider. My other concern is where the cutaways meet the neck, creating a smooth transition without a divot into the neck. My preferred method of mounting the fret board is to glue it on over sized and taper the neck and fret board at the same time, but that doesn't seem like it will work for this method. With the neck blank tapered to match the taper of the fret board is easier to mount the fret board and continue the taper. Again, I have the concern of blending the cutaways to the neck without damage. Aesthetically (especially on a laminated neck) the reveal of the neck lines will widen for the length of the body. Is it any harder to glue the wings onto a tapered neck blank than a square one? If anyone has any other tips, please feel free to chime in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted January 16, 2019 Report Share Posted January 16, 2019 can't offer much for advice... but I will offer company as I too would like to hear some veterans respond to these questions. thank you for asking them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 17, 2019 Report Share Posted January 17, 2019 Not exactly expert opinion but I'm working on the laminates for my first through at the moment. This drawing is not accurate or to scale but it gives an idea of how I'm approaching it. You can see the taper of the neck is going to start at the end of the headstock and go all the way through to the body, this design makes sense for me because the plan is to taper the laminates also so all the laminates are in a sort of V and it save faffing around with an angle where the neck joins the body wings. The dashed line indicates the blanks that I'm going to glue and cut off after glue up because clamping a V will be a pain other wise. One floor I've found in this plan is that the neck will be tapered from the off so I won't have a square edge to run a fence for a truss channel, so I'm going to have to make a truss rod template of some kind or another. But that's the basic concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 17, 2019 Report Share Posted January 17, 2019 Forgot to mention, the guy it's for is every specifically wanting a PRS 24 neck on it, so I'm going to use that neck template as a routing template to route the neck taper, then I'm planning to stick a feather edge to it to make the headstock and body carry on that taper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ihocky2 Posted January 17, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 17, 2019 ADF, the one bit of advice I can give is to route the truss rod while the neck is still square. Lay down a piece of masking tape to remark your center line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 17, 2019 Report Share Posted January 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, ihocky2 said: ADF, the one bit of advice I can give is to route the truss rod while the neck is still square. Lay down a piece of masking tape to remark your center line. Can't do that, the centre laminate of the neck is tapered so the contrast strips follow the taper of the neck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norris Posted January 18, 2019 Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 Could you split your centre lamination down the centre line, rout a rebate of half the truss rod width in each half, then glue it back together? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 18, 2019 Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 16 minutes ago, Norris said: Could you split your centre lamination down the centre line, rout a rebate of half the truss rod width in each half, then glue it back together? that sounds like more trouble than it's worth, in theory all I need to use is have a straight edge running down the centre 3mm off the centre line and use a 6mm bearing bit off that. Or use one of these round collet things (I cant remember what they're called) and offset the straight edge half the diameter of that away from the centre line. If none of that is possible, I'm sure it wont take that long to do it with a chisel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted January 31, 2019 Report Share Posted January 31, 2019 Mark off where your body wings will glue on, then route a deep channel right in the middle on the side (or drill) and you have a pre-made wiring channel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 31, 2019 Report Share Posted January 31, 2019 1 hour ago, komodo said: Mark off where your body wings will glue on, then route a deep channel right in the middle on the side (or drill) and you have a pre-made wiring channel. Smart guy I'm putting a top on my neckthrough, so I was thinking about using a rebate but and gong from where the bass pickup down close to the bridge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
komodo Posted January 31, 2019 Report Share Posted January 31, 2019 There's a wonderful satisfaction in routing for your pickups and "discovering" your pre-made wiring channels. Probably also an abject horror in routing for your pups and not finding your wiring channels . . . . 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted January 31, 2019 Report Share Posted January 31, 2019 That is my go to plan. I have had no complete misses....but I did have one just barely made it. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 31, 2019 Report Share Posted January 31, 2019 I missed by a couple of mm when I routed the control cavity on #5. On #2 I didn’t miss but it turned out that pre routed channel filled with glue and I had to drill through it anyway now I mask off pre routed channels before glueing tops on. Every days a school day. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted February 7, 2019 Report Share Posted February 7, 2019 On 1/16/2019 at 5:24 PM, ihocky2 said: I've been out of the game for some time and after building a guitar for a Christmas present I have the bug to start building again. I have a few plans in mind to try and have ready to paint when the temperatures warm up. At least one of these I want to be a neck through, which I have never made. I am unsure how to go about handling the width of the neck, I've seen two viable options but I am not sure if one is better or easier than the other. If there are any other ideas I am certainly open to all of them. Neck blank the same width for the entire length. The appeal of this is easier glue up to the body wings and aesthetically the neck width through the body is the same the entire way. I don't know if I should make the blank the width of the fret board at the widest point, or if I should make it wider. My other concern is where the cutaways meet the neck, creating a smooth transition without a divot into the neck. My preferred method of mounting the fret board is to glue it on over sized and taper the neck and fret board at the same time, but that doesn't seem like it will work for this method. With the neck blank tapered to match the taper of the fret board is easier to mount the fret board and continue the taper. Again, I have the concern of blending the cutaways to the neck without damage. Aesthetically (especially on a laminated neck) the reveal of the neck lines will widen for the length of the body. Is it any harder to glue the wings onto a tapered neck blank than a square one? If anyone has any other tips, please feel free to chime in. I generally do through necks but with a top so the through neck only shows from the back. For me, I go parallel from the point that the neck meets the cutouts. It does get a bit geometrically challenging, though, for the very long top horn single cut bass.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted April 17, 2019 Report Share Posted April 17, 2019 (edited) I'm working on my third neck through at the moment so I can at least tell what I've decided to avoid in my future builds... The first one, the LP type shown in the April GOTM contest, is a few mm wider than the fretboard end. Making the neck end blend nicely with the top is a PITA to make it look like a feature instead of just poor measuring! It's like carving the guitar out of one single piece of wood. Looking from the neck to the body joint shows more on the bout side than on the cutout. The next one is a dual cut where I succeeded better with the width of the neck block. Because of the dual cut the fretboard didn't protrude much into the body. The current build has a top to hide the neck seam but any inconsistency in the neck width would look even worse when looked along the neck. And since the single cut design left quite a many frets over the body, in order not to knock the bass side upper corner of the fretboard off some serious fiddling had to be done. That said, the next one will definitely be wedge shaped along the fretboard, no matter what the shape will be. The angle is so shallow that it won't affect gluing, neither would the profile suffer. Edited April 17, 2019 by Bizman62 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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