Blonde Marauder

[Muzz]

Making the headstock template, straight lines cut first,

Rasp and sandpaper to take out the curves

[Muzz]

Headstock veneer

[Muzz]

In cutting out the neck template I tried a new way of lining up a straight edge to run my router template bit along. I was going for 43 mm at the top and 56.5 mm at the bottom. I often find that when putting a straight edge on wood marked with a line, I cover up the pencil line and can't see where I am, so I placed blue tape triangles with the point right where I want to cut.

 

Then lined the straight edge up with the points.

 

 

Top end

 

bottom

[Muzz]

Making the truss rod channel jig, the frame holds the router snuggly and only allows travel in one dimension.

 

The baseplate was clamped in place then the jig flipped upside down to screw the baseplate on.

 

Tomorrow I will route the 6mm channel down the middle of the baseplate and it will be good to go.

[Muzz]

I routed through the truss channel jig

 

and tried it out on the model neck

 

from this exercise I learnt I have to rout 1.5 mm deeper than I calculated and set it back 1 mm towards the heel

 

and I need to get a slightly thinner router bit, this one is actually 6.3 mm

 

apart from those adjustments everything looks good, I'll go ahead and do the real neck next,

[Prostheta]

Bear in mind that the final size of the cut isn't dependant purely on the size of the router bit so you might find a new cutter producing as wide a cut anyway.

I can't remember the type of collet in that Bosch POF, however I suspect it is a single locking collet. Those have less concentricity than double locking collets, causing higher levels of runout and especially with longer cutters. My Makita RP0700C is a single locking collet, and that can have noticeable amounts of runout that compound errors when doing say, multiple passes of template routing relying on the bearing to run over previous cuts. The rear commutator bearing is also mounted in plastic rather than the (zinc? aluminium?) lower casing. Any play or slop here results in an eccentric cut. I remember mine sounding like shit and vibrating slightly rather than being absolutely smooth in use.

On the theme of play, your jig or even the router base might have excess movement in use that translates to a cut outside of your aims. I'd consider using a 4-5mm diameter cutter (if that's even possible) and taking the cut in passes with an offset.

The other possibility is one that I think is less likely at this level of cut; deflection. A bit that flexes against tool pressure from within the cut. I have a diagram at my desk at work that I wrote to remind me of the deflection vectors and magnitudes of deflection within certain cuts, but climb and conventional. This tends to be exacerbated again by endmill stickout and lower shank diameters (or a flex point in a reduced part of the tool) but with hand routers in softer materials with small cutting loads, I doubt this is of much consequence.

[Muzz]

I dropped into Bunnings today and picked up a proper 6 mm bit to route the channel. 

 

The channel in the practice run cut with the 6.3 mm bit, was uniformly 6.5 mm. The truss rod is 6.2 mm wide https://luthiersupplies.com.au/welded-2-way-truss-rod I'll do a test route with the 6 mm bit on a piece of scrap first to be sure that the maths is right and the truss rod channel is going to be tighter than the budgie smugglers on a lifeguard that's been eating a lot of pies recently.

[Prostheta]

Sounds good! Go make some wood smaller

[Muzz]

Ruler clamped along neck centre line, a BOWWSE lined up along the ruler

 

and used to continue the centre line along the headstock

 

Three holes drilled with a 6 mm bradpoint bit along the centre line

 

two holes used to poke 6 mm drill bits in through the jig channel and line it up on the neck, one just to align the jig with where the channel stops on the neck, The drill bit at the right is is sitting in a hole 9 mm deep so the router bit can sit in the hole before the router starts.

 

Routed down to 9 mm deep.

 

 

[Muzz]

Listening to Whitesnake's 1987 remake of Here I Go Again and leveling the back of the headstock, using the cheesegrater and then 80 grit sandpaper.

 

Flatter than Florida on a hot day.

 

Look for the glue line, what your brain initially tells you is the join, isn't the join.

 

Next step is the lateral shaping.

 

 

[Prostheta]

Very ordered and prepared working. That glueline really messes with your head!

[Bizman62]

Nicely hidden glueline!

The cheesegrater seems to be a highly underestimated tool in guitar building, yet I saw a first timer shape a neck with a 4" one in a couple of hours!

[Prostheta]

Neck shaping can be done much quicker than that if you're excluding the fine shaping with sandpaper. I've always rasped in my contours at the neck and heel, then "joined the dots" using a spokeshave, then lightly rasped into form using that flat back end of my rasp. Beyond that, it's paper and scraper! That said, if you can spend that time ensuring the neck is absolutely perfect then that's always the better option. The worst is having to fight with the tools to get towards the result, as it should never be made harder by the tool. I'd say that with the machine-perforated surform and machine struck rasp, you'll get a lot of the tool wasting the stroke by cutting a channel in the material that it follows instead of cutting further. This easily happens midstroke, but is generally defined by your technique and angle of attack. Using an angle of somewhere halfway between the lays of the tooth lines produces the most effective cuts. Go to it!

[Bizman62]

Plenty of ways to skin the cat. My spokeshaving skills aren't stellar, I tend to get a hourglass shape on the neck with those. I've used them but the ones at the workshop are blunt, cracked apart and welded back together, reshaped poorly on a grinder, blotched with semi-dried glue etc. and there's no sharpening tools other than a heavily grooved grindstone... 

The 4" cheesegrater seemed to do an uniform job in joining the dots and as I said the guy using it had no guitar building experience.

I've learned to like a sanding beam for leveling the humps and bumps caused by other tools.

[Prostheta]

Sanding beams are pretty much an essential for getting a smooth transition from 1st to the heel, definitely. Spokeshaves are problematic in some woods, or in laminated necks where each material works very differently to its neighbours. I have two identical Stanley #151s which are far from perfect since they can't get into tight concave edges very well, but do remove most of the neck shaft very well.

[Muzz]

Cheers Prestheta and Bizman, I love the cheesegrater,, I use it as well a rasp and spokeshave for necks. I agree that there are so many ways to carve a neck, it really comes down to personal preference. Sculpting the neck I find to be one of the most enjoyable parts of guitar making, seeing and feeling that neck coming into shape is a great experience. I wonder if the choice of music you listen to while you do it can influence the outcome.

[Prostheta]

Anything that gives you patience and encourages you to take more of a thoughtful approach. I can't say that I choose music when work gets noisy unless I have my ear defenders on!

[Bizman62]

2 hours ago, Muzz said:

I wonder if the choice of music you listen to while you do it can influence the outcome.

I tend to hum. Does an earworm count?

[Muzz]

23 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I tend to hum. Does an earworm count?

Sometimes when you get the earworm, you just have to hum it out,  

Experimenting with the the neck template, the chunky piece on the left guides the router away from the sloping head stock area. 

 

 

[ScottR]

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

Experimenting with the the neck template, the chunky piece on the left guides the router away from the sloping head stock area. 

It took me a minute to see that. Good idea.

SR

[Muzz]

Cheers Scott, the next step is screw the top templates to the mdf below with countersunk screws and rout the bottom layer to match the top.. Then drill two 6 mm holes in the template midline to align it with the neck truss rod channel using upside down 6 mm drill bits. Not sure yet whether to screw the template to the neck or stick it with double sided tape. 

[ScottR]

There's been a number of times when I've used double sided tape, and once done wished I'd have used screws.

I don't think it's ever been the other way around......although the tape is so much more convenient.

SR

[Muzz]

Got the paddle template screwed down to the backing plate

 

then got the anti wobble surround in place and went to get my short template bit

 

but it was not in the drawer it was supposed to be in, I'll look for it tomorrow, cheers, for now

[Prostheta]

Yep, hand routers are in a wibbly-wobbly world of their own sometimes.

[Bizman62]

Using a jar is a clever idea should you ever have to leave a half full glass for other tasks. Screw the lid on, put it into the refridgerator and enjoy when you're free to continue that tastiful task.