Project Lucy-- my first

[Setch]

Greg, you can level you neck using my router thicknessing jig. I've explained it a few times before, so I won't repeat it here, but I can if you've not seen it.

I still recommend you taper the neck using the 'straight edge of MDF' technique. There's really no need for the extra step of making a template. To get the correct neck taper, draw everything out fullsize (you may have heard that before). Draw your scale length, mark your nut width and bridge width at either end, and join the dots. Don't forget to add 2-3mm each side of the strings.

If you insist on using a template, make it 6" too long at each end. That way, if you get the taper right but the width a bit wide/narrow you can simply shift the nut position until the width is correct.

[mledbetter]

I have the tele set from GUitarBuildingTemplates.com It's not a bad way to start but now that i'm into it.. I could have made my own.

If you have a program like freehand or something that lets you do a tile print, you could take a scale drawing of your project and print it out full size.. Then spray mount that to MDF and cut out your template. You have to be WAY careful the first time to get the edges smooth.. Use an edge sander and a spindle sander.. but once you have it, you're good to go.

The neck.. like setch said.. Just use a straight edge piece of MDF and do the math.. I'm not relying on the purches tele template for aligning the neck anyway.. it hasn't proved a tight enough joint for me. It looks sloppy.

PRS has nice full frontal shots of their guitars in decent resolution. You can just take one of those into freehand, trace it exactly, use a known dimension on the guitar to set your scale to and print it out.. You'll be good to go.

[GregP]

Cheers for the replies. I think I WILL just go for the straight-edge of MDF this time.

Setch, I've seen the thicknesser jig, and I was actually going to use it to get my headstock down to size (a mistake mentioned earlier, in which I didn't thickness first before joining-- or WAS that a mistake?) but I don't have a pair of rails. Now, since the area isn't as big as a guitar body, the MDF should actually end up being 'stiff' enough to serve as rails, so I just may go for it anyhow.

The 'gap' is literally only half a millimetre, so I'm still wondering if the sandpaper would be right for the job this time anyhow. I'll do a mock-up jig and test with scrap first to see if it's the tool for the job.

mledbetter-- regarding the location of the scarf joint: I agree that a neck-location scarf would be 'stronger', that much isn't in question. BUT, considering how strong a properly glued joint is in the first place, the difference seems to me to be purely academic. In other words, if I do a proper job gluing, it'll be plenty strong at the headstock, particularly with the laminate. Regarding having the same problem, I agree, but I also think that the fix would be easier for 2 reasons: a. smaller surface to have to 'plane' before adding laminate; b. it's less important to have it absolutely pefect than on the connection between fretboard and neckwood.

Don't get me wrong, it's still highly important, as there is a lot of string tension up there, but it's still *relatively* less important. Or from another perspective-- the way my neck is right now, the joint IS super-strong, but it's less than perfectly level. On a headstock, if I can get a joint that strong, then the laminate won't be doing the job of adding structural support anyhow, so it won't matter as much if the headplate is primarily cosmetic and the glue isn't absolutely perfect.

Of course, the main thing is simply that the surface would be easier to get level in order to do as close to a perfect job as possible.

So, I think the lesson I've learned is STILL to do the scarf at the headstock instead of the neck.

Greg

[CudBucket]

I used the straight-edge MDF technique to make my templates.

[Mickguard]

but I don't have a pair of rails.

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I just bought a long strip of steel from the hardware store, cost me 3 euros or so --it's about 5 mm thick, so it won't bend under the weight of the router and it's long enough to cut in two. I don't think Setch is using anything fancier than that for his rails...

I'll probably just clamp it down when I'm using it, but it might be worthwhile to drill a few holes in there, give me the option of screwing them down too

...going to take it for a test run on Sunday, if I can find some time....

[Setch]

I'm using 1" mildsteel square section which used to be part of a cigarette gantry in the shop I work in. I have also used aluminium extrusions which used to be part of a conservatory frame. Anything will do, provided it's straight, and rigid enough not to flex under the load of a router.

[GregP]

I'll have a look around, but it's hard to find the strangest things around here, that aren't even a thought for people in other cities.

This is the hardest damn city to source ANYTHING in.

Minor news-- got my inlays from DePaule today (standard block inlays). They look great. I also bought some blanks, so I'll practice doing some inlay work before I try to eff up the fretboard.

Greg

[GregP]

'nother question--

I bought a nut that will serve as my 'guide' (I'm using zero fret, so it only needs guide slot duty), but as it turns out, it is.... a quarter of an inch high. That's exactly the height of my fingerboard.

Now, theoretically, taking a slightly different approach, I could still use it as a guide. But, that to me seems a bit of a workaround.

Should I just put it in the parts bin for a future project and get a new nut, or am I just missing something? It's a Graphtek nut (I wanted black, and that's the only 'quality' black nut I can think of that was easily available locally) that's meant for a Les Paul... I have to admit, I find it a bit odd that it's not already the 'correct' height! Are factory fingerboards normally shorter than a quarter inch?

Tips? Recommendations?

Greg

[GregP]

Nothing much to add.

I finally got sick of hemming and hawing and figured "worst thing that could happen is that I "eff" it up and have to start the neck over <shrug>".

Drew up my measurements right on the neck black, and then use a straight piece of MDF as a guide for my flush trim router bit. I could go the full depth, so I went halfway through the neck blank, and then used this initial rout as the 'guide' for doing the bottom half. Standard procedure, I think... not necessarily for necks, but for flush-trim routing in general.

I already had a headstock 'template' I had made with MDF, but I didn't think it was very well done, so I cleaned up one side and then used my old "flip and reverse" trick to make it symmetrical, using a hole that will later become a tuning peg hole as one anchor, and a centre hole that ends up somewhere in the truss rod area.

Trouble? Well... the truss rod channel was already routed, so I had nowhere for the second screw to go! I could have just used another tuning peg hole, but instead what I did is wedge some maple into the truss rod, and drill into that. Once the routing was done, I simply removed the maple I had wedged in there.

There were a few hairy moments while routing:

1. The clamps kept getting in the way. At one point in time I had little choice but to unclamp and then reclamp. The end result is that my rout wasn't perfectly straight after all. The teeny deviation is something that can easily be sanded out, though. I went almost 2 full millimetres wider than I needed to in order to get some wiggle room, and that bump you see near the headstock was a casualty but is actually even further out from my line (like 4mm) so I haven't screwed anything up that can't be fixed.

2. The router bit kept getting hot. That meant that I was burning a lot. A LOT. Not smoking-hot, but enough that I'd have to do a lot of sanding if I wanted a natural finish. Luckily I already know that I'm not doing a natural finish, so I didn't mind.

3. In the headstock shape, the bits that come to a point were getting a bit... dodgy. I was scared of getting a bit chip out, so I went extra slow and extra shallow, which partially contributed to the burning. BUT, in the end it seemed to work.

If you look carefully at the picture, the shape of the headstock right at the end doesn't seem to be symmetrical in the photo... in fact, it may be a bit off in real life, too, and I just didn't notice until "developing" the picture-- I'll fix it with a piece of round wood and some sandpaper if that turns out to be the case.

Next step:

thicknessing the headstock. In many ways, it could of and should have been done first-- before gluing the scarf joint, actually. But since I screwed up and DIDN'T do so, I'll have to devise a way to do it now.

[Mickguard]

Hey cool, I thought you'd given up...I've been feeling pretty low about my own skill levels these days, has me taking a break and just practicing with the tools from time to time...

[GregP]

Nah, G. I'm a procrastinator, but not a quitter. This'll get done eventually.

Greg

[Mickguard]

Nah, G.  I'm a procrastinator, but not a quitter.  This'll get done eventually.

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All right...in that case, I'll get back to work on mine...finally worked out most of the problems with the neck area, and I'm sanding it now...then I think I'm going to get some of that black epoxy, just because I want to see what it's like to work with that...

[GregP]

All right, so no pics to accompany the work, but:

-Finished cleaning up the neck taper. Somewhere along the way it had aquired a few minor flaws, but nothing that 2 minutes with a sanding block didn't clear up

-Thinned out the headstock. Ideally, this should be done before doing the scarf joint, I would think. But, first-timer that I am, I blew the mission. The solution:

1. figured out how thin I needed it, including ebony faceplate, to accomodate the tuners. Marked the depth on both sides with a pencil.

2. Used a plunge router, set to the correct depth, to hog away as much wood as possible from the back of the headstock before the lack of a surface meant that using the router wasn't possible anymore

3. Tried a few power tools before settling on a good old manual tool-- in this case, my microplane rasp-- to get rid of the remaining wood with brute force and elbow grease. The previously drawn lines, along with the already-flat surface served as guides for when to stop rasping.

4. Cleaned the whole thing up with an orbital sander and some 100-grit sandpaper. A coarser grit would've been more effective initially, but in the time that it would have taken to change papers, I just worked the sander instead.

I left a little bit of wood for a volute of some sort, but due to space constraints on my compact-ish headstock, there's not going to be much of one. If it ends up being TOO dinky as far as volutes go, I might just get rid of it altogether. At least by leaving some wood, though, I have the option.

Next steps: gluing the faceplate and fretboard. However, it's been advised that I inlay these first, so that means the real next step is inlaying the faceplate and fretboard, something I've never done before.

Before I can get to that, I need to research some inlaying techniques, and I would like to construct a makeshift router base for my SpinSaw's flex-shaft. I like the one in the tutorial section of the main site, but I have some plans in my head on how I want to modify it. So, that should take up the next week of free time, if I'm lucky. When you have a dog, work, friends, and a girlfriend, it's pretty slow-going.

I also found flap-discs for the angle grinder, though I didn't purchase one yet. Turns out that Canadian Tire stocks a pretty good selection of them. Wal-Mart had a very limited tool area. American Wal-Marts are clearly more all-encompassing than ours. I'll pick one up and when I'm sick of working on inlay, I'll practice on some scrap wood to see if it's a technique that I could make use of for carving the top.

Greg