Making plans

[metallisomething]

When you are drawing the plans for your guitar, how do you line everything up perfectly on paper? You can start with a center line but then how do you accurately measure and draw your nut and bridge using the center line as reference? for the taper of the fretboard, do you just choose a width at the nut, 12th fret, etc and join the lines? how do you make a template for the shaping of the back of the neck?

thanks

there are things that are known, there are things that are unknown, in between there are...

[MzI]

i use autocad cuz its really easy once you get the hang of it, there really is no templates for shaping the back of the neck, for the most part its done by hand, the only real guide you use is the thickness of the overall neck, you could always get a neck similar to the style you want and get a copy carver

MzI

also, there is calculations for the nut width, bridge spacing, width of the end of the fretboard, length past the last fret etc, do get perfectly straight lines with paper and pencil i recommend using a straight edge of some sort with a parallel rule, basically a drafting setup will work quite nicely tho they can be expensive

[68 lost souls]

Could you please elaborate on those calculations and there methods,

Thanks

[johnsilver]

Depending on the type guitar you are making, you may be able to get some neck dimensions from the original manufacturers website. For example, Gibson gives the width and thickness of the neck at the nut and the 12th fret. The width is helpful in that is really is a matter of connecting the two dimensions and extending them on to determine the overall neck width. If you have access to a similar neck to what you want to make, you can make little templates of the neck shape at various places along the neck, for example, at the nut, the 12th fret, and so on. This will give you a guide to the shape and you can smooth in between for a good feel. Here is an example of what I mean on a Tele style neck I made.