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In conjuntion with an Inclinometer and Myka's Neck Pocket Jig i'd say this would be the best way to go about making a neck angle

i use this saw rasp for rough shaping and i get great results with it, it only takes you 30 minutes to rough cut an arm and belly contour on a body with this animal.

i used one of those, bought it from axminster, didn't like it much though, mine went dull pretty fast and i was just testing it of mdf templates..

another idea for reducing size is use a smaller scale length, like putting a capo on the 5th fret, take that as the nut and work out the measurements from there.

There are special surface trim bits that you can use, if you want, i used the biggest bit i had and it worked just fine

i had the some problem and i solved it by using the router, make up a base for the router to ride on, plunge to router until the bit touches the face of the fingerboard plus a little bit more and cut, then keep lowering the router little bits at a time until you reach the desired thickness.

GuitarMaestro: That's probably it, i think he's using a neck from another guitar so this would be the most direct way to go about it

it's looking pretty good so far, just a question, isn't the headstock a little too thick? what kind of tuners are you going to use? About radiusing, is there such a thing as a 12" radius scraper, i'm thinking that such a scraper would yield much better results than a sanding block, plus it would be much easier to check when the fretboard reaches the correct radius and taking out high spots

what about stability issues? you're gonna have a pretty wide neck, can a single truss rod cut it?

i don't have a bandsaw also so i went to a carpenter shop and ask them to cut the portion of the headstock to a 13º angle, then i used this jig to smooth the joint, i was working on a scarfed joint but i guess the same principle applies.

just curious, would a normal drill press be adequate to serve as a substitute for a regular arbor press? edit: typo

thanks jay5, really cool stuff! i just finished my first fretting job, this would/will definitely come in handy!

Now this is what i call a great link! Been looking for a long time for a decent wood supplier in Europe with accessible prices, thanks a bunch helge!

that's pretty cool indeed, i destroyed my first neck due to the side load that is was putting and didn't even noticed it, until it was too late of course...

well, it sure has been a long time since my last update, this has a good reason, i had to toss the neck i was building, my home-made pattern sander was not sanding my neck square so i ended up with a neck with a taper across it's width, not very good for fitting it in the neck pocket. Here is a pic of the neck of where i'm at right now: The specs were changed a bit, i am now using an ebony fingerboard, i also used a ebony veneer on the headstock so i've got a maple neck completely covered in ebony. The board has been radiused (12") and the first 17 fret slots have been cut, 7 to go still. Also did some work on the body (sapelli), sanding it down to the line, next up is cutting the neck pocket, i'm using a Schaller 3D6 bridge, i'm not sure yet if i'm gonna put a neck angle in it or not. Hopefully will have some more pictures soon.

nice work, not my style but very well executed HR Giger, is this it drak?

www.touchstonetonewoods.com lots of stuff, moderate prices and shipping charges www.axminster.co.uk for tools, get yer titebond from here

seeing that huge piece of wood gets me thinking about a one-piece guitar, body and neck made out of one chunck, has this been done before? how would it affect the sound as opposed to the neck-through design? not directly related to your question Southpa, but food for thought anyway

hi all, just came across this site, they are based on the UK, they've got lots of router cutters (don't know about the quality though), including template bits, lots of bearings and spiral cutters

I found this pretty handy for general alignment problems.

Here(PDF) is a nice article on the subject, if you google for 'tempered scale 17.817' you'll come up with more useful info

well, finally got all the parts to build my pattern sander copy, with this i did some initial tapering on the neck. The pattern sander actually works quite well, used some balsa wood as the guide wheel for the drum, after some use it burns a bit from the friction but it still remains fairly accurate. Sorry about the poor quality of the pics, wish i had a better camera... here we go: Pattern sander getting built: Drill press mounted on a board Drum sander with guide wheel disassembled... and assembled The whole thing mounted Now i just use it to taper the neck to the correct shape, the guide wheel on the drum sander rides up against the template fastened to the top of the neck and sands away everything underneath Work in progress... another angle As you probably will notice, due to the fact that the headstock is not shaped yet i'm still unable to reach the nut portion of the neck and give it the correct shape Semi-tapered neck.... another angle next steps: cut away unused portion of headstock so the sander can reach the nut start thinking of a way to place accurate perpendicular fret marks on the fretboard

Try voloviewer, you can download it also from guitarbuild.com Also another thing that people may find interesting is a software that allows you to use the print function and generate a .pdf file, i found it useful to print a template across several pages, the software is called PDF995, get it here

hi all, after much thinking, reading, drawing and reading hundreds of posts over here in projectguitar.com i finally started building my first guitar, here are the specs: Scale length: 635mm (25") 24 frets maple neck with rosewood fretboard, headstock angle 13º, U-Channel truss rod ash body Schaller 3D6 bridge (fixed) Schaller tuners here is the body shape i came up with, it's not very original but i like it, any comments/criticism is, as always, appreciated here are some progress pics on the neck, they're only of the fretboard glueing, i forgot to get pictures of the steps before that attaching the fingerboard clamped neck headstock below is a shot of the templates, neck & body, being aligned so i make sure everything is ok, i use a very thin string that is stretched along the templates neck body alignment another shot of that next step: build a robosander copy, will use it the taper the neck

looking good so far! is there any special reason why you chose to do the neck angle this way?