Dave Higham

It is indeed an old boxwood spokeshave almost identical to this one, except it doesn't have what looks to me like a lignum vita insert screwed in. https://www.oldtools.co.uk/collections/wooden-spokeshaves/products/old-wooden-spokeshave-boxwood I have a couple of cast iron ones too, one of which is a Stanley, but neither of them work as well as the wooden one.

It's a Microplane. https://www.microplane.com/microplane-woodworking-tools Although if you Google Microplane now, all you seem to get are their products meant for cookery. I've noticed that in TV cookery programmes they all use them for zesting lemons, etc.

Here’s what the neck looks like now. The thing behind it is the support I use for working on it and also use as a clamping caul when gluing the fingerboard on. Started by sanding a radius where the neck meets the headstock. I also sanded a smaller one where the neck meets the body and then took off the surplus from the back of the neck on the bandsaw (but I forgot to take photos). I draw up the cross section of the neck at first fret and body junction to enable me to cut a series of facets which will be rounded off to produce the finished neck profile. Lines for the first two facets are drawn onto the neck and ‘notches’ cut at each end. The ‘notches’ are joined up. I cut 4 more facets in the same way and then round them over using sanding boards rather than rasps or files. I finish using cloth backed abrasive in the ‘shoeshine’ method. I didn’t take any photos of all that either, so now it looks like this The neck is blended into the heel and headstock using rasps, files and sanding boards. To get a nice transition from neck to body, I do it with the neck installed. The figure in the headstock veneer makes it look as though there’s a ‘volute’ in this photo, but the back of the headstock is flat.

I've had brass ones break; no problems with steel ones.

Yes, that’s basically the way I do it, but I block two hex nuts against each other with an insert that I’ve modified by filing two grooves into it, turning it into a rudimentary tap. I put this in the drill press, clamp the neck in place, bring the chuck down and turn it by hand until the insert is fully engaged. Doing it in the drill press means it goes in straight. Then I unblock the nuts, release the chuck and raise it, and unscrew the threaded rod. I then take the insert/tap out using a screw driver and replace it with one without the filed grooves. I always do a trial run on a piece of scrap the same as the neck wood. If it’s a hard wood , like maple, I do some trials with slightly larger drills. Also, if it starts to become difficult to turn, I back off a bit, turn a bit more, back off again, turn a bit more, etc. (The approved method when tapping threaded holes in metal.)

As I said, not knowing much about Teles when I started, I ordered a Mighty Mite neck (which I didn't use in the end) and it had 21 frets and the FB flush with the end of the neck like the original Teles. As I wanted to bind the FB, the 1/4" rad. was a nuisance so I added the 22nd fret and let it overhang. I then found out that Fender does this too.

It certainly looks that way doesn't it? In theory it isn't, but there's no way of knowing now 'cos the fingerboard's glued on.

It make sense , but in that case, you can't get them out again. Some manufacturers also make a tool for inserting them, which locates in the slot. https://www.rockler.com/power-drive-threaded-insert-tool-power-drive-threaded-insert-tool

I bought a radiused and slotted fingerboard to save myself some time. The first thing to do was to take the corners off the fret slots using a triangular section needle file. I later found out (too late) that I should have also checked the slots with my fret slotting saw. I tried to press them in on the drill press and they weren’t having it. I didn’t want to risk breaking the table on the drill press (I’ve heard of it happening) so I hammered them in and, I mean, really hammered! I’ve already realised that I shouldn’t have routed the neck pocket in the body to suit the ready-made neck, as making a neck to match the pocket is a bit trickier, especially as I want to bind the fingerboard. The neck pocket has a ¼” radius in the corners and I don’t want to try to put a ¼” radius on a bound FB. So the FB will have 22 frets and will overhang the end of the neck, which I’ll endeavour to make fit the pocket as best I can So I made up some binding strips from rosewood and sycamore veneer to finish at 3 mm thick and after some careful measuring cut the FB to its finished width minus 6 mm. Once the FB was bound I sanded the width a little, until it measured exactly the same as the pocket in the body. Once it’s glued onto the neck blank, I’ll trim the neck to the width of the FB on the router table. With any luck the neck should then fit the pocket. So now I nailed the FB to the neck. Well, not really. They are 1.5 mm panel pins used to locate the FB in holes drilled in the fret slots. Now I can blend the end of the FB into the headstock on the spindle sander. And it came out like this. I had to take the truss rod cover off to do this, so I filled it with a piece of balsa wood to stop the hole getting full of sanding dust. I fill as many of the holes as possible before pore filling and varnishing as it makes the job much easier. I use balsa as it crushes easily and can be a bit oversize and be forced into the hole to make a perfect fit. It’s also easily sanded flush with the surface and easy to dig out after finishing. I trimmed most of the surplus off the neck on the band saw and routed it flush with the FB. The FB isn’t glued on yet, as there are one or two things still to do which are easier without it. The first is to sand a radius on the end to fit the neck pocket. It’s not quite as good a fit as the ready-made neck was (it slides in easier) but I think it will do. It will be mostly hidden by the fingerboard overhang anyway. I’ve never liked the idea of using woodscrews to attach a neck to a body. I’ve always used threaded inserts and machine screws on basses and I’ll do the same here. So this is the second thing that’s easier without the fingerboard. With the neck in place I mark the position of the holes. With the inserts installed I wick two or three drops of thin CA around them. Some people have trouble fitting threaded inserts. I do it, using a drill press. If anyone who has a drill press is interested I’ll show how I do it. Or perhaps there’s somewhere else on the forum for that.

The head profile was then cut slightly oversize on the bandsaw. The grain of the maple veneers is so squirrely that it chips out very easily so I took the head down to its final shape on the spindle sander. Here’s the final shape. I had to cut that hole to get access to the truss rod and it had to be that big because it’s a double acting rod and the nut is lower in the neck than the normal Fender one and I need room to be able to turn the Allen key. But the more I look at it, the less I like it, so I decided to make a cover for it. I started by milling a slot the size of the hole but longer. Then I made a rosewood bung to fill the hole. It conforms to the curve of the headstock but it’s a little bit proud of the hole (about 1mm) as it needs a bit of clearance to be able to get it out easily and it looks nicer if it’s a bit proud than if it was flush. If you’ve been following this thread you’ll know how to get it out to adjust the truss rod. Press one end down and the other end comes up and you flip it out. It’s held in place by two small neodymium magnets and the opposite end from the magnets is bevelled.

Someone else's idea, not mine, but you're most welcome.

I gather you'll be using an inner and outer steel slat when bending. Can I pass on a little tip someone gave me when it comes to taking the sides out of the bender? As you're taking the pressure off the ends and the waist, the inner slat tries to straighten out and break your sides. Make some little clips like these. Thes are made from plastic coated fencing wire. They slide into holes in the bending form near the waist and the ends, the flat part going between the inner slat and the wood. Release the pressure on the ends and the waist just enough to insert the clips. You can the safely take off the outer slat and the blanket and the clips keep the inner slat in place. If you already knew all that, please forgive the intrusion

The impression of the inlay shell is made with 'Friendly plastic'. A very low melting poiny polymer which softens in hot water. https://www.amazon.com/friendly-plastic/s?k=friendly+plastic The modification to the spindle sander is quite basic as you can see.

No, there's one corner with a very small radius, so I use a 1/32" (0.8mm) downcut bit. There's a bit of play in the system so I found that a stylus of 1mm works quite well.

I needed to inlay the head veneer before it was glued to the head I cut the recess for the shell on a little home-made copying rig. This was thought up by Keith Mackenzie and can be seen on Chris Paulick’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PQlDAg971c Photo from another instrument. I used the upper caul I made for bending the veneers to clamp them while gluing them to the head and here’s the result. The overlapping veneer was carefully shaved down flush with the surface of the neck.

Yes, it's the Triton (other brands are available ). I have a feeling that the quicker it dries out, the better it keeps its shape, but that may not be true. At any rate it means I can use it more or less straight away.

I fitted the truss rod, glued in a fillet on top of it, skimmed the fillet flush with the surface of the board and completely forgot about taking any photos. Sorry. Trimmed some of the thickness off the headstock on the bandsaw and finished off on the spindle sander. I’ve added a fence to the spindle sander. It’s hardly any more sophisticated than the router table, in fact it’s a bit off the end of the router table. I now need to bend the veneer for the front. The boiling water and clamp method worked OK for the body binding so I decided to try it for the headstock veneer. The lower caul was shaped in exactly the same way as the headstock in the previous photo, and the upper one with the radius 2 mm smaller to allow for the thickness of the veneers. It worked. I just dipped the part to be bent in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes and then clamped the veneers between the cauls and put it in a low oven for about an hour.

At this point I had second thoughts about the Mighty Mite neck. When I ordered it I thought I’d be able to customise it a bit but I realised that what I wanted to do either wasn’t possible or involved so much work it wasn’t worth it. So I decided to make one. Even so, I ordered a slotted fingerboard which I could customise and that might also save me having to buy a 12” radius sanding block, etc. I already had just about everything else I needed. One of the things I wanted to do was veneer the headstock to match the body; difficult, if not impossible with a ready-made Tele neck as I wanted the veneer to go under the fingerboard. There are some large off-cuts of the drop-top so I used a piece to make headstock veneers. Cut two pieces of dyed black veneer and re-sawed an off-cut into two veneers for front and back of headstock and sanded them to 1.5mm thick. Also made a template for the headstock. That brown thing behind them is the neck blank. Just a word about templates. The quality of MDF sold by the DIY stores here goes down year by year. I still have some old pieces that had a very smooth, fine-grained surface and quite a dense core. It wasn’t HDF, it was MDF. The crap they sell now would need the surface sanding if you wanted to paint it and the edge is easily deformed by pressure from the bearing on the router cutter. So I soak the edges of MDF templates with water-thin CA; hence the stains you can see on the surface. It hardens them up nicely. Glued two pieces together for the back veneers. Skimmed the equivalent of the veneer thickness off the end of the neck blank and made a clamping caul. Drilled two holes in areas that will be cut off later and placed two headless panel pins in the holes. The veneer and caul have corresponding holes so it won’t all go sliding about when it’s glued and clamped. Forgot to take a photo of it glued, but as the veneer was oversize I skimmed it flush on the router table. Positioned the template on the neck blank and drilled holes at the tuner positions. The holes are only 5mm diameter and they’ll be opened up to 10mm later, but, for the moment, I can use them with 5mm dowel pins to locate the template. Take it off, put it back on, front or back, etc. Routing the slot for the truss rod on my ultra-sophisticated router table. The fence rotates on a 5mm dowel pin (the black dot at the left-hand end) and fine adjustments are made by tapping the right-hand end with a hammer. The ‘stops’ which determine the length of the slot are fixed with double sided tape. Et voila! Once I’d cut the slot to depth I had to widen it slightly as my router cutter is 6mm diameter and the truss rod is 6.35mm wide for some strange reason.

Thank you for the kind remarks chaps. They're very much appreciated. I carved a lump out of the back using spokeshave, microplane and sanding sticks . . . . . . and now it was time for the neck pocket. When I decided to make this guitar I thought I’d save myself some time and work by buying a Mighty Mite neck from Stewmac. I made a template using the neck itself. I don’t know if this is the approved method but it worked for me. Place the neck on a piece of MDF. Apply double sided tape to some pieces of wood and stick them to the MDF butting them up tightly to the neck. Took the neck out. Cut out most of the MDF where the neck was on the band saw. There’s also a cut-out at the other end which will help me to centralise the template on the body. Routed out the remainder on the router table. At this point I realised that the template was too thick to be able to route the whole depth of the pocket without having to change cutters, so I made another one. This thinner template was too flexible where it overhangs the body, so I added two cauls the same thickness as the body. Then I positioned the template on the body and I realised that, for the photo, I’d stuck the cauls on the wrong end. They were only held in place with double sided tape, so I pulled them off and put them on the right end. I could now trace the outline of the pocket, and then hog out most of the wood with a Forstner bit. Now , I know I took a photo of that, but I’ve lost it! Anyway, I then put the template back on the body and routed the remainder of the pocket. The little white band is a paper scale I print out and stick to the body. This lets me align the template perfectly with the centre line of the body. Pocket routed That looks like a pretty good fit. Good enough for me anyway!

Now I had to find a veneer to cover the bevel. First I needed to make a template. I stuck a piece of paper onto the bevel using repositionable spray adhesive and traced the outline with a pencil. A few years ago I made a bass ukulele (not the one further up this thread, another one) but only had guitar-size back and side sets, which left me with some large rosewood off-cuts. I stuck my tracing onto an off-cut and cut it out leaving about 3 mm all round. I sanded the veneer down to about 1.25 mm thick (flexible enough to bend easily around the bevel) and it’s ready to be glued on. Gluing the veneer onto the body was rather stressful the other time I did it. It has to be bent round the bevel and taped in place whilst it’s trying to slither around because of the glue and if I don’t get it lined up properly and the glue starts to grab I’m in a mess, so I thought of a way to try to make sure that didn’t happen . I used my paper template to trace the outline of the bevel on the inside of the veneer. Then I stuck 5 little blocks of softwood cut at 45° onto the veneer with just a tiny dab of glue. These should enable me to position the veneer on the bevel perfectly (I hope!) Hope there’s enough tape on there. Fingers crossed. Tape off. It looks to be OK. After some VERY careful trimming, especially at each end where the veneer tapers down to nothing, with spokeshave, chisels and cabinet scraper it looked like this.

Now it’s ready for the rest of the binding. The treble side is straightforward, but the bass side binding has to be pushed down in the bevel area, so reducing it in height to about 2 mm in that area helps it to bend. The rebate is cut so that, when the binding is installed, it will be a little proud of the top surface and the sides. It’s easier to scrape the binding flush with the top and sides than the top and sides flush with the binding. I now have to shave the corner off to form the bevel. This left a couple of triangular grooves which I filled with two strips softwood. I’ve only done one bevel like this before, on an OM, and I didn’t trust myself to cut it with a spokeshave and keep a constant 45° angle all the way round. So I took most of it off with the spokeshave and then finished off with this sanding contraption. After sanding, the bevel looks like this. You can see the upper softwood filler. The lower one has almost gone.

No problems about hijacking. Communication is what forums are all about. Wait and see . . . won't be long.

That's looking good When I made the OM I don't think I'd seen the method of shaping the side before gluing the linings in, although I did cut the bevel shape into the top before gluing it on. Shaping the side first is a better way of going about it I think. I'd work out the shape the side needs to be by projection from the shape of the bevelled top. In the drawing shown, I prefer the second bevel to the first. I think it looks more elegant, although many luthiers do bevels like the first one. The one on the right shows how I work out the profile I need on the side.

I've only done it once before Ash (on an OM) but I did it exactly the same way. After all, the area of the bevel on an acoustic is 'solid'. I asked a lot of questions on other forums and received a lot of help and advice, particularly from Steve Kinnaird. I've always been amazed by the generosity of some professional luthiers in freely sharing information. When I built the OM I cheekily wrote to two pros who use a slightly different bracing pattern to what's accepted as 'standard', asking if they would share information on dimensions, etc. They both said 'sure, what would you like to know?'. One even sent me a full size hand-drawn plan. These were guys whos base price started at $6000.

I can now install the purfling, but I can’t install the binding at the same time. I do it a little at a time, holding it in place and applying a drop of water-thin CA and trying not to glue my fingers to it. Should have taken photos but . . . The third piece of binding goes on first. It covers the length of the bevel. It’s not as deep as the rest of the binding, it’s the same depth as the purfling. I take most of the surplus height off with a little block plane and finish off flush with the top with a cabinet scraper. Now I run the router round this area again, as if I were routing for the binding, which tapers off the ends of the bevel top binding. Just as the binding rebate had to be widened on the top, in the area of the bevel, it also has to be deepened in the side by an equivalent amount. I haven’t been able to think of a way of doing that with a router, so I have to resort to craft knives, chisels and patience.