Rockhorst

Can anyone judge the scarf joint based on the pictures? I saw an old test piece that I did with my router and I think that was not as bad as I remembered it to be, compared to the sanded version. I think I'll draw up some vectors images of the jig and have it lasered, the 'lazy' git that I am...

Guess you're right Scott. I'd sort of come to that conclusion, so I saw this coming. It's just a pity with all the work and elbow grease that went into it. Oh well, I'll get back to it in August! Thanks for the input, greatly appreciate all the extra eyes

I just butt joined a piece to the heel after matching the faces with a router pass. I know that's not the most stable joint, but I've seen some tests with titebond holding, and I guesstimate that the tensions and stresses in a guitar neck are relatively puny compared to that. I've included pictures of the entire neck (can post larger ones if needed) and I'd like your judgement. I'm torn between continuing with this neck or starting over. The scarf isn't perfect, and the top face of the neck needs to be planed down further to make it flat. At it's flattest it's now 19 mm, the high point is 19.5 mm. It's because the joint moved at glue up, even though I did a dry run and used locator pins. I haven't got jointers or jointer planes that could make this a fast job, so it may not be worth it. I was able to square up the neck-to-headstock transition. Also, this is a 10 degree scarf, which moves the meeting point of the to faces a little too much towards the headstock for my taste. Maybe I should've gone for a more standard Ibanez 14 degree. I'd have to make a new jig first for that. Anyway, I'm taking a trip for a few weeks soon, so enough time to contemplate. Enough talk, picture time! Let me know what you think.

Back of the neck

Detail of the front

Make or break in the next couple of days. If the scarf joint went well, gluing a little extra maple to the heel should, in the end, be barely noticeable on the finished guitar. If you know about it, you can spot it in the lower cutaway, but otherwise. It should not be a problem with integrity I think, especially with a fretboard glued on top. Even if it goes south, I'd rather practice on this one a little longer. Maybe it wasn't clear yet, but I've already did some work on it, so the alternative is throwing it in the trash (or keep it for that short scale build that may one day arise).

I've already got a spare blank. Different setup, but I ordered two at the same time: maple with bubinga strip and maple with double purpleheart stripes. Working on the bubinga now, hope to save the purperheart for a later project. But, if need be, I can start working on that one.

One thing I should add is that I custom ordered my neck blank from a small local wood dealer that specializes in musical instruments. I made some stupid choices when I determined the dimensions of the blank. Next time I'll order it slightly thicker and longer, as that has no influence on the sales price whatsoever. That's the real lesson here. For now, I'm trying to work with it, as the wood is to nice looking not to give it a try (again, pictures tomorrow).

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

An inch short? Errrr

How did this happen?

I already had discovered I was working with tight margins, I should've ordered my neck blank about 2" longer to be on the safe side. Beginner's mistake. I wanted to cut the headstock part with some room for error, but I totally messed up the math. That wasn't necessarily a problem yet, but I started cutting the scarf joint with a (Japanese) hand saw and the blade twisted and wandered to much. After fixing that up, getting everything at the same angle and flat, my margin was way gone. I'm now scarfing on a totally separate piece of maple. It's drying in clamps now. If it totally fails, I'll start over, but as someone aptly said: part of the process is fixing your mistakes. Last night I redid my measurements and calculations and I now have solid figures for a future attempt, if need be. I do have an old cut off piece from the same blank that's just over the right length to attach to the heel. Got lucky there.

Pictures coming up in the morning, so you can help me judge the situation.

2 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Have you seen the P-bass I made last year?

Link?

Well my neck's come up about an inch too short Feared this might happen but proceeded hoping for a miracle. I reckon I could add a piece of maple to the heel end and it would hardly be noticable....Beats tossing an otherwise good plank I guess.

That scarf joint business is giving me a hard time...I can get the surfaces flat at a consistent angle with the jig and some sandpaper, but I can't get the edge between the horizontal and the slope to be square to the board. Could I just glue it on and square it up 'after the fact'?

Hey Steve, it's funny to see how we are sort of running in parallel. The same day you posted you're belt sander options, I had been researching the exact same options. I thought the disc sanders with angled table would be great to finish up scarf joints without a router...

Makes sense. I'll try to minimize it though, as my means of planing are, I think, limited. I wouldn't want to do that with a router, most likely sandpaper?

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

Gibson style? Gibson are more known for not scarfing! I think they did at some point, however I'm unsure on the orientation.

My bad! I thought they used a scarf with the headstock part glued underneath.

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

....or am I missing something?

Dunno  Referring to this picture, I was going for the illustration in the middle (No 1). I seems to me that the pieces should fit together with as close as 'knife edges' as possible and keeping it flat?

Thanks Prostheta  I'll do the pencil check. I should maybe specify that the plan is using the Ibanez type of joint, so the frayed end will be on the top side, covered by the fretboard, instead of the Gibson style. Does that change anything in your answer?

Fixed the control cavity route to satisfaction. Curve doesn't follow the body as nicely as intended, but it's good enough. Once I get the backplate done, I'm pretty sure you'll hardly be able to tell anyway.

More exciting news: made a jig for a 10 degree scarf joint and processed half the neck. Turns out I ordered the blank a little on the short side, so I only had a few millimeters to spare to also make the headstock out of it, didn't work out. So I'm gonna put some maple on the other side, as I had originally intended. Jig worked well. Part of the success is definitely due to reinforcing the MDF with some aluminum rims. Headstock and gluing is planned for next week, probably won't have the time for it in the next couple of days.

I was thinking of thicknessing the headstock part down to 14 mm before gluing. Is that ok? (just checking)

(also just checking: should I worry about the slightly frayed edge? I'm guessing it'll be ok after sanding and such?)

Loving those curves! Great looking guitar, I hope you get it to the color you want.

I was afraid this was going to be an 'anything goes' kinda question

Thanks Knightro! New template on the way.

I hope to start on the neck this weekend. I've got some options there: a big slab of maple, two maple planks which are bend a bit but can be combined with a scarf joint to a flat blank, and...I have a maple plank with bubinga center strip and one with a double purple heart line...The last two are a bit on the thin side (only 19.5 mm), but I can solve that with a slightly thicker fretboard or a shallower neck pocket.

I'd like to try white binding around the fretboard and headstock. I've seen what a breeze this is with a router table, but I'll have to do a few jigs to make it work with my hand router. Nice challenge.

Question though: at what stage should I glue the fretboard to the neck? I think the steps are:

• cut slots
• add radius (14" throughout)
• trim sides
• cut binding channel
• add binding
• insert frets

My best guess is to glue it just before or after adding the radius, is that correct? What's a bit confusing to me is that working on the neck contour should be done with fretboard attached without a radius, but radiusing would be easier without a contour on the neck (or not glued in at all). Pointers? I can't find any tutorials on necks with a scarf joint and binding, tips and suggestions appreciated.

Carved the belly cut today with a saw rasp. This was by far the most enjoyable and rewarding job so far. It was a lot of fun to see those curves just magically appearing as I rasped away.

There's also something that went wrong (naturally). Turns out my control cavity is about as wide as my router base. I hadn't noticed this, so while routing the recess for the control plate, the router plunged when routing the part closest to the body outline. I managed to hide that by widening the recess with a chisel. I took some work to get the sides straight, and now I'm right at the edge (or slightly over) of the roundover. To make matters worse, the depth of the recess varies from 4.0 mm to 5.5 mm. This sucks...

Since the recess is now hand carved on one side, I don't have a matching template that I could use with a router to flatten it all out. This template inlay illustrates it nicely:

Options I see are:

Option 1)  make a new template and hope for the best, there's really no room to take more wood out if I want a flush backplate, due to the round over. On a next build I'll do cavities before round over I think

Option 2) a bit more radical: make a new template for a back plate the includes the edge of the guitar.

Any suggestions?

19 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

I got pretty dang lucky here. I had my extra long router base on the router, shut the power off and grabbed the base, while the motor was winding down my hand slipped and took a good chunk out of 2 of my fingers!!

Thanks for sharing! Important story!

Made sort of a jig from cut off pieces, double sided tape and a plate of MDF to support the router while cutting the binding channel. Worked like a charm, wish I had taken the time to set this up (basically identical, but mirrored) when doing the round over. Would've been perfect then. Lesson learned.

Build is now progressing nicely I have to say. I pre-drilled the control cavity and will route that somewhere in the next couple of days. Then on to the belly contour before moving on to the neck. I'm going to postpone routing the humbuckers and neck pocket until I have the neck (close to) finished.

The awesomeness that is double-sided tape never ceases to amaze me I'll give it a shot.

Prostheta, that sounds like a very good idea. This is a picture of my router base, not sure how to go about it?

The ridge you see in the boo boo is 1 mm at it's deepest point. If I had a nice way of thicknessing the body, I'd probably just take a millimeter of and redo it, but I'm afraid that I can't keep the back flush.

Looking very good on those templates!

(Also looking at the pictures I'm only now noticing that I'm to close to the center line at the bottom of the neck pocket with the roundover)