Yup. My Aunt and Uncle live there and we go there for Christmas (via Hong Kong this year...).
As feared, not as productive today as I'd hoped. My first project this morning was to build a scarfing sled for the router. I thought before I did, I'd just see if I could put the glued up headstock back in the jig for the table saw and get a respectable result. Turns out I could!
Made up a jig for gluing the headstock to the neck and clamped her up.
Yeah, I'll call that a win (had to include a foot shot for y'all).
While the glue was drying I made the fretboard template cut her to size. Normally I'd cut the board 3mm skinny, cut the fret slots, then glue the sides back on to create a grain matched binding type thing. I did that with this but the off cut started twisting up, so I abandoned that idea and won't bind the board on this one. I'm just playing, after all.
By the way, the router bit with bearings top and bottom is one of the most useful tools I've got; very easy to make sure you are always routing "downhill". Go one way with the template on the bottom, flip the piece and template over, lower the bit to run the top bearing on the template and you're routing downhill again.
i don't have the router table fully built yet, so I clamped the neck off cut to the table as a fence.
Run a test piece to make sure I've got the fence set just right; wouldn't want to make a dumbass mistake here, would you?
Perfect!
A couple of passes along the fence and I've got a snug little channel for the truss rod, slightly offset to the treble side. Why offset, you ask? I'm running a fairly thin neck and wanted to put a carbon fibre rud in the neck for stability, so I offset the truss rod to the treble side and put the carbon fibre rod on the bass side.
Well, that's it for a while. Work, Christmas and life are getting in the way for the next month. I'm slightly bummed because I was really getting into it and enjoying building again. Soon come...
Cheers
Buter
ps - you didn't really believe I intended to offset the truss rod, did you?
That little boo-boo really pissed me off since I am very careful and always make test passes. In this case, however, I didn't realise that I'd flipped the test block and was setting the fence to the wrong datum. I absolute nailed the wrong line, though, eh?
Fortunately, I had a few CF rods that I used to use for reinforcing bass necks. I will be interested to see what effect this arrangement has on neck stability.