guitarnut

Having figured out the top carve situation, I needed to put the same angle on the neck heel. I used the same router sled setup that I used for the top. This was a bit tricky because I had already radiused the fretboard...had I known I would have left it flat for sure. I drilled small holes in 2 of the tuner locations and a deep countersink...far below where the router bit would travel...in the tenon. This not onlt allowed me to plant it firmly on the table but I used the 2 screws in the headstock to level the neck side to side. Crude, but it worked. I ended up going with a 4 degree angle since my top came out a bit steeper than the 3 degrees I was shooting for...turns out to be closer to the angle PRS uses on the 22s and 24s. I measured the distance from the end of the tenon to the nut end of the fretbaord...20.125". I then ran that 4 degess angle out to this distance on a piece of scrap and that gave me my elevation for the headstock end of the neck. Befoe locking in the angle, I ran a test/cleanup pass. Then I set the angle and adjusted the router so it was just breathing on the end of the tenon. You can see in this pic the result of the first pass. It caught most of the heel but missed the area to the left at the end of the tenon. The next pass was set for final depth and here is the result. Me likey...

Looks good to me. I'll need to bring the neck tenon down in thickness and cut it the carve angle before I can see the finished result. More soon.

Well, not being the patient type and having only limited time to work on guitars, I pushed forward. I thought it through, checked a double checked and made the first cut. Works just like I planned. Some progress shots. When I got to this point...just past the end of the pocket, I pulled the pivot point and shimmed the body flat. I finished the cutting like this. Had I continued on at an angle, I would have nothing to carve out on the horns. The cut would have been down to the binding height. You can see in this pic how it levels off, leaving enough to carve down to the binding level. The binding might be just under 1/4" but that's better than having no detail in the carve on top.

Well, I'm getting more info on the carve. I have decided to go with a 3 degree neck angle which means I need a matching surface on the top. As I see PRS tops, there is an "alley" that runs, at the neck angle, from just in front of the bridge to the neck pocket. This places the PUs and fretboard in the same plane. So, my thinking is this... By using a router sled, with the body 3 degrees to the table, I can shave the top down at a 3 degree angle along this area. The carve is less severe as it moves to the neck so removing this material across the full width of the body should be fine. I started by setting up the Shopsmith with the extra table and trunion on it and laying a piece of OSB down as a base. I cut 2 pieces of hard maple scrap into rails and attached some 1" PVC pipe. I ran the rails thru the planer together to make sure they are exactly the same thickness before attaching the pipe. I then made a sled out of scrap mahogany and ash. Then leveled everything left to right and front to back. Initially, I thought I had the setup I wanted. But as I adjusted cut angle by sliding a shim under the body, I could get the depth of cut I wanted at the pocket but I would have been cutting way too far up the body to get to a zero pass. Then it occured to me that my pivot point was the end of the body. It needed to be at my zero cut line (shown in red). I moved the shim to that point which elevated the end of the body off the base allowing it to pivot at the new location. The 2 MDF blocks that are screwed down at the body horns are able to pivot on their screws allowing me to tweak the angle. Much better control now. The zero cut line is just to the right of the bit...during the first pass, the left side of the bit would travel along this line. Now I just need the courage to fire it up and start cutting. Mark

So, to determine the angle I want, I started by measuring the distance from where I assume the top starts to roll off. I assume this is just in front of the bridge since I wouldn't want the bridge posts in at an angle but perpendiculat to the top. I made a mark at the bridge side of the nridge PU route and measured out to the farthest point. Almost 7". Then on a piece of scrap, I set a 4.5 degree angle and drew it out to 7". This tells me the amount of top that would be removed at the end of the pocket so the carve matches the neck angle. Or more importantly, the amount that will remain. I transferred this mark to the top. Following this mark down to a minimum 1/4" faux binding for the rest of the guitar gives me a visual reference to see if the angle is in line with what PRS is doing. To me, 4.5 degrees seems a bit steep. Maybe more in the 3 degree mark that ehawley provided. Thanks again Ed! I'll map that out and see where it lands. Since PRS puts the angle on the neck heel and not the pocket, I'm in good shape to move forward. Peace, Mark

I took another look at the neck angle situation. First. I wanted to get an idea of how the neck is set. I found a few detail shots that shed some light on this. I can see from these that the thickness of the top, at the neck pocket, varies a bit from model to model. The thickness here would indicate the steepness of the angle...more top remaining, lesser angle. Less top thickness remaining, steeper angle.

Still lots of work to do on the body but it's shaping up. Peace, Mark

I've carved alot of maple and some walnut but mahogany carves like butter! It took all of 15 mins to rough carve this neck. The Ibex plane shaved beautiful "pigtails" to whole time...no grain wierdness like figured maple. A real pleasure to work with. After the carve, I leveled the fretboard. The pencil lines are hard to see on rosewood but you can see that one side of the fretboard has been sanded level. I used the same aluminum channel and 120 grit. Fully leveled and ready for inlays. When I cut the additional block for the heel, I measured it at 4.5" in length, thinking that might be too long and that I could carve it back. My thought now is I could have gone a bit longer. But I know a major complaint of PRS fans was the increased length of the neck heel at some point in the guitar's prodution. The earlier one was more compact. I need to shape it a bit more to follow the lines of the body.

Everything ready to glue up the fretboard. Clampzilla!!! Out of the clamps and ready for profiling. I braced the neck with a piece of scap the same thickness as the heel. Part of the profiling included routing off the end of the fretboard flush with the neck. The 22 fret is fairly close to the end of the neck but it's fully supported so I'm not concerned about it. I'm thinking it's the result of "stretching" the scale by a 1/2". The balance of the stretch will be made up at the bridge location. Time to start carving...

I made a plug to fill in part of the recess that I had drilled in the headstock...just to have more wood for the TR cover to bite into. I also made a small pug to sit above the TR nut. I resawed a veneer for the headstock. It's thick enought that I can do a faux binding on the headstock too. I need to figure out how to take thickness off the headstock to accomodate it. More on this later. To get ready for the fretboard, I did a quick leveling. Using a piece of aluminum box channel and 120 grit. I made pencil lines on the neck... ...and it just a few passes to level it out. Though you can see a low spot on the bass side near the heel. It took just a bit more to level it out.

Thanks! I haven't decided yet whether I'll angle the neck. I'm using a TOM bridge so some compensation for the height is going to be needed. I left the pocket a bit shallow until I know which way I'm going. I can still angle it...it would only lower to outer edge of the pocket by an 1/8th to 3/16ths. Then as you say, I would have to reshape the front of the heel to make it fit properly. I could also take a 4 degree wedge off the bottom of the heel and be done with it...not sure how that would look though. I've also considered insetting the TOM. It might look kinda cool in the carved top. I have plenty of depth to do it and I could use the same "dish" treatment as the pots and switch with a slight channel between the 2 posts. I'm not sure yet. I started this build on a whim...still figuring it out as I go. I haven't actually seen a PRS other than photos. I may visit the local dealer before it's done...guitar dealer that is. Peace, Mark

This is as far as I want to go with the pocket for now. I left the pocket a bit shallow until I get the fretboard on and bridge placed to see exactly how proud of the pocket the neck needs to be. I don't have access to a PRS to measure this so I'll have to figure it our later... I'm not using a PRS bridge, so it wouldn't matter anyway. A decent fit considering I was sort of making it up as I went. More soon. Mark

Out of the clamps and ready to be profiled. I usually use a flush trim bit to do this but given the thickness of this top, I made a pass from the back with a longer pattern bit to reduce the cut the flush trim bit would have to take on the final pass. Profiling completed and ready for the neck pocket. A quick check before routing. The neck pocket template is useable but could be better. The neck pocket on a PRS guitar is surrounded by more surface than some guitars so the stubby template does the job. A progress shot...

Getting back to the body. I attached the routing template and profiled the mahogany back. Before gluing up the top, I need to clean up the glue joint. A little trick I like to use is to attach the top to the back of the body using double stick tape. This allows me to pass it thru the planer fully supported. Before the planer... And after. I also flip it over and take a very slight pass on the glue side of the mahogany back. This gives me 2 clean surfaces for gluing. Compare this shot to the one above before profiling. Ready to glue up the top. Clampzilla!

Part of profiling the neck is getting rid of material above the tenon. I took it to .75". I'll take it to final thickness after I route the PU cavities. Note that the portion of the tenon below this is still thicker than it needs to be. I'll take care of this with a block plane. After clamping the neck on it's side so there's no pressure on the headstock, I planed the sides of the tenon to the proper width.

I rough cut the heel to narrow it down. Then I attached a blck to the band saw table to support the neck while I trimmed it down to the headstock. After changing to a 1/4" blade, I rough cut the headstock... ...then set up the neck template to profile the edges of the neck. You can see the tenon that was not included in the neck template. It's one thing to not include it, but to sell a product as "complete" and just leave it up to the user to figure it out is just irresponsible.

22 slots, ready to go. Now this is where things got a bit dicey. My neck template did not include the tenon that is used to glue in the neck. A major oversight by the template maker, in my opinion. Fortunately, he made the neck pocket template in a way that it lines up with 2 points on the body...the edge of the neck PU route and the PU side of the trem route. And it pins into the trem mounting holes. I placed the neck template into the neck pocket template and pulle it to the nut side until it snugged up in the template...which was with it's end right at the nut side of the neck PU route. The difference between there and the end of the neck pocket is the length of the tenon...1.5625". I placed a light source under the templates and and slid them until the light just peeked out. I marked the open portion of the pocket templete to define the tenon on the neck heel. I neede to open up the access for the truss rod nut. I used the boring feature on the Shopsmith to do this. I drilled a center pass and then angled the neck to either side and widened it as it gets closer to the nut.

Jigged up and ready to cut the truss rod channel. The veneer will cover the extra channel beyond the truss rod nut. I glued up a 4" x 4.5" block to beef up the heel and to give me something to carve into later. While the heel was curing I moved on to the fretboard. Most PRS models have a 25" scale. I opted to use a 25.5" scale. I lined up the fret scale template on the notch that sets the leading edge of a Fender nut. I flushed up the end of the fretboard and taped it down.

With the neck clamped to the bench and the headstock hanging over the edge, I used the block plane to thin out the headstock...keeping an eye on the glue line and the nut line to guide the planing. Unless you're just really good with a plane, and I'm not, every p[ass on the headstock face takes the nut line closer to the heel of the neck. So I set up a couple of stops to brace the neck while I planed the top. This brought the nut line back to the headstock and also thinned out the nut end of the neck making carving a bit easier later. I took the headstock down to 5/8". Probably needs to be a bit thinner considering it will have a veneer on it. After thinning it a bit more, I put it back in the stops to do final positioning on the nut line. Note the nut line and glue line are straight and perpendicular to the edge...meaning that the neck and headstock are flat top to bottom and left to right. With all that done, I laid out the truss rod.

With the 2 pieces in place, I checked the joint on the back side of the neck. Looks good to me. I've seen several ways of clamping a scraf joint. I went with this one. I clamped the neck to the bench on edge, and clamped a piece of scrap so it's face was parallel with the end of the headstock...this allowed me to keep the longer portion of the neck at the edge of the beck. There is a part of the joint that will be completely covered during gluing that could glue a caul to the neck so I taped some wax paper to a couple of cauls so I wouldn't have to deal with holding it in place while clamping. With the neck clamped down and the scrap holding the headstock, I just clamped the 2 pieces together. After a couple of clamps were in place, I removed the neck to get the additional clamps in place. Done!

I started on the neck today. I was a bit optimistic about the number of necks I could get from this blank...I got 2. I laid them out for the scarf joints. I'm not sure what angle PRS uses on their headstocks but I found this approach online and went with it. Measure in 4", draw a line, measure in 3.5" further and mark a line. Then conect them with a diagonal line. I freehanded them on the bandsaw. After clamping them to the beck top, I used a block plane to flatten out the joint. The few doark spots are where the plane has removed material. Here it is all flattened out and ready to glue up.

Fortunately, it came out okay...I'll use it on a future build. A Les Paul Jr perhaps. Mark

The templates I have don't indicate that there is any milling before the top goes on. Just to be certain I can get the neck PU to the control cavity, I laid out the various routes to make sure I could drill it from the neck pocket/neck PU routes. On to the top. PRS builds 10 tops, this is probably a 4. Not the best flame I've used and it isn't bookmatched but I think it'll be pretty with a nice carve and the right finish on it. Out of the clamps and traced out...ready for profiling. At almost .750" thick, it will allow a deep carve. Nearly .500" tranisition from bridge to binding. I took this shot of the practice neck. I didn't take photos along the way because I was thinking too much about what I was doing. Now that I've been thru it once, it's far less mysterious. I'll take pics as I build the actual neck for this one. Peace, Mark

After a few punishing weeks at work, I'm back to building. I have today off and the whole weekend to play. I've been wanting to expand my builds and I have moved from Teles to the Wolfgang and now to a PRS. Specs: 3 piece mahogany back 2 piece flame maple top with faux binding 25.5" scale. Half inch longer than stock...just what I'm used to playing. Mahogany neck with rosewood fretboard Pearl dot inlays and flame maple headstock veneer Locking roller TOM bridge String thru body with ferrules Scatter wound custom humbuckers Volume, tone, 3 way switch...might add phase switching. And so it begins. I've had this piece of 20 year old mahogany sitting in the studio for months now. It's just over 2.50" thick. I also have a small piece that I'll use for a test neck. I resawed the mahogany for the body and neck...taking a 1" thick piece for the neck with a body thickness of a touch over 1.50" before planing. I cut the body pieces just to the right length for each part of the body...the plank wasn't long enough to cut 3 equal lengths...plus, I wanted a piece left over for the neck heel. Here are the neck materials...I think I can get 4 necks out of this board if I'm careful. The body blank is glued up, centered and traced out. Ready for profiling.

Thanks.