SIMpleONe89

Ah I did that too. It took a long time and I may also create a jig!

Thanks! So does your work!

Then I finished up routing the tremolo cavity. Again this was quite scary because I had to use the long pattern bit and the last time I accidentally routed into the top while plunging back up. Luckily no mistakes this time round! And I did a test fit with some hardware lying around. I'll probably get Zebra humbuckers again. They look nice. A picture of the neck joint. It feels really comfortable at the moment with the thumb behind, but I still have trouble reaching the 24th fret. I might do a scoop on the lower horn. Whew! Hard part's over! Routing the neck pocket always makes me nervous!

Then I started to route the neck pocket, pickup and tremolo cavities. But before that I drilled a bunch of relief holes. If you have trypophobia, now's a good time to look away. Then routed the neck pocket to a depth of 18mm, bearing in mind my neck is slightly thicker by 2mm. This time, the pocket was really tight so I had to sand off some meat from the neck itself. I may have to widen the neck pocket slightly later on because from preliminary measurements the neck may be slightly off towards the bass side by 1mm at the bridge, and that makes a significant difference in terms of string alignment. Then with the neck in place, I drew out the position for the neck humbucker. In hindsight, I could've gotten 2mm closer towards the neck but I didn't want to take chances of the humbucker not fitting properly. I guess it won't make a significant difference in terms of tone. I'm hoping to get the bright, neck humbucker tone you hear on players like John Petrucci, Steve Vai etc.

Did some work over the past few days. I rounded over the entire back of the guitar, including the neck pocket, because I'm going for an all-access neck joint. The round over makes it more comfortable and gives easy access to the higher frets. And I also drilled out the holes for the neck ferrules.

That looks good. I bet it'll look great if left as a matte finish. I can barely see the patched area but I'm not sure if it's some lacquer run in the area above the bridge pup cavity.

Dayum that looks awesome! I love that fretboard! Care to share how you routed such a nice switch slot? My last one wasn't perfect and a tad too wide.

Oh right I was looking at his picture and I thought the sharp line was the centre.

That looks much better! Hope this goes well. I haven't tried this but maybe for the short mahogany you could cut off a scrap from the same piece and just glue on the horns. But you may need to do a heavy stain or solid colour because the grains won't match. I have a short spare body blank that isn't long enough and I may just try that, or do a smaller guitar.

But wouldn't that shape be extremely uncomfortable for the thumb? I prefer my necks to be relatively flat along the middle.

How did you make that interesting pearloid pattern?

Killer top! Can't wait to see it carved. How are you going to carve it?

Some more pics in natural light:

And now for the neck carving! This time round was much tougher because I had a thicker neck blank to start with. I drew lines and opted for a flat profile because I love to play with the thumb behind and because I have small hands. Then carved out the facets... I reckon carving the neck is probably the safest step of building a neck. There's so much wood to work with and one small slip up can be easily fixed, unless you carve through to the truss rod! That being said, it's a rewarding process as it starts to take shape. A long process based heavily on the feel of it in my opinion. Some people use routers to carve the neck but where's the tender loving care? Hand carving necks allow for a unique neck, like snowflakes - no two are the same! Anyway, so after much filing, scraping and sanding, the neck is done! Please don't judge me for the messy table. I'll clean up after I'm done. I bought this flamed maple neck blank from StewMac but unfortunately the figures aren't as crazy as my top or some other flamed necks. Hopefully I can pop the grain with brown dye later on and maybe with finish the figures will come out. The headstock looks alright though.

I also sanded the fretboard up to 1500 grit. And of course it has a 14" radius, which is comfortable for my style of playing, and because that's the only radius block I have at the moment. And this is after the frets installed. I opted for StewMac's medium fretwire this time and kinda regretted it. The first build had jumbos and I loved the feel. Anyway no harm done because most of my guitars have small to medium fretwire. For the frets, I tried a different approach this time. I chose to hide the tangs so I cut off the tangs at the end and filled the slots with ebony dust and CA glue. Unfortunately there was one fret which I might have missed out which has its tang sticking out. I will probably paint it over with some black acrylic paint before finishing. As you can see above, the tangs can't be seen! I think it looks nicer this way than having the small bit of metal sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the beautiful ebony. And I also scrapped the edges to round the fingerboard in between the frets. This makes a huge difference in terms of comfort. I also glue in my frets with a drop of CA glue, but that alone still caused a few squeeze outs here and there, which can be scraped off easily.

Ok some major updates! Haven't been posting but I managed to finish the neck this week. First up, the inlays. I cut out my "signature" asymmetrical diamonds (Not by choice. It's really hard to cut perfectly for such small items!) for the 12th and 24th fret. Then I added abalone dot markers for the remaining fret positions. Here's a picture...Yucks! That looks gross! Ah much better! She cleans up well. And of course I'm unable to get a 100% accurate CNC slot because I'm only human and I have terrible eyesight, plus the slots are really tiny! I also hate working with abalone dot markers because the pretty ones I select almost always get sanded down to ugly, plain looking ones. A super tiny difference of 0.5mm shaved off can be a huge difference aesthetically! Thanks Andy. I strongly agree with the third point - getting madder and madder at the mistakes I made! I'll try the timbermate and hopefully the brown stain I use will be similar to the stained timbermate. I have Walnut and Natural at the moment. Fortunately the tearouts I got were tiny, in the corners of the tip of the headstock and near the nut. Definitely won't use filler for that and I should be able to blend them in smoothly.

Yes please share how you did the carve!

Wow that flame is intense! Looks very PRS. I like!

Beautiful maple! Looking forward to it!

Is it going to be wide enough for the body?

Thanks pros. My truss rod is pretty thin at 10mm so it should be fine. Luckily Norris stopped at 3mm!

What's the safest, minimum thickness between the bottom of the truss rod channel and the outside world? I can't imagine if I accidentally carve into the truss rod!

Oh right I forgot this was for a customer. The solid stripe would look nice too I think.

Looks amazing scott. Can't wait to see it finished. Those round over glue lines look like the ones on my current build so I'm glad that they will sand out!

Why don't you route a middle humbucker and use pickup rings? That way the pickups will all be next to each other and cover up the defect. Looks cool too.