Bainzy

Building a Double-Neck Strat Body I just wrote this short article/tutorial for my website and thought you guys might enjoy reading it!

Pretty much 99.9% of Strat necks that have the extra 22nd fret are 25.5" scale length just like the 21 fret necks - it's just a fretboard extension in most cases and doesn't alter the scale length at all.

Until around 1960 Gibson used a straight channel for their truss rods, and they did what Wez suggested - the channel was angled so the rod was much deeper at the body end than at the headstock end. Right now I'm using something inbetween the two versions, instead of either a straight channel or a channel that dips in the middle, my channel is flat at the body end then around the 7th fret starts to curve upwards, ending up 1/8" higher at the other end.

The top was 5/8" thick on the first Les Pauls made before and including 1960 before final sanding, although some ended up closer to 1/2" thick after final sanding. After they started making them again in 1968, they've varied over the years but I don't think any were more than 3/4" thick, the Historics they make now are the same thickness as the old ones but I'm not sure about Standards.

I wouldn't spend any more money on the Stanley ones than any other cheaper spokeshaves, but if I was going for a quality one I would spend the money on a Lie Nielsen or Clifton. In my experience, the new Stanley tools aren't much better at what they do than the cheaper imported ones, the blades aren't great, the spokeshave cap iron gets shavings caught under it instead of acting as a chip breaker, and the beds aren't that flat. You can soup up cheap spokeshaves though; stick in a thicker replacement blade, make a new chipbreaker out of 1/4" thick brass and file the bed flat and you'll get a fantastic tool.

I just bought a 1 piece Alder body blank, dimensions 2" x 13 5/8" x 23 3/4" - it looks like it still needs to dry out a bit more, although it was quoted as being KD to 8-10% for 30 days before being listed for sale - how should I store this when it arrives? I work in my garage, the climate here is typical north of England climate so the garage can get a bit cold, should I leave it in the garage or in the house before working on it? Is stickering 1 piece and weighting a waste of time? http://i10.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/ag/ab/9cf7_1.JPG http://i8.ebayimg.com/05/i/000/ag/ab/9e64_1.JPG

I haven't got it corrected in that particular neck, while removing the fillet I ended up in A&E after the hot knife I was using slipped and punctured my hand. After that healed I put the neck aside for a while, changed the truss rod channel width I was using and routed out the second one (this time making sure I didn't press too hard when gluing in the fillet). I managed to check it wasn't too tight this time by banging the rectangular anchor a little to the left and right after the fillet was installed, this showed me the rod could move in the channel. I've still got to re-do the original truss rod installation in the first neck, but I'm progressing well with the second - I've finished making the fretboard and headstock, and I'm about to cut out the tenon. I'd have put the progress pics up already but I've had a bit of trouble getting my photobucket account to work lately.

You're not gonna find anything bigger than a 13" planer unless it's a really expensive industrial model, your best bet is probably to get a 10" combined planer/thicknesser, and then join up two surfaced and thickness pieces of wood for the body. If you must use 1 piece body blanks that are around 13" wide, while a 13" planer may just squeeze them in, you still need some way of preparing one face as a thicknesser isn't designed to remove warps or cups in a board. Your best bet for wide bodies is probably just to plane one face flat with a hand plane, then either run it through a 13" thicknesser or get out a marking gauge, run it around the body edges at the desired thickness and then use the hand plane to thickness it down to size.

Around £10 in some places for a 4" or 8" long block does seem a bit pricey when you can knock out a 24" one on the Safe-T-Planer in about a minute with wood that costs a few quid at the most. I've never actually seen any radius sanding blocks for sale by any major or small companies that are longer than 8", and when you get one that's around 20" long, sanding literally takes about a minute or two and is far more easy to get it accurate.

I take it you mean English Sycamore? Sometimes there's confusion as apparently there's a completely different wood in America that Americans call sycamore. I'm using it to build the necks for my doubleneck Strat, as there's nothing to worry about. Planing and finishing wise it's exactly like hard canadian maple, weight wise it might be a little lighter but I can't feel the difference personally. Therefore tone is pretty much like hard maple. Stability wise, I've got quite a lot of pieces and none have them have been unstable, I'd think it's as stable as any other hard maple piece with the same type of grain - if it's fairly straight grained it'll be fine. While I've not got round to finishing a guitar with it, I asked Jonathan at Feline Guitars if he'd used it before, he said they'd used it on many guitars successfully and there should be no problems with it and have used it quite a few times instead of maple.

Looks like you still might have a fair bit of sanding to do after though. I had a go at the Safe-T-Planer method last weekend, I couldn't believe how rediculously simple it is and it works flawlessly, I turned a stick of scrap pine into an accurate 20" long radius block in minutes!

You're only one grit away from getting a just about perfect mirror finish - with high quality blades (that I know can hold the edge), after using 2000 grit sandpaper I go up to 2500 grit for a really sharp edge and that gets the blade looking mirror-like quickly. At first I didn't think it'd be worth it going up to 2500 but after trying to get light tight joints for hot hide glue, it really does make it effortless with a LN #5 1/2 jack, producing see-through shavings, although it's a waste on a plane you'd use for coarser work as your blade edge won't be as tough.

For cambered plane blades I usually use a similar technique to straight edged blades. I got fed up with honing guides a while ago and found that if you ground the primary bevel fairly accurately, and on a rough stone shape the bevel to exactly how you want it (eg. straight with a honing guide, or cambered), when you resharpen you can just use your hand to guide the blade for a long time until you regrind the bevel. You could go about it a few ways, such as with a Veritas roller as mentioned above, you could try find something called 'slip stones' which are like waterstones but are concave to allow you to sharpen tools with curved blades, or you could try do it freehand. I prefer to use the freehand method, after flattening the back of the blade I gently sharpen the blade by moving the area of the curve that's sharpened every few strokes from left to right until I'm happy that it's sharp all across the edge. Unless you're using very coarse stones, it'd take you a long time to wear the blade camber into an uneven shape, and if you end up using waterstones that long anyway you're using them wrong, waterstones should usually only require about 30 seconds of use for each grit at the most.

That should be okay then, as we don't use the compost from the bins until it's become soil after about a year - there's a sliding door at the bottom of the compost bin that lets the finished goods out which is pretty handy.

I think it's probably more a tradition thing than a strength issue. If there really was such a problem with Mahogany, people would add bushings for the neck screws to be inserted into to remove any issues.