J_48_Johnson

I layed out the neck marked the tuners location cut the headstock angle cut the groove and installed a double action truss rod glued down the ebony fretboard did the inlays and side dots sanded the fretboard to a 12" radius installed the frets trimmed the fret ends on the 12th. fret, instead of using double dots, I am using a garnet trimmed in a gold ring, and did a little work at the body end of the fretboard after that, I carved the neck with a spokeshave, rasps, and sandpaper

This is my third build, but the first where I made the neck. On the first two, I bought the neck and made the body. On the third, I am making a neck through Les Paul. I bought everything and started the build. I used a big chunk of maple for the neck, got the plans, (for dimensions), and started the build. Since I was going to make a one piece neck, it had to be thick and wide enough for the headstock angle and width. After messing around on the computer, I found a picture I knew I had but couldn't find when I started this thread. Here's a picture of the wood when I started the build. The three on the left are the pieces I used for this build. The one kind of out of the picture on the far left is the neck wood. The one to the far right is a free piece the guy sent me for whatever reason when I bought the wood for this project. The yardstick is in there to give you a reference on how big these boards are.

I lurk here daily and have posted a few times, so I hope I won't be out of line by saying welcome aboard. In the top picture, it looks like you've rounded the tip of the horn. Is it rounded off or just the camera angle? The reason I'm asking is because I rounded them off in my first build and I've never seen anyone else do it.

I was thinking about getting a curved sole spokeshave. Let me know if you figure them out. They have to be great for spooning out wood on a non flat surface.

Short story... My Dad has had a spokeshave for years, and I think when I was a kid I messed around with it once trying to figure out how to use the darned thing while working on my pinewood derby car. All I did was gouge the wood and I gave up. Anyway, I've seen people post about using them for making your own necks. I bought one along with other tools when I was gathering things for my next build. I am now in the process of making my third guitar, a neck through LP. This morning I started to cut the neck profile. Set up with the spokeshave and some rasps, I started work. Following Melvyn Hiscock's directions from his book, I made the profile, (rough), at both ends of the neck and started using the spokeshave to bring them together. At first, I tried to cut too much. Then, too little. Then I got the right amount of curl from the blade, but it went out of tune somehow. I messed around with it and figured out how to lock the blade in place and I was set. I can not believe how nice it cut the wood, and how fast I started making a very nice neck profile from a block of wood. It was a delight to use. After I had it roughed in, but pretty darned close to the profile, I rough sanded with 80 grit on my orbital sander, then block sanded with a long block, 10"-12" long to make sure I didn't have any high spots, and it was smooth along the entire length. I left it at that because I still have work to do on it, but if you have never worked with a spokeshave, by all means try it.

I followed your advise and made my own bender instead of buying one from Stew. Mac. It works perfect! I already put the radius on my fretboard, so I set the adjustable wheel to where I thought it should be, bent the wire, but the radius wasn't enough. I adjusted three times before I got the right radius. Perfect. BTW... I didn't put my handle on, and it works fine without it, you just push it through by hand. Nifty little tool I must say.

Sanded to 800 followed up with 0000 sttel wool. After that I dyed again, and it is smooooooth and black! I doesn't even look like wood, well hardly. I used my home made fretwire bending tool to get the radius just over 12" so the tang ends hit before the middle. I used the fret caul I bought from Stew. Mac., and pressed them in. There were a few of them that didn't want to sit right for whatever reason. Slots were clean, tangs looked like the rest of the tangs, I even tried turning the fretwire around, some were still tight. I filed down a hair of the tangs and sent them home. After I had them all seated, I hit them with CA glue to make sure they wouldn't move. I got the thin CA glue from Stew. Mac. and ran it in from the end of the fretwire. It sucked it in like solder on a copper pipe joint. I'm done for today. Maybe tomorrow I'll trim the ends, work on the fret ends a bit then start figuring out how in the world I'm going to fit the body wings on this thing.

I sanded the radius into the fretboard today, but I only sanded to 220 and I couldn't wait to see what it looked like so I put some black die on it. Fan-freaking-tastic. Tomorrow I'll continue to sand up to 800 or so then I'll 0000 steel wool it and die again. I hope it looks good after my final sand, I think it will.

I read up about inlay work so that's where I got the idea of using a knife to cut the edges, then use the rotozip to clean out the middle. I left a lot of epoxy on/under the inlay. Most of them I couldn't see because of all of the epoxy on them. I used electrical tape, (because of the thickness of it), to tape around the inlays, then filed the epoxy down until my file was dragging the tape. After that, I block sanded down until I started hitting wood and stopped. Today I glued the fretboard onto the neck and I'll radius sand tomorrow. After that I'll fret. Stay tuned.

thanks for the replies. I cut the wood with a sharp knife, routed to the lines where I could, then cleaned the rest of it with an 1/8" chisel, and a pointed knife. When I started to put the first inlay in, the hole was too small, so I had to trim a bit more to get the piece into the hole. It fit snug. I did this down the fretboard until all were in place. I took the inlays out, mixed my epoxy trying not to make any air bubbles at all in it and drop filled each hole. I put the abalone on the epoxy, worked it around until the piece went into the hole. I pushed them in and worked them around a bit to make sure there were no air gaps below the inlays. A lot of epoxy came up around the inlays, which I took as a good thing so I would have complete coverage to make sure any gaps were filled. today I'll start to file / sand down the epoxy to see how I did.

I need a few questions answered as I begin my first inlay work. What I'm working with: ebony fretboard, abalone inlay material, black epoxy First off, how tight do you want/need the inlay to fit into the hole you carve? Once you're done fitting and you place the inlay into the cutout with epoxy in it already, how much epoxy should squeeze out on top? Just a little or quite a bit to make sure everything is filled in? What tools do you use to take away the dried epoxy on top of the inlay once the epoxy has set up?

When pressing frets in, do you glue them in as well or just leaved than as is? I'm asking because I'm building my third guitar right now, but this is the first neck I've made since I bought the first to necks. If you do glue in, when / where do you put the glue? Do you put it in the slot then press the wire in or do you press first and let the fret wire suck the glue into the joint like when soldering a pipe joint?

I just bought everything to make this simple little tool, but I'll be darned if I could find ANY plastic or nylon washers! I was sent to the plumbing department by three different people working at the Home Depot. Found nothing is isle 26, (the plumbing stuff isle). I suppose a coffee can lid cut into little washers will work in a pinch.

+1 on everything you said Drak. I finished my second build in August, and I was already thinking about the third. As of yesterday, I finally pulled the trigger on my parts order. I've been working out problems that I WILL run into along the way. I'm still not ready to start the build, no time to dedicate to it, and all of my problems have not been worked out as of yet, but I'm close. Once the parts O' plenty get here, I'll start working harder on my plan so when I have the time, I'll be ready. Thinking about and working out the problems before hand makes it so much easier... and cheaper. It's always better to work out the problem before cutting wood. You can always cut or shave a bit more off, but it's hard as hell to put it back on! Peace out, and have a great New Year. Stay sober

IF ibanez is cutting their guitars on a CNC (which Im sure they are) I'd use a cove/ball mill bit and program it in that way. Would be alot easier, then just come back and drill the actual output jack hole. You could make a template for a plunge router to do the same thing by hand possibly. Drilling into the wood on an angle like that scares me. Drilling into wood at that angle scares me too! That's why I suggested to use a hole saw. The center drill bit wouldn't let the saw wonder, and when you have the hole cut 360 degrees, use a forstner or spade bit to finish it up and to give you a flat bottom. The hole saw would give you a smooth cut w/o chip-out, and then the drill bit would finish the cut and leave you with a flat bottom for the jack to sit on.

I read the post and I didn't see anything about a neck angle. Is the neck flat to the body wings or did you build it with a neck angle? If you built it with an angle, how did you position the wings to get your angle, and what angle did you use? The reason I'm wondering, is that I am in the early stages of designing an LP neck through build, and I'm having a hard time getting my head around what neck angle to use, and how to position the wings to the neck while gluing to get the angle I want. Any help would be great!

I would use a hole saw to just start the hole so you didn't get any chip out, and then go with either a spade bit or a forstner bit. The forstner bit would give you a better more controlled depth of cut. I'd try different ways on scrap first. On my S470, I've always wondered how they made that hole, they probably have some type of jig for it, but it makes a very clean looking jack.

I bought one of his necks for my second build. Bacote neck w/ovankol fretboard, stainless steel frets. The neck I bought is okay, but nothing as compared to a factory neck. The neck itself is fine with the shape being constant and smooth from the headstock to the heel but on the fretboard there are a couple minor flaws. By a couple frets there are some small chips in the wood that were filled, (with CA glue maybe?), and smoothed. The side dot markers are brass looks to me, but on the seventh fret, side fret marker it is a tad lower than the wood, I guess from pressing it in too far. I would have liked to see the marker being left proud and then filed down to flush. His home made dual action truss rod seems to work just fine. On the page I bought mine from he seems a bit long winded in explaining things which made me kind of worry but I think it is to let you know what you are getting. His page is kind of gimicky if that's a word, but the neck is just fine, plays well with no major worries. This is the first "home made" neck I've ever seen let alone played so I have nothing to compare it to. As I said at the beginning, it isn't a factory neck to be sure, but I like it and the price made it a deal.0.

What I did with mine is buy a sheet of pickguard material and used a chamfer bit along the edge. I rough cut the shape I wanted on my bandsaw then made the exact shape of my pickguard on my template material. Double side tape held the template to the pickguard, and I clamped it to my work table template on the bottom. Just go around cleaning the the rough cut edge on the pickguard until you get the feel of how much you can take off without digging in or melting the pickguard material. Once you have that figured out, run the bearing on the bit up to the template material. Unclamp the pickguard and move it so you can get to another spot to work with. Keep going until you reach the neck pocket area. I was way careful while I was running up to the opening for the neck because you want the edges there to be flat with no bevel like the rest of it. Take it slow as you are approaching the neck pocket area on the guard so you don't slip and have your bit roll into the opening, just kind of feather it off until you get the corner you're looking for.

Thanks for the input jmrentis, that's what I was looking for. I wasn't sure how to do it, but your way is one way that works well. I have a bandsaw, but it isn't big enough to take an entire cut from a body. I'm planning a neck through, so I guess I could slice the wings before they are put onto the neck through section to get my covers if my wood is thick enough to do so.

I've seen builds in the past have wooden control covers and I like the look a lot. Some of them have grain that doesn't match very well while others look like the piece of wood used for the cover is the piece they cut out to form the cavity itself. How do they do that? If they used the piece of wood that came from cutting the hole, there would be no shoulder for the cover to rest on once done, or do they put blocks underneath for it to rest on once done?

Sweet! Ge-orge Actually, we liver in Barberton, but no one knows where it's at, so I put Akron. I see you do the same thing. B-rad from Akron

I'm in the VERY early planing stages of building a LP and I need to know what the fretboard radius is, or did they change them through the years? I've searched online and have found nothing to answer my question. If they did change them, what were they, and what did they go to? Thanks, B-rad from Akron

I am in the way early stages of planning my next build and was wondering if the ebony dye goes on the fret board before or after the abalone inlays go in. Are thier pros and cons doing it each way? Is one way better than another? The reason I'm asking this is because it sounds to me like the almost black ebony is all but gone and I may have to use a lower quality that may have different colors in it. I'm okay with that, but when I do the inlay work and use black epoxy to set them in, I think I may wind up using the dye to blend the black epoxy to the fret board if it isn't black. Please advise, Brad in Akron