jaycee

Hi Brad and welcome to the forum.

Firstly forget about which sounds better set necks or bolt on's. Thats not the issue.

In my opinion I have been working with wood for many years the more cuts you have to do the harder it is.

A bolt on neck is the easier of the two.

Not sure where to post this so I thought this as good a place as any

http://www.exoticguitars.com/default.htm

These are simply amazing

draw a plan. nobody can answer this question but you.

I concur with rhoads as far as I know theres nothing set in stone. If it looks good then do it . I just gave my classical neck angle a measure and it looks about 10 degrees, taking that acoustics are around 13 degrees it should be ok around these angles

What angle are you talking about? Headstock? I may be wrong, but I believe they are talking neck angle (as in 1.5 deg. is common on steel string). As mentioned though draw it up.

Peace,Rich

Sorry guys I was thinking headstock angle

draw a plan. nobody can answer this question but you.

I concur with rhoads as far as I know theres nothing set in stone. If it looks good then do it . I just gave my classical neck angle a measure and it looks about 10 degrees, taking that acoustics are around 13 degrees it should be ok around these angles

I marked my frets out with a fine pencil line, checked it ,checked it once more , and another just in case, then put a tri square along the fret line and scored it with a Stanley knife (with a new blade in) when that is done you have a slot for your saw blade to sit into and saw away.

They came out very well. I was very pleased with it, my first build as well.

One other thing after I did all that checking I left the pencil marked board overnight and re checked it the next day, that way I thought if I was fatigued the previous day it should show up on the re check.

It's not as scarry as it seems

You could take a look here and see if it helps

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tht1.htm

I have just finished my first guitara strat copy. I bought the tools as I needed them.

180w orbital sander

550w jigsaw

1050w router plunge.......by the way I drilled the machine head holes with the router and an appropiate bit, they came out very cleanly

All were at the cheap end of the market but not the cheapest I think I paid about £40 for them =$80 ish. The Jigsaw and router in my opinion are a must, I bought the sander because the timber I used for the body was rough sawn.

Tho the tools were inexpensive buy the best bits, blades paper you can afford, I think one of my router bits cost just as much as the router itself.

Forgive me if I seem a little obtuse regarding this type of joint on the neck, but could you set everything back the same distance, so if youhave to route say 3/4" extra for the joint just set the bridge, pickups etc back the same distance.

I'm sure theres a good reason why it can't be done as it hasn't been mentioned yet, but I would like to know anyway

I think theres one of these being used on a tutorial section.

It may take the "fun" out of making your guitar but if you want to make a little money money out of it it looks pretty good.

http://www.copycarver.com/

Sorry if its allready posted somewhere but I thought just in case.....

Hopefully I found the problem, I took the fretboard off and It seems I put the truss rod in upside down

It's a two way truss and I put the adjustment part of the rod next to the fretboard rather than the other way around, it took an aweful lot of pressure yho before the fretboard started to come off.

So I have just re-glued it and hope it doesn't shift by the morning

As I was setting my guitar up as per the tutorial, the neck wasn't responding so I decidec to stop..a little to late tho. The fret board from the 17 th fret has come unstuck.

Is it just a matter of re-glueing and accepting that the neck will not straighten up to what I would like (about .005" .5mm at the seventh fret) before the breakout it was 2- 3 mm and playable

The papers say the Sting Ray has a nick name of **** cat, I guess he got one on a bad day and "whoop he's a gonna"

Perhaps complacentcy had crept in

Very sad and tragic especially for his familly.

Nice call guys that's seemed to have sorted the problem out. It also gave me another thought where I put some double sided sticky tape on the bottom of the nut, put the other side onto the back of some sandpaper cut to size which now bites into the nut slot and stops everything from moving

Its to high in the middle not by much tho maybe 0.5mm. I thought the pressure of the strings might have bowed the nut to compensate but it hasnt done it completely.

If I have to get a chisel I will but there about £20. I will try the padding suggestion and take it from there. Cheers

I had thought of that but I am on a tight budget and a 3mm chisel will cost quite a bit

I like that Al . It will look to the uninitiated as if it was meant to be. I'm not into Archtops ? so it looks fine to me. I have learnt over the years that sometimes rather than try to hide your mistakes see what you can do with it, what is it telling you, gets your creative juices flowing so to speak

I have fiished my first build . I will post pics as soon as I can get my hand on a camera.

There is one slight problem tho my nut slot has a slight bow in the middle, I don't have a chisel to fit the slot ( I made do with a Brad to "chisel " it out originally) but as there is a little more accuracy involved here I would like any suggestions to remedy the problem.

I thought of these

1, Spot glue with superglue or wood glue

2, Make an arc in the bottom of the nut

3, Double sided sticky tape

It plays OK but there is a slight buzz now and again which I think is due to the nut not being seated correctly

You may find this of interest

"Once stripped, lightly sand the neck. Normally only #220 and #320 grades will be needed. If the finger board is not maple tape the board to protect it. I have found it best to tape just the face of the fretboard. Tape over the bevel line of the frets but not beyond leaving the sides along with the position markers clear to be sprayed. "

From here :-http://home.flash.net/~guitars/Fenderneck.html

From here :- http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tutorial5.htm

You will find a whole load of tutorials that will guide you through your build

There is a tutorial somewhere I will try and find it, but some thing I found interesting was the when you fit the cavity block glue it etc you will have a small gap between the new block and guitar body.

What he then did was to route out a rebate following the join between the two pieces, which basically made the gap larger.

Because the gap is larger you can get a nice lot of filler in there rather than try and push it inbetween the two pieces and when it dries it is more stable sands up well for an invisible job

P.S> found it http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tht1.htm

A cheap and fairly accurate way to sand the scallops would be to buy a few dowels ranging from 1/4" up to 1 3/4" and just wrap sandpaper around short lengths of them.

Why didn,t I think of that! I want to scallop my neck just from the 19th fret. I "made" a drum sander from a 32mm drill bit by wrapping cardboard around it for stiffnes and covering that with sand paper. I then put it in my drill clamped the drill to my workmate and fed the headtock into it until I had a nice curve up to the nut

I took mine to a place with a big machine, only took a couple of minutes and only cost a bottle of wine

I concur with T M, find a local joiner with a large planer/thicknesser machine and ask him to do it.

I took a few pieces to a joiner that I considered needed to be planed flat and thickened to the correct size ( i.e. fretboard planed to 6mm ) and it cost a few pints, small price to pay and a lot less hassle

How "not so snug" is it ?

what type of truss rod?

What you don't want is the truss rod turning around in the cavity.

If its a two way truss rod with squared nuts like these http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Truss_rods/Adj...Truss_Rods.html

then i would imagine if you pack the sides and glue it that would be ok.

Wait and see what others have to say but thats what I would do. Just make sure that the "whole" truss rod assembley doesn't turn around.

Hi Bart if you still looking for a guitar course I recommend this one

http://www.guitar-academy.com/

I have had a few over the years but this is by far the best.

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I have to agree with Southpa and practically everyone will give you the same advice to Pre-Bend frets with a tighter radius than your fretboard, that way the ends of the frets will "dig into the board" when pressed. I have just fretted my guitar with pre bent frets, but rather than use a drill press ( I don't have one) I had a good size plastic spring clamp which I used to hold the fret into place, which worked exellently.

I saw "Bush" and "Machine Head" in the thread title, and I had to giggle a little bit

-Xanthus

That made me laugh I'll never look at those things in the same light now.

Cant you router some of the headstock off a little ?