Setch

To answer the original question too: 1. Thickness, taper, slot and radius board, in whatever order works for you. I have used pre-cut boards on most of my guitars, so I don't have any real opinions on the best order. Remember when slotting that you should make the board narrower by twice the thickness of your binding material, so that with binding on each side it is the correct width. 2. Attach binding to the body end of the fretboard, and trim it flush with the sides. Remove all traces of dirt/sawdust/fingergrease from the ends of the binding, then glue on the sides. This should result in an invisible joint, and it's easier than cutting mitre joints. 3. Once the glue is dry remove the extra height of binding with a small block plane, scraper or sandpaper on a flat block. Run a radius block with 320 over the board to flush up the top surface, and use a dead flat sanding block to true the bottom. Now you can either glue to the neck and fret, or fret then glue.

Nuh-huh. You can fret before or after glueing the board, I've done it both ways, and I found fretting with the fretboard unattached was *much* easier. I attached it to a thick flat slab of formica'ed worktop material with some doublesided tape, fretted it, then flushed and bevelled the fret ends before glueing it. It is by far the best fretwork I've done so far, and I found it so much easier I doubt I'll ever go back to fetting with the board glued to the neck.

Brian, can I request the suppliers I list be added to the suppliers section of the main site? I must have answered this question a dozen times now! Craft supplies - Very inexpensive, and good enough for beginners & intermediate. Can be a bit hit and miss though, I don't believe their staff have any tonewood knowledge - you get the first piece on the shelf, sometimes it's great, occasionally it's just OK. No custom cutting, just stock sizes, and a very limited selection of hardware. David Dyke - Luthier supply. - Very good quality, and very knowledgable. Prices are higher than craft supplies, but the trade off is David's expertise and the superb quality, as well as custom milling etc. Good range of hardware as well as timber. Touchstone Tonewoods - Not tried them personally, but they have a good rep and a by far the best online catalogue. Nice selection of hardware ranging from inexpensive to high-end.

Yup, it's maple. It's definately not what most folks would characterise as 'instrument quality' maple - not remotely white, but I really like it. It has big mineral streaks (I think) which lend it some stripes of almost grey green - I'm guessing these are what you initially thought were joints of a fourpiece top. I think a fourpiece top could look very nice, provided the joints were nice and tight. It certainly can't hurt to liberate some nice maple from a cupboard door...

I think having a 1/2 inch collet and cutter makes a big difference - I suspect that the extra flexibilty of a 1/4 inch makes it more prone to tearout, especially if you are using a long cutter. I have a long 1/4 bit for body profile routing which is a real bitch for tearing out material, even though it's of good quality and very sharp

Try the 3M doublesided - It's good and thin, yet still sticks like sh!t to a blanket with a little pressure on it... Three little tabs at beginning, middle and end and you'll be set. I really don't see how the thickness of one strip of tape can cause problems on an unprofiled fingerboard - like I said before, radiusing will remove any tiny imperfections unless your tape is 1/16" thick!

Both 1 or 3 work well. I used them on the guitar below. The binding channel for the carved top was cut with an improvised router table (more or less exactly as you describe) and the back with the same bit in a plunge router. Which ever way you do it be sure to trim very close to the line first, and use a very sharp bit in small increments. The nature of the grain in the waist of the guitar makes it VERY easy get to tear out, and this is nightmarish to repair invisably. Climb cutting can help, but be very carefull not to lose your grip on the router or the guitar, and plan every cut before you make it.

Use a slave board like Lex suggests. I very much doubt that you'll get any problem with the board being thinner by the thickness of a single layer of doublesided tape, and if you do you'll remove that all when you radius and level the board. Besides, planing boards much thinner than 1/4 without slave board is asking for heartbreak when you shred an expensive piece...

Within one centimetre? Damn, when my neck's within a centimetre of final shape it's still practically square! I think you'll find a world of difference btween shaping softwoods and hardwoods, and your dremel will have a much tougher time on maple. I really don't see any abrasive on a tiny dremel sanding drum competing with a big old rasp or spokeshave for quick stock removal...

Like a no.4 plane? I think it would be tough to get some thing as long as a neck laminate flat with a shortish plane like that. A big jointing plane would be best, or a planer or thickness sander. You can also glue some sandpaper to a bit of plate glass to get the laminates flat, I've doen it that way. If you don't have accessa to the correct tools don't sweat it too much - a nice bit of quartered mahogany should be perfectly fine without lamination, unless you plan on a very long, or thin neck.

Unless you use a very fine tooth, stablised blade in the saw it will need planing, and most likely it still will if you do. Table saws don't usually leave very flat surfaces when ripping rather than crosscutting. If you laminate the neck you'll want to use laminations at 90 degrees to the the fretboard, rather than parallell to the fretboard. **edt** Not the way you illustrated, the other way.

If you don't grain fill mahogany you will get visible pores. They may not be there when you level and buff, but over time your finish will continue to shrink and harden as the solvents in it evaporate, and it will sink into the pores. You can fill pores with laquer, but this is an expensive way to do it, and you still stand every chance of the finish shrinking later. I would recommend CA or epoxy for a good glass clear fill.

What he said...

Wes, with a well fitted joint overtightening can actually starve the joint, by forcing *all* the glue out, or enough that you can compromise the strength of the final product. It's a bit of a balencing act - too much glue, weak joint.... too little... weak joint!

With quarter inch maple I'd centre join it first, then attach the joined top to the mahogany. I find that glueing the seam at the same time as joining to the body is harder, and it's much easier to end up with a visible glue line. Set the two side next to each other, with the good face upwards, and the figuring lined up. Then close close them like a book - so that the good faces are inside, and the rough faces are the front and back 'covers'. Clamp them like this is a vice and plane the 'spine' of the book perfectly straight. By planing both pieces together you ensure that even if you don't plane at exactly 90 degrees to the faces, you'll still have a perfectly fitting joint. Once you are happy the spine is straight, reopen the 'book' and hold the joint against a window. If you did it right the joint should be light-tight, and no light should show through. If you can see light, pencil where the problem area is, and rebook and replane until the joint is perfect. Once the joint is perfect, you can clamp the two pieces together for glueing with a sash clamp, or for a thinner piece like yours, place you two pieces together, with the figure perfectly aligned, but with a thin piece of scrap or dowel underneath it the joint. Use small nails to pin the pieces to a piece of flat scrap, or to your work bench, then apply glue to the joint, remove the dowel or scrap, and push the pieces flat - this should force the joint tight together whilst the glue sets.

I'd avoid filling if you possibly can. No matter how careful you are, chances are that you'll create a fill which is invisible from maybe 3 different angles, but painfully obvious from about 30... it's the nature of wood, even when you are patching with material cut from the same board rather than a filler. I would recommend you forget staining, seal the maple, fill the depression with CA or epoxy for a glass clear fill, then colour by spraying tinted laquer. I honestly don't believe you will ever match a fill on maple that you will be content with, especially not if it's figured. Sorry this isn't what you want to hear

um.... how about ditching the power tools (Rotozip??? Are you high?) This job can be done with a hand saw. You use you hand, in conjunction with your arm, in a recipricating back-and-forward motion. Then you use a plane, also with the hand/arm tag team, to true up the faces. It's amazing the things you can accomplish without ever plugging into a power outlet. </sarcasm> Secondly, it you're having to glue on a piece, angle it to get the strongest grain orientation - you've already lost the aesthetic appeal of a one piece, so you may as well trade that against the improved strength of an angled scarf joint.

It is always (always!) easier to cut the 'channel' for binding a fretboard before it is installed. Why? Because it isn't a channel. You simply make the fretboard narrower by twice the thickness of your desired binding material (that's twice the thickness of a single piece - since there will be a piece on both sides). This is easy as pie with the board unattached, but a nightmare once it's glued in place. Once the board is dimensioned you glue the material to the body end of the fretboard, trim it flush with the sides and then glue on the side pieces. I doubt you'll have any success trying to bend round a 90 degree corner, but tightglue joints with duco, acetone or CA glue should be virtually invisible. . You can hold the binding in place with tape, or pin two scraps of wood to a base piece at the same taper as the board, and push the board between them to hold the binding whilst the glue dries. Once it's dried you can use a flat block and 120 grit paper to flatten the binding on the underside of the board, and a radius block to bring the top edges flush.

Steam is the way to go. If you're feeling lazy, just crank up the steam on your home iron, hold it about an inch above the dent and blast away. Alternatively, get some paper towel, and roll it into twists. Soak the twists of towel with waterand lay them in the dings. Touch the tip of a iron or soldering iron to the paper to steam the dents deep down. This really works, for all but the deepest dents. I do find it works best if you attend to the ding as soon after it happens as possible.

Unfortunately the real test of dyes in this kind of application is how well they resist fading. Most things you use will look great now, but you'll be pretty pissed in three years if they fade to a murky mess. I'd be particularly worried about using food dyes - permenence is not likely to be a consideration when producing a dye for something you're going to eat in a few days anyway...

My top tip for neck pocket templates goes a little like this. Materials: The neck. a sheet of 1/2" or 3/4" mdf or plywood. Some doublesided tape. What to do: Take your sheet of mdf/ply and cut three pieces off it, approx 3" x 1". Ensure that at least one side of each is straight and square. Cut a rectangle of mdf/ply approx 6" x 6". Using a small piece of double side tape attach the heel of the neck to your 6 x 6 board. Apply tape to the three smaller pieces of mdf/ply, and place them tight up against the sides of the heel. Remove the neck. Using a bandsaw, jigsaw, scrollsaw whatever, remove the bulk of the mdf/ply where the heel was, then use a router (table or handheld) with a bearing bit to trim the template. The bearing rides on the three pieces taped to the larger board, and if you use the appropriate diameter bit to match the corners of the heel, you should end up with a perfect template. If this is confusing rather than helpful, ignore it and I'll take some pics and post them early next week.

Wood putty isn't good at skinning wide-but-shallow imperfections, and you will most likely have the piece simply flake off after you've finished the paint job Also, this seems like a good reminder for the golden rule - Always sand with a flat block. Wood isn't totally even in hardness, so you need a block to avoid valleys.

You may want to work on your focussing if the pictures are going to be helpfull. In both pictures of the neck the background is very sharp... Unless the neck crack goes all the way through the neck, I'd gently prise the crack open, until you can syringe some wood glue into the space. Get in as much glue as you can, then clamp the crack closed. Clean up the squeeze out with a damp cloth and leave for 24 hours before stringing up.

I'd also shim the entire pocket - removing finish from both sides of the pocket & neck will result in a pretty sloppy fit, and that will not aid sustain or tone, and might not even be structurally sound - no matter how much glue you use. For a set neck, you want a pocket tighter than a gnat's pooper...

Maybe Brian could add a UK section to the suppliers list - I'm sure this is the fifth time I've answered this question. Anyhow:- Craft supplies UK Touchstone Tonewoods David Dyke Luthier Supply Hope these help. I've ordered from David Dyke and Craft supplies, and would recommend David Dyke for quality and service, and craft supplies if you are after great prices (their quality is OK, but somewhat hit and miss).