Lots and lots of sawdust.......

I got to spend an hour or so after work today in the shop so I decided to tackle carving the neck to shape. After reading a lot of methods of how to do this, I settled on doing it the same way I carved the heel..... cut, rasp, and sand away everything that doesn't look like a neck! I first used my microplane in the drill press and went at the neck roughing out quite a bit of the wood. Then I went at it with a sanding drum in the drill press to get it closer. After that, I clamped it down, used chisels, hand files, and sandpaper to get it to final shape. It is only sanded to 80 grit, and it still isn't completely to final shape, but it is much farther along than a pre-carved neck from LMI or Stewmac. I am happy with it and am getting exited to fit the fingerboard and do the inlay.

On a down note, I unfortunately did it again with the OM. I had it sitting in my warm room to prevent cold cracking of the finish and didn't think much about the humidity level in there. The humidity has dropped to 25% in my shop and lower in the warm room. When it dawned on my yesterday, I pulled out the body and checked. Sure enough, the back is sunken back in and the fine center crack has opened up again. Sigh.... I am afraid that poor little OM is doomed. I gotta get it finished so I can get a sound hole or case humidifier in it so I don't do this again.

Here is the neck after I rough shaped it with the microplane. There is still a lot of wood that needs to be removed.

My super duper fine detail wood shaping device. This thing throws wood like crazy!

Sorry but I didn't get any other pictures as I was busy shaping. Here is the neck as it sits now. Note: the heel end is straight, for some reason the shadow makes it look crooked.