Lots of neckwork....

Today I spent a lot of quality time with my neck....... my guitar neck that is! This is my second neck from scratch so I still am a bit tentative about the whole neck shaping thing but hey, it's only wood right? The first thing I did was to lay out the neck heel shape on the end and sides of the heel block. I also layed out the nut width (1 11/16") and the 14th fret width so I could taper the edges. I cut the rough taper using my band saw so I had a better visual for the heel shape width. I am not very good at the whole '3D visualization' thing so I approach the neck carving a little differently than all of the tutorials and videos I have read/watched. I really am more of a 'start cutting everything that ain't a neck' kind of guy so that is exactly how I did this one. First I cut the bulk of the wood off of the cheeks of the heel using my band saw. I then sanded the curve on each side using my drill press and sanding drum. Once that was done, I decided to cut the taper close to the finished width using my router with a flush cutting bit, and a jig. This was needed so I had a more accurate width to finish the heel shape with. After cutting the width plus 1/16" on each side for final shaping, I went back to carving the heel and roughing out the neck shape. I have the whole neck rough shaped now, about to the same degree as a pre-carved neck from one of the suppliers would be if I bought one of them.

I then turned my attention to the peg head. If you remember, the top veneer is too thick because I decided to add a back veneer after the top one was already glued up. I dug out my plane and went to work planing it down the the same thickness as the back veneer. This gives me a final thickness of 9/16" which is what is needed for the tuners I will be using. After that was done, I screwed my peg head template to the neck and cut the peg head to my normal shape. I have decided to make one change to my peg head design however. I have been having a difficult time getting the two corner notches exactly the same and looking perfect. I decided that this time I am going to use round corner cuts instead of square ones. This is a lot easier to do with a router, and it looks pretty nice. If it ends up working well, I will be changing to this design for my future builds.

Tonight when I was practicing on my Dreadnought, I broke a string. When I was changing it out, I noticed that the bridge looked like it was possibly starting to pull up on the far end from the tuners. It isn't very much, but I can slip the corner of a piece of paper under the corners of the bridge and in a couple of spots along the back edge. It only goes in about 1/16" so I am not positive that it is pulling. When I glued it on, I kept the glue a touch from the edges to minimize squeeze out thinking that when I clamped it down the glue would squeeze up to the edges. I checked these gaps with the strings off, marked how far I could slide the paper in, and then put the strings back on and checked again. It didn't pull up any under tension so that has me a little confused if it really is pulling up, or if it is just my poor gluing technique. So, now I am up in the air on whether I should remove the bridge and re-glue it, or just leave it and watch for any signs of it getting worse. I guess on the positive side, I will get a chance to get some repair experience that I could definitely use. Hmmmm, I will have to think about this one.

Okay, here is where the guitar stands as of this morning.

First, a center line mark for the heel.

The neck after I rough cut the taper.

Here you can see the layout line on the left, and what the sanding shape was on the right. You will notice on the left side that the edge was cut at an angle on the band saw to remove some of the wood before sanding.

Pretty basic stuff here. I just held the neck under the drill press with a sanding drum and sanded to the line keeping the neck straight up and down.

The sanding gives me this shape.

After a bit of rough sanding with my drill and a small sanding drum. There is still a lot of wood left at this point. I also used the rasp on the left to remove some of the wood bulk.

The neck clamped to the tapering jig. In this picture you can see that I have the edge of the jig just a hair past the layout line. The line is under the board.

This jig runs along my router bit with a flush cut bearing on the bottom. The bearing rides against the jig and the cutter cuts the neck flush to the jig edge.

One minor mishap. The edge of the router bit caught some end grain of the neck and popped a piece out. Fortunately this is on the back side of the neck and it will all be cut out anyways. It did make my heart skip a couple of beats when it happened though!

Planing the top veneer to thickness.

Anyone need any ebony shavings?

My peg head template screwed to the peg head. I rough cut the peg head at the band saw so I didn't have so much wood to route out.

The flush cut bit rides along the template and cuts the peg head to shape.

The peg head shape. Note the rounded notches this time. I like the look.

And the back of the peg head.

Here you can see the thickness of the two veneers are the same. Now I wish I hadn't put the piece of maple veneer in there. Oh well, live and learn.