OK. There’s quite a bit to a neck, and I have had a few, er, learning opportunities, but that’s why I am doing this with cheap woods to begin with.
The main jobs (not in order) are:
- Thickness the wood (if necessary)
- Route the truss rod cavity
- Truss rod access
- Shape the neck – saw then route
- Tuner holes
- Carve the neck
- Thickness the headstock
Where I left it was an almost finished neck template. I sanded the template a little and am almost happy.
Next job was to route the truss rod. This is better done before the neck is shaped as you have a straight edge to reference against with the Router.
Or so I thought…
Fortunately I remembered the old adage – measure twice, cut once and checked the bit position at both ends of the neck, and it was different.
I ended up using the router and a straight edge to straighten one side, clear and mark the neck again and then route.
Cutting like that, you need to make sure the router is hard up against the reference edge. I slipped a shade and some parts are slightly wider.
So I am looking at making a jig to use a router fitted with guide bush to position the slot more exactly.
I tried thicknessing using the bagpress jig and struggled – I am clearly doing something wrong
The cut is clearly uneven:
Once I had done that, I used the jigsaw (before I got the bandsaw) to rough cut the neck. That was quite hard work.
Then I stuck the template back onto the neck and hit the router table.
Here I hit lesson one – I need to learn more about template routing and the grain. I am not sure if I was simply taking too much off on one pass, or if it was fighting against the grain, but part of the headstock was launched.
If this was a real build, that would be scrap, but I am sure I will have more lessons, so I’ll just sand it to a different shape. I also felt a little tugging at the heel of the neck. Fortunately, that didn’t lead to a launch!
By this point I had done the sensible thing, and bought a bandsaw, and decided that would be the best way to thickness the headstock. Set the fence and saw to it, finishing parallel with the line of the nut. At this point I realised I should have done this BEFORE shaping the neck, as that would have made it easy – cutting an oblong slab!
The thicknessing worked great for drilling truss rod access – I jut out a long brad point bit flush against the headstock and went straight in line with the truss rod slot.
And then drilled the tuner holes.
Next up – Carving the neck