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Julie, I should have been more specific about my club comment. It is the transitions from the neck proper to the heel and the headstock that look from the photo that look like they could be a bit more refined. could be the photo, could be my eyes. When I carve a neck I do it all in one day, leave it over night and review my work the next day. I always find improvements the second day. I'm just not that good I guess! Sober second thought.
The tape trick is gold!
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This is what I didn't do:
I just took the spokeshave to the edge of the back and started digging. When I got to the ends, I tried to shape it with the spokeshave. Note to self: DON'T DO THAT!!!I also didn't sketch out the lines. Another fail. And maybe the result of that came through in the first photo. You were right Chris. It wasn't shaped well. After my last post here I went back to the shop and worked on it and was surprised how much waste there was on the floor and the bench. And it's still a bit off , but it's better then it was.
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Lines are critical for me anyways. I use a 2" Frost knife to carve those spots. http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/pag...30,43332,43393 Lee Valley, it's cheap as all get out and it'sone of my favourite tools EVER!Originally Posted by Julie Moriarty
This is what I didn't do:
I just took the spokeshave to the edge of the back and started digging. When I got to the ends, I tried to shape it with the spokeshave. Note to self: DON'T DO THAT!!!
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Julie: A good tool to use when refining the surface of the neck,to get everything nice and straight,is to take a farrier's rasp. Break it off to make a 4" long piece. Grind the ends square and blunt them some. There is a coarse rasp on 1 side,and a very coarse file on the other side. That file is plenty sharp on the rasps I have seen. You can buy them in hardware stores,or at places like Tractor Supply. The file side really makes a good tool for smoothing out little lumps in the neck.
I repeat,the file side on these is REALLY SHARP,and does an excellent job of filing down slight lumps you might not feel when using a narrower tool,like a spoke shave.
How to break the file: Stick the file upright in a stout vise. You have a nice bench,so to keep from screwing up your vise chops,put a piece of hard maple on each side of the vise,to give the teeth of the rasp something to mess up! This maple should extend down the full depth of your vise's chops. You don't want any waggling going on when you strike the file. Stick the rasp up tang end down. Leave about 5" sticking up out of the vise. The break may be angled,and you'll lose length grinding it square. LAY A PIECE OF STOUT FABRIC OVER THE RASP. An old towel is good. This to keep sharp shards of the file from hitting you.or going all over the shop. Take a good,heavy MALLET,not a steel hammer,which would damage the file's teeth. Give it a good swing. It is surprising how much "spring" a large file can have before it breaks. You may have to whack it a number of times to get it to break. Be careful your knuckles,etc.,are not going to get crashed onto something when the file breaks. You might want to give the job to a strong man if you can't hit it hard enough. A rawhide mallet with a cast iron body in the center would be ideal as they are heavy. Most people don't have them,me included.
If you can't break the file off,and have a 3# hammer,put a piece of hard maple against the file,and strike the maple hard with the 3# hammer. Tractor Supply has a surprisingly good one for $9.00,IIRC. I bought one on the recommendation of a professional blacksmith in Williamsburg. One can always benefit from having a heavy hammer around for the occasional whacking job.
Don't be overly concerned about having a big curve in the truss rod. It will make your neck too deep just trying to bury it. I put a 1/16" thick wedge of wood under the end of my truss rods at the peg head end of Gibson style guitars. Over this,I glue down a piece of hard wood snugly so the truss rod can't rattle. The filler strip makes a curve when it is thoroughly seated due to this little wedge,which its about 1 1/2" long.. It does the job just fine. I plane the extra filler strip off and glue the fingerboard on. I have never had a neck that I couldn't easily adjust straight. I use 3/16" drill rod for my truss rods,threading them myself. at the heel end of acoustic guitars,I drill a 1/2" hole straight down into the heel a little over 1" deep. I drill and tap a piece of 1/2" round brass which the truss rod screws into all the way down TIGHT. You don't want to find that somehow the whole truss rod is revolving when you turn the nut. Loctite of the most permanent type is a good idea to drip into the hole in this brass piece. The brass rod is about 1" long. I made a screwed on neck by request on my last guitar. Most makers screw in those threaded brass nuts with knife blade threads. They drill holes and screw them into the heel. This is VERY WEAK,and liable to split the neck down where the heel gets narrow. What I did was to drill clear down the neck and put in a 1/2" brass rod all the way down the total depth of the heel. 2 holes were drilled and tapped to have screws coming from inside the guitar body to thread into.
This guitar had an extremely powerful tone. Probably my best one,so the brass rod did not hurt anything. Indeed,on an acoustic,a heavy peg head and a neck made of good hardwood of good weight,keeps the vibrations from dissipating up the neck. They go to the bridge,where vibrations are easier to make. The guitar is more powerful because vibes are not wasted. If you get that right,and dozens of other things right (
Last edited by george wilson; 12-21-2013 at 12:15 PM.
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If you are building a guitar for yourself, I get the neck shape to its base profile and then go on to other portions. When the guitar is 90-95% done, I assemble the guitar and string it up. I'll play it for a couple of weeks interspersed with a little fine tuning with rasps , sandpaper etc. I definately have my own prefernces for what I like in a neck shape. Oddly enough, I have very different opinions relative to whether I play sitting down or with the guitar on a strap.
Shawn
"no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."
"I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"
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George, I have a 12" cabinetmaker's rasp that does a really good job rough shaping the wood. The 6" modeler's rasp smooths it out pretty well. Your description on what to do with the ferrier's rasp sounds violent. I'm just imagining shards of metal flying everywhere.
Shawn, fine tuning by playing makes sense. I recently read where one noted guitarist had four identical guitars - custom made to his specs (with CNC-made necks) - and yet there was one he said was his favorite because he liked the neck of that particular one better than the other three. And when you think about how we use our hands to feel what we can't see...
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Not at all violent if you lay a towel over the rasp when breaking it. Too good a tool to not have,Julie. Send me your farrier's file and I'll break it for you. PM if interested.
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I got back to the Strat yesterday. I made the trem routs, put a roundover on it and made the arm and belly cuts. I'm finding using a sander to make pretty much the entire arm cut and most of the belly cut to be easiest. It looks like this build will have a Fender American Series trem on it as I had ordered that for the Tele only to later find it wouldn't work with the '72 Deluxe version of the Tele.
I have to figure out a way to accurately drill the threaded knurled inserts for the trem posts. My ancient drill press only has a 4" throat depth. I need about another 1/2".
After researching woods for the neck and fretboard, I've finally settled on a curly maple neck and birdseye maple fretboard. When you consider all the factors involved in wood selection, maple seems to be the no fail solution. It should go fine with the finished body.
I'm thinking a red mahogany dye would liven this up. I'll experiment with the black-dye_&_sand-back method on a separate piece but I doubt I'll do a sunburst effect. I need more practice with that before I apply it to the real thing. And if I have to, I'll wait till warm weather comes to spray lacquer on it. More and more I'm becoming convinced lacquer is the only way to go.
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The first (real) neck I'm building will use QS maple for the neck and whatever for the fretboard. I figure the lesson will cost me the price of a truss rod and some fretwire. If it's made right, maybe I can use it on the pine body.
I started with establishing a straight line from the neck template I made to a 27x4.5x.70 piece of QS maple. I planed the piece to .70" to come as close as I can to 18mm. The Fletcher Guitars videos I'm using as a tutorial say 18mm for the neck and 7.4mm for the fretboard to bring the total thickness to 1" for Strats and Teles.
From there I went to the router table and routed for the truss rod. The end of the truss rod requires additional room for the spoke wheel. I used chisels to cut them in.
I set the brass ends just below the surface of the board.
The truss rod is a Hot Rod dual-action truss rod with a spoke wheel for adjustment at the base of the neck, instead of an Allen head at the end of the neck
Installing it only requires a straight, single-depth rout in the neck (for two part necks). The dual rods allow tension to be applied to both concave and convex bows in the neck. I'm rotating the position of the spoke wheel 180 degrees from the pic above and setting it flush with the end of the fretboard, rather than sticking out as the pic above shows. I'll rout an opening just below the 21st fret of the fretboard and let it "peek out" at that point, but it will still be below the top of the fretboard. That should make it easier to make adjustments while hiding much of the spoke wheel and avoiding weakening the neck-body joint.
They say there's a lot of ways to build a guitar. I don't know. What I do know is this is fun...
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Just two things:
1) now that the rod is upside down, it will adjust backwards from pretty much every other rod on the planet....counterclockwise = LESS relief, and clockwise = MORE relief. Be sure to make a note of this or you're sure to break the rod trying to adjust the neck
2) If you haven't done so already, and the right time would have been before making the route for the truss rod, be sure to establish the centerline on the front of the heel so you can extend it to the back, and back up to the front, of the neck if you need to. The longer you allow the centerline to go unestablished, the harder it is to reestablish it should you need it....for aligning the fingerboard, for example.
I've used that particular rod before. It's not my favorite, but it actually works pretty well. I would suggest that before you bury it forever, put a SMALL dab of caulk in a couple of spots under the rod. I've run into situations where that style rod can resonate and "sing" if it happens to get into a configuration where it's under tension but just happens to not be touching wood very firmly. The couple of dabs of caulk will deaden that.
Nice to see you building your own necks so soon. To many people put it off for YEARS and then never end up doing it
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I realize the rod is 180 from what StewMac suggests but you make a good point about noting the difference is making adjustments for future use. The guy who did the videos I'm following shows silicone dabbed at the two brass ends and in the middle to prevent rattling. And I'm keeping very aware of not losing the centerline. As I lose it in one place, I redraw it as soon as I'm done with the work.
Today I made up some neck and fretboard blanks. I made two neck blanks made from figured cherry and about four good pieces for fretboard blanks made from birdseye maple and two more of figured cherry. But I'm not so sure about the cherry for a fretboard. The pieces were left over from the neck blanks so I milled them along with the BE maple. I have some jatoba that I'm considering for fretboard blanks. No rosewood or ebony in stock.
I'm not sure why there would be any hesitancy to go into neck building. But then again, maybe I'll soon find out.Nice to see you building your own necks so soon. To many people put it off for YEARS and then never end up doing it
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Any of the hard maples would be fine. Jatoba is a little off the beaten path, but also makes nice fingerboards. Cherry is not commonly used. It tends to be a little soft and spongy and that may lead to some trouble holding in frets and/or some possible forward neck bowing issues down the line. The whole assembly of fingerboard, slots and frets does a lot more than you might think to keep the neck straight and rigid, and any weakness there invariably causes the neck to bow forward more than you might like. The thing to do with the cherry is make sure that you have clean, very well fitting fret slots, and that will go a long way towards mitigating any issues you might otherwise run into. Sloppy fret slots will exacerbate any tendencies for the neck to bend forward because the poor fit with the tang is a weak point, and is actually a leading cause of that sort of problem, especially in older guitars. Cherry would look nice, though. It'd be very unique.
re: building necks
I'm not sure why either. It's just a guitar neck, for heaven's sake. People see them as sacred and it scares them...they spend their whole lives afraid of the big dragon. Newcomers who jump right in slay the beast without a second thought and find it's just a pipsqueak in a dragon costume
Last edited by John Coloccia; 12-28-2013 at 7:41 PM.
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As to the pipsqueak... I'm looking at it as something I want to try because it would be immensely satisfying if I got it right. And if I flame out, it will only be after a lot of tries.
I'm taking no chances on the fret slot cutting. I bought the overpriced .023 kerf table saw blade from StewMac and their steel fret template which includes the set pin shown in the picture below. I'll be making a sled for it and if I can't get it right with those tools I need to be burned at the stake.I also bought their fretwire and a press caul that I'll use on the drill press to set the fret wire. Seems pretty foolproof.
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Julie you and I seem to be about the same place
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ~ Albert Einstein
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Cool! Hopefully we'll be able to pat each other on the back for a job well done. Either that or cry in our beer!Julie you and I seem to be about the same place
Have you made the table saw sled yet? That blade is pretty small and I was thinking of using 1/4" MDF for the base but I'm not sure if that would be too flimsy. If I can find some 1/2" MDF, I'll go with that but I think all I have in 1/2" is birch ply and it's terribly bowed. If you've already made the sled it would be great if you could share what you learned.
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