12/26/2004

Using the neck-pocket template I made, I clamped the template to the body lining up the center lines. Then, with a hand-held router and a 1/4" pattern-bit, I cut the pocket to 5/8" deep making passes of about about 1/16".

1/4/2005

This week I got back to work. The first thing I attacked was routing the truss-spoke channel so the neck could sit in the pocket. To do that I made a template that would allow me to rout a 5/8" slot on the center of the body. The length of the slot is irrelevant as it will extend into the neck position pickup cavity. The template was clamped in place and routed with a pattern bit.

1/6/2005

The next step was to drill the holes for the neck screws and ferrules. I located the ferrules in the pocket and marked their centers. Then, drilled through with a 1/8" bit. Flip the body over and use a 5/8" Forstner bit to cut the flat-bottomed recesses for the ferrules.

1/6/2005

Three of these screws had to be cut down because the ferrules sat at different depths to accomodate the roundover of the body. This picture was taken before the screws were cut. The other pics are of the neck and body mated together for the first time. I'll have to tweak the fit a little to get it exactly the way I want but it came out fine. What didn't come out fine was the tear-out I got on two of the ferrule recesses. I can fix that easily. Another problem I encountered, was that I didn't like where I had originally placed one of the ferrules. It was too close to the edge of the body. So, I drilled a new hole. The original hole will have to be filled with some 1/8" mahogany dowel material. You can see this in the picture below. In fact, you can see that I considered yet a different location then the one I finally settled on.

1/15/2005

I fixed the ferulle tear-out by filling the un-used screw hole with a 1/8" diameter mahogany dowel. When the glue dried I trimmed and sanded it. Then, I took some mahogany dust that seems to be covering everything in my garage, mixed it with some yellow glue and filled the tear-out. That was sanded and shaped after it dried. Here's how it looks now and some other shots of the neck bolted to the body.