11/26/2004

Today it was time to glue up the fretboard and neck. I had to cut the nut slot first. I decided against using the Wilkinson roller nut because of the limitation to .010 gauge strings. Instead, I'll use a graphite nut. I cut a 1/8" channel 5/32" deep. This was done with a miter-gauge on my table saw. I'll have to order the nut now.

11/26/2004

The next step was to attach the truss rod into the channel with silicone. The silicone is applied only at the ends of the rod under the rectangular dual-nuts. After that, I used fine line tape to cover the channel so the yellow glue wouldn't get onto the truss rod and bind it up after it dried.

11/26/2004

I spread some yellow glue on the neck after I put in two alignment pins made from wire brads. When I was sure the center lines were lined up, I pressed down and started putting on the clamps.

11/26/2004

Before I glued up the neck and fretboard, I removed about 1/2" of thickness from the headstock. The final thickness of the headstock will be 9/16". I took 3/16" off the back and 1/4" off the front. These were basically, two re-saw cuts along the fence on the bandsaw. I had some drift but I'll be able fix that with the spindle sander. I'm going to make a fence for the spindle sander table and flatten both the front and back of the headstock.

11/27/2004

After letting the glue set up for 24 hours, I took the clamps off the neck and trimmed the excess fretboard to within an 1/8th of an inch at the bandsaw.

11/27/2004

I then took the neck over to the router table and trimmed the fretboard to the neck taper with a ball-bearing bit. The heel was a little tricky and still requires more hand sanding since the spoke style truss rod nut doesn't allow the router bit to pass through the it. I got most of the excess fretboard off after a carefull pass on the table saw. I'll be filing this down tomorrow.

11/27/2004

You can see I've got burn on the maple. Maple is hard stuff and will heat up a bit. I'll have to clean this up by hand.

11/27/2004

I had some cleaning up to do on the headstock as the bandsaw leaves a rough cut. Plus, I had some blade drift when I trimmed the thickness yesterday. I ran the neck along a fence on the spindle sander before I trimmed the fretboard. This ensured that the neck would be level as it went past the sanding drum.. I'm not done but you can see what the spindle sander can do in this application. The picture shows a 2" drum in use but I'll need a 1" drum to finish the curve in the transition from the headstock to the fretboard near the nut.

11/27/2004

At this point in the neck assembly, a mock up of the neck and body gives us a pretty good idea of what this guitar is starting to look like.

11/28/2004

Today, I radiused the fretboard and installed the side markers. I used a 16" radius sanding caul from Stewart Macdonald. I cut a 3" belt into pieces that fit on the caul. Then, I just taped them down. As I've said before, this Honduran Rosewood is super hard and I had to change the paper 4 times before the 80 grit paper was able to cut the radius. Now, I'll have to deepen some of the fret slots.

11/28/2004

I followed up by marking the centers for the side markers. This was done the same way as when marking for the fretboard dots. Then, I clamped a stop to my drill press, got the appropriately sized bit and drilled the openings about an 1/8" deep. Then, I went back inside and used some plastic weld cement, also from Stewart MacDonald and glued the the side markers in. I would just stick the whole rod into the whole and then clip it down. Tomorrow, I'll sand off the excess.

11/29/2004

Tonight it only took about 10 minutes, a block of wood and some sand paper to clean up the side markers. I wish I had gone with Abalone but these look OK for my first attempt at a neck.

1/6/2005

Here, I'm drilling the holes on the back of the neck for the screws that will hold it into the neck pocket. These holes were marked by drilling the holes in the neck pocket first, with a 1/8" bit, clamping the neck into the pocket, pushing the same bit back through the hole in the body till it hit the neck, and then tapping the bit with a hammer so it would leave a witness mark on the neck. That's where the bit needs to drill.