By: John Page
My apologies for so much time passing since my last installment, but I felt I really needed to concentrate on getting these first guitars done. I am way past my initial time estimates for all of my clients and I’m feeling extremely guilty about it. I’d really like to start out by thanking all of them for their kind support and patience this first year of my new guitar venture. Thanks guys!
As promised, this installment will cover the last half of the fabrication of the neck. There are a ton of steps throughout the building process, in fact that’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a good column. A lot of folks just don’t realize what really goes into building a guitar by hand. There are so many steps that I can not show them all here. I’ve tried to include as many of the steps as possible, but unfortunately some are not shown, especially in the paint booth. Nevertheless, let’s start where we left off, with a sized, glued up neck laminate with the peghead veneer glued on as well.
This blank has gone through several curing cycles already, and with the peghead veneer glued on I can proceed. All of the operations up to gluing on the fretboard must now be done in one day. I don’t want any down time in the processes at this point. Once I rout the truss rod channel I want to close it up as soon as possible. I don’t want the neck to start to creep open. There’s lot’s of discussion about single action versus double action rods. With the 5-piece neck design I really like the ability to correct for underbow or overbow. The truss rod I use allows me to rout a straight channel, ¼” wide by 3/8” deep.
The next step is to trace the perimeter shape of the neck onto the blank using a template that references off of the fretboard alignment holes that I drilled previously. This tracing needs to be pretty accurate as I will be using it to rough trim the shape on the bandsaw prior to pin routing.
Now it’s time to bandsaw the neck perimeter. I want this trim to be within about .04-.06” from the line.
The bandsaw trim is important to minimize the possibility of the wood chipping out during the pin routing process. There’s already a lot of time and money into the neck at this stage and it’s real easy to lose it within a split second if the router catches the wood wrong.
Next comes a template change and I pin rout the peghead perimeter.
The next two operations are thicknessing the butt and back of peghead. This is done on another overhead router, freehand. Again, an easy place to loose the neck if you don’t hold onto it properly.
After routing the butt to the appropriate thickness, I do a quick clean-up with some sandpaper to level out any router marks. With the butt now at the proper thickness and parallel to the face, I can use my neck bolt mounting screw template to drill the mounting screw holes. These holes actually receive threaded brass inserts because I use a ¼-20 machine type bolt to fasten my necks to the body. I believe they do a much better job of tone transference than a standard wood or sheet metal screw… but that’s just me. Here I am drilling the holes.
I use the drill press to install the threaded inserts so that I can guarantee that they will be installed at a precise 90 degree angle. It’s a pain to grip and thread it, but I only go in far enough to assure the proper alignment. I seat them the rest of the way with a wrench after the fact.
Now it’s time to install the truss rod. I like to pour hot wax on any of the threaded sections prior to installation. I don’t want the glue to tie up the workings. I just use a candle to drip it on.
Then comes the glue application. I mask off the edge of the neck so I don’t have a bunch of glue squeeze-out on the edge of the neck blank. For me this is an important step because I use the neck blank itself as a template to trim off the excess fretboard after it’s been glued on.
Once the glue has been applied to both the fretboard and the neck blank, I install two small wooden alignment pins into the neck and join the two pieces together. I use a precision radius block as a shim, plus some scrap wooden blocks to protect everything from damage from the clamp faces. Once I’ve tightened the clamps I scrap and wipe off the excess glue from the neck blank for reason explained above. The glue assembly will stay in the clamps for three hours.
Once I unclamp the assembly I remove the tape and mount the neck to a holding fixture which allows me to trim the excess fretboard flush to the neck blank. I use a flush bearing cutter for this operation. I use a Freud ¾” with a sheer to the cutting edge. It helps minimize possible chip out on the fretboard.
Here’s the neck with the fretboard glued on and trimmed. At this point I let the neck cure for about 20-30 days. I want the glue to be absolutely dry, and any moisture that may have been introduced to the neck during the gluing process to be completely evaporated.
After the glued-up neck has cured it’s time to rough shape the back of the neck. I do this with a tool I made that allows me to leave a specific amount of shoulder and material, so I can dial in different shapes by hand later on.
As I stated in the last installment of this column, at this stage in the building of the original neck for 001, a giant stain appeared. Usually you can see signs of a stain as you work a piece of wood, but this one was hidden. Hidden that is until I back shaped it, then it reared it’s ugly head! The first 001 neck was lost.
So, after sourcing out another fretboard that Eddie liked, I built a new neck. The processes were obviously the same as the ones I’ve just shown you, so I thought I would just pick up the replacement neck at the rough back shaping operation again. Here it is.
After the rough shaping, I dial the neck in a “little” closer to the final shape and dimension, but not too close.
Once this operation is done the neck must cure for another 30 days. The purpose of this cure cycle is to let the neck move if it wants to after a pretty major amount of material has been removed. I want it to move now before I do the final fretboard dress and fretting. That’s why I still leave a bit of extra material on at this stage.
After the 30 day cure cycle I sand the fretboard level with the precision radius sanding block.
As soon as I finish that I lay out the top dots (if ordered), drill and install them.
Next comes the layout, drilling and installation of the side dots. I use a pin vise to drill the side dots by hand. I can be a lot more accurate that way.
After I install the dots, I do the final fretboard truing with the precision block. Now it’s time to fret.
After fretting, I clean up the fret edges with a fine mill file. I rasp, file and sand the neck to its final shape and dimension, working down to 400 grit paper. Just before I finish sanding I glue the nut in so it can be final sanded to fit.
When I think it’s ready I sign and date the neck… and it’s just about done!
I prefer to not have any stain or lacquer get on the fretboard, so I mask it off.
Eddie wanted a vintage tint to the neck, so I wiped it down with some Golden Oak Watco and let it cure for three days, then I sprayed a couple of coats of sealer and tint on it. After it dried for two days, I applied the serial number and peghead logo transfers.
After the logo was applied, 001 went back into the paint room for the final top coats. It’s going to cure for another couple of weeks before I sand and buff it.
Whew! Man… that was a lot of pics and writing. No wonder it takes me so long to get these things done! In my next installment I’ll complete the guitar, sanding, buffing, assembly, etc. I hope you come back and see how she turns out!
Have a great 2008 everyone, and I hope I haven’t bored you too much with this series! Be happy and well.
