| Time to carve the neck - add some lay-out
lines to get you started.... |
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| I first carved the transition into the
headstock and bottom end of the neck. Then I started removing
material in-between with spoke shaves. |
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| It was an enjoyable hour tweaking the neck - I
kept stopping to check how it felt in the hand and removed material
until it felt "right". |
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| A quick cleanup with sandpaper and the neck is
ready - now for some frets! |
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| The jumbo frets I bought need the tangs
cutting back to go in-between the binding. |
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| Here I have marked the waste to be removed
from a fret. |
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| I filed off the tang and clipped it to length
with side cutters. |
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| A little wipe of glue on the tang and the fret
is hammered into place. 21 to go.... |
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| And the rest fitted. I'll level the frets and
then I can glue the neck to the body. The neck glue-up was very
straight-forward. Glue in the mortise, slide in the neck and apply a
clamp - so simple I forgot to take a photo! |
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| After gluing the neck on I realised I forgot
to drill the holes for the pickup wiring - doh! Its much easier to
do this from the neck socket. I had to do half the hole from the
front pickup cavity and join it up from the rear pickup cavity. |
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| Then connect the back pickup cavity to the
control cavity - be careful not to bruise the wall with the drill. |
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| I measured and marked out the holes for the
bridge studs and drilled them on the drill press to ensure the holes
were vertical. |
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| The position of the studs for the other part
of the bridge is critical for proper string intonation (making sure
the strings sound in tune all the way up the neck). So I mocked up
the strings using string to ensure I got the bridge properly centred
and correctly placed. I marked the positions with a center punch -
the studs that were supplied with my bridge were pretty rubbish so I
have ordered a more suitable pair. |
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| I drilled out the tuner holes on the headstock
using a template. Then it was time for some sanding! |
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| I used my random orbit sander to give the flat
surfaces of the guitar a good sanding. The bevels and the neck were
sanded with a block and by hand. Unfortunately I drilled a little
close to the surface near the control cavity and managed to sand
through - argh!! A little filler wiill sort that out before the
lacquer goes on. |
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| With everything sanded and clean I mixed up
some pore filler - the grain of mahogany is quite "open" and will
take many coats of lacquer to give a flat glossy surface due to the
pores. So this filler will fill the pores so I won't have to put so
many coats of lacquer to give a perfect finish. I added some dye to
the filler to give it a ruddy hint. |
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| The filler is applied with a rag across the
grain, rubbing it into the wood. The excess is wiped off leaving it
in the pores. I'll leave it overnight to dry before giving it a
final sanding. |
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