Pain in the Necks

Well, fortunately, there was not really anything painful about working on the necks I did today, in fact, everything went pretty well. I started off by installing the frets (gold) into the semi-hollowbody Les Paul neck. Compared to the last guitar I did (black Strat), these fretboards have been a piece of cake. I still am not sure if it is because the last guitar used an ebony fretboard or if it is the fretwire and or fret saw's cutting width, but so far, I have done a maple and a rosewood fretboard and both were easier than the ebony with the other fretwire. The first two pictures show the fretting in progress and the third shows the completed fretboard. Also, on the third picture, you may be able to see globs of superglue I put down to fill in some gaps on the inlay.




Well, since I am still waiting on the dots for the third attempt on the semi-hollowbodied Tele neck (they should arrive tomorrow or Friday), I decided to work on the other guitars I have been putting off (the solidbody Les Paul and the SG). Since I had already split the neck blank so I could make two necks from it, I decided to start working on them. The first picture shows one of them on the bandsaw getting the side profile cut. The next picture shows the truss rod slot being routed in. I figured out how to use the edge guide on the other Les Paul I am building, so the channel is much easier and accurate to do now. The third picture shows the truss rod in the slot and the fourth picture shows the front profile cut (except the headstock shape).




Well, I did it again. That first neck went so smoothly, I decided to do another. I will use one on the Les Paul and the other for the SG. You can see the fronts of both of them in the first picture and the second shows one's front and the other's side profile.



Well, here's the body for the SG. I actually cut this and routed the pickup cavities and electronics channel back when I was working on the skeleton Strat copy. It has just been sitting around ever since, so since I was feeling productive today, thought I would work on it some more. I got the neck pocket routed out and the neck fitted to it (the neck tennon had to be shortened and I had to thin out the profile of the tennon as the pocket is smaller on the SG than on the Les Paul). I started using a forstner bit to take the bulk of the wood out and then used the router. Next, I had to use some angled profile templates to cut the correct angle in the neck pocket and then on the top of the body at the neck tennon.




Here's the body with the neck in the neck pocket. It fits pretty good, especially for not having routed the neck tennon with the template. You can see the heel of the neck sticks out past the back of the body quite a bit. Also, on the profile shot, you can see how the neck angle continues on to the body.This is because the profile template I used on the neck is for the Les Paul. It will need to be trimmed down flush with the back of the guitar's body. You can see that the neck and body woods are two different colors. This is partially because the body got a bit of overspray from the black Strat and partially because the body is made of Sappele mahogany and the neck is Honduran mahogany. Once it gets sanded down, grain filled, and stained, it should not be as noticeable.



Here is the back of the neck joint. You can see that I have already shaved off the excess wood at the heel. It still needs more work, but that will get done when I carve the neck. The next picture is just a full back shot. Next time I get over to the shop (hopefully I can get over there tomorrow and Friday), I plan to carve the edges of the body. I am going to try to do a smooth body to neck joint and round out the neck extension on the back of the body.




Well, that's all for now. I hope you like what you see. If you know anyone in the market for an SG style guitar, let me know and I can try to hook you up. I am planning on using a one piece wraparound tailpiece/bridge with individual saddles and black hardware. I will be using two humbuckers with chrome covers. I am not sure if I will add a coil splitter or just do standard electronics. Amazingly, I was only at the shop for about four hours today and I got all this done. Either that means that I am getting better, or I just did not have any problems like I normally seem to run into (or a combination of the two). Hopefully I can be this productive more often. Well, take care, I'll update when I get more done.

Aaron