Shapin' the Necks

OK, so I actually did all of this yesterday and not today, which is why I am also having a second post today. I went to the shop and decided it would be a fine day to start carving the necks. I decided to go with the Les Paul neck first, which meant I had to use a draw knife, rasps, and files to get the basic shaping done. I then went over it with 60, 120, and 220 grit sand paper. I don't have any real in progress pictures, but here is how it came out. I will probably be taking a bit more thickness off the back of the neck to make it a bit easier to play. Right now it is probably about the right size for a 50s neck, which has been called a baseball bat neck due to its large, round back. I prefer something that is between that and the really thin necks and I have had several people comment on how comfortable my necks are to play, so that is what I will go for.



Here are a couple shots of the neck sitting in the body. Still not ready to be glued in, but its getting there. You can see there are some gaps, so I will need to do some more filing/sanding to get closer tolerances.



Next, I worked on the neck for the solidbody Telecaster guitar. This neck is already pretty thin, so the profile will be a bit flatter than the other necks, but it should work fine. Because it does not have a heel or angled headstock, I do the initial shaping using a routerbit designed for stairway rails, so it is a good fit for the hand. Then, I used the rasps, files, and sandpaper. The first two shots are just different angles while it is being worked on and the last two are after sanding and spraying with water to make the maple's figure show up a bit better.




Here are a couple shots of the neck in the guitar's body. It is actually starting to look like a guitar! It is always nice when that happens. As you can see this is the guitar that is going to have a third (middle) pickup and a tremolo.



Lastly, is the neck formerly known as the problem child. I should not have any more problems with it as I do not need to make up for lack of contrast with the inlays, so I will just drill holes the right size and rout the fish as close as I can get it and just use clear super glue to set them in. The transition from the neck to the headstock is looking really nice on this one in my opinion, but like the Les Paul neck, it is still feeling a bit round and large, so I will continue to slim down the profile for ease of playing. Once the gold dots and fish come in, I will inlay and radius the fretboard and put the gold frets in.





Here are two pictures of the neck placed into the neck pocket. It is a fairly simple guitar, but should look nicer than the run of the mill Telecaster due to the nice figured maple top and neck as well as the gold hardware.

Hopefully I will get to sanding and starting the finishes in the next couple weeks. I was reading my new guitar finishing book and found out that I was going overkill on the sanding on my previous guitar, which actually makes it harder for the finish to adhere to the wood, so now that I actually kind of know what to do, the finishes should come out nicer than my previous finishes. I also have two new spray guns and a nicer compressor available to use. Well, thanks for checking my blog, don't forget to check out my other post for today that actually shows what I did today. As always, please give me any feedback you come up with. Ta ta for now,

Aaron