[Setekh]

Wa-hey! Talk about it coming all together. Really love the mother-of-pearl dots too, the neck looks so much cooler with them.

[Gloriano]

[Martinus]

I started out the day with a light breakfast of orange juice and determination, by dinner time I was kicking ass and taking names...
What follows is my account of the zen art of fretting...
*sound of gong and man tieing headband*

The weapon of choice for cutting fret slots is a junior hacksaw, even though it's primarily designed for metal it cuts wood quite well and more importantly it has a cutting width pretty close to the width of the fret's tang:


Remember our nice flat fretboard from yesterday? Well I'm about to unflatten it, if you own a guitar you'll notice (with few exceptions) that the fretboard has a camber, this provides easier play and a more comfortable grip. You used to have to plane the fretboard to shape which is a bit tricky, then some smart boyo came along and created a sanding block with the correct radius for the fretboard. You can actually get a number of different radii, I chose a 12" radius block as it gives a fretboard that will allow string bending (flatter is better) and also has enough of a camber to allow comfortable playing (rounder is better for comfort). Here's the block itself:


After a lot of sanding *wheeze*:


Ahh the devastating convenience! (note the kitchen in the background, mum's being very patient with me )


A bit more sanding with progressively finer grades of paper results in:

[Martinus]

You like those dots Eddie, get a load of them now all shiney like:


Here's the piece de la re-chordance... er....



Basically, you cut it a little longer than the width of the fretboard and bend it a bit so that it's got a deeper arc than the top of the fretboard, then you put it in position:


Then I take out my ultimate weapon, this implement is called a deadblow hammer and I dub it "Thor's Hammer!" (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name, ok)
It's got two faces, one's made of plastic and the other's made of rubber, the idea being that you don't dent the fretwire too much when hammering it into the fretboard. Did I mention it has a cool name?


You tap both ends of the fret in first and then gradually tap backwards and forwards across the board making sure neither end pops out:

[Martinus]

Many frets later and a bit of filing to remove the overhanging ends results in:


Now onto the back of the neck! Woohoo!
I rough shape both ends of the neck; the head and the heel neck profile is made with a file and some elbow grease:



Then I take a spokeshave and rough shape the back of the neck, I'll probably do the final shaping tomorrow but I must rest and regain my Chi for tomorrow I finish the neck and go to work on the body:


*exit gong... and fade...*

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Pwnage

[Dark_4ce]

You ROCK Maeg! And soon literally too!

[Joey_21]

DUDE! The craftsmanship put into this fine piece is astonishing!

[Martinus]

Ok I decided to deviate from my plan to finish the neck and do some work on the body.

First I had to position the bridge and tail piece, to do this I must make a nut for the neck (note that at this point the neck is attached to the body). The nut is only cut for width and is far too high at the moment but that's what I want, anyhow, I mark out all the grooves on the top and cut the outside ones only.


The reason for this is that I can take a bunch of rubber bands and make a string of sorts, I make one for each side of the neck and run then through the two nut slots I just cut and down to the bridge/tailpiece. I can then use the bands as a guide to where the bridge should be along the neck's axis. You can see in the photo that I'm looking to make sure that each 'string' is the same distance from the side of the fretboard. Luckily the marks I made earlier were pretty much bang on the money, I just had to move the bridge a small distance. Tres clever eh?


I then mark out the holes for the tailpiece pins and drill them.


Same for the bridge:


And here they are test fitted. You'll notice that they're rather high at the mo. That's because the pins themselves are screwed into retainers which need to be tapped into those holes. If I were to fit them now before the body is sanded and sprayed etc. I'd never get them out.

[Martinus]

Gotta fit the pickups next so I take my template that I made earlier, double sided sticky tape it to the face of the guitar and get busy with the router... Some time later:



Since the screws on the pickups are of a greater depth than the pickup itself I need to route a small, deeper bit on each side of the pickup cavity, here's what it looks like all finished:


And with the pickups test fitted:


Finally here's a glory shot of everything up until now:


And with that I'm on the home stretch.

[pyro-manic]

Hoo-hoo, she's starting to look mighty fine now....

Ta for the linkage, btw - most helpful.

[phreak]

that thing is going to kick some serious ass when its done

[Martinus]

Ahh, no worries pyro and cheers Phreak. I probably won't get anything more done until monday.

[Setekh]

Whoa, man... that gives new meaning to the word "fretting".

Love "Thor's Hammer!", too. Man, can't wait to see the finished product...

[Martinus]

Nothing quite like a little Asgard technology to make a mean guitar.

[Sandwich]

Wowsers, Maeg. You should make this into a permanent page somewhere so Google can index it.

[Martinus]

Woo! I can see the finish line from here...

Ok last time you saw the neck it looked like this.


lots of spokeshaving, filing and sanding later results in:


It's a bit chunky at present but I want Sean to do a bit of work on it (It'll be marked on tuesday or wedensday and I recon it's good enough at present to get him what he needs.) We can recarve it thinner or whatever at a later date. Anyhow for the time being this is what we're working with:


And with that we now have a servicable neck, w00t!


Tomorrow I will put the thing together, do a bit of setting up to get it strung up and get it examination worthy.
I'm just a bit excited.

[Ulala]

Amazing work Maeg, I'm envious!

[Setekh]

To see the process behind that neck, I now appreciate my own acoustic's workmanship so much more. That's awesome, dude.

[Martinus]

Ok the build is effectively finished, I gotta do all the fiddly things like electronics and fretdressing for the setup but that's another chapter. I've got two exams coming up so I'll just leave you with a few shots of what she looks like now. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Originally posted by Setekh


To see the process behind that neck, I now appreciate my own acoustic's workmanship so much more. That's awesome, dude.

Thanks a lot Eddie but an acoustic is far more challenging that an electric to build so multiply the effort I made by two.
Coincidently I wanted to remind myself of how far the neck had come so I got a photo of the neck blank before I did anything to it.


I got quite a lot done in a pretty short time.