Sticking your neck out - Part 2

Where to begin...

The neck that I chose for this build is about as close as you can get to a 'Les Paul' style with it still being a bolt-on.  The scale length is 24.75 inches and it has 24 frets - which are both characteristics of a Les Paul guitar.  It feels a bit thinner than a Les Paul neck but not too far off.  A purist would say 'pshaw!' but as I'm not building a replica - I see no reason to get my pantyhose in a twist.  It's close enough.  If that doesn't appeal to you - the woodpile is by the exit.

What?  Looks good to me!

As I hinted in my last post - this neck (along with all the others) will need quite a bit of work - some necessary some cosmetic - before it can be played.  I know for sure I will have to:

• Fill the existing screw holes
• Drill new holes to match the body blank and neck plate I have chosen
• Change the headstock shape to a more 'Les Paul' style
• Fix that chip in the fretboard at the 24th fret
• Final/finish sand
• Tape off the fretboard
• Stain and shellac the neck
• Finish with nitrocellulose spray
• Let dry for 3 weeks - then sand/polish
• Level/crown/polish the existing frets
• Clean/polish fret board
• Install a nut
• Install tuners

I'd also like to do the following:

• Add a lamination to the headstock that matches the body wood (the maple headstock kind of stands out)
• Inlay an Irish 20p coin on the headstock (it's my thing ...until I come up with a logo)
• Bind the headstock to match the body
• Change the fret marker inlays (the diamonds).  Nothing wrong with them.  I just have something better in mind.

I may have no choice but to:

• Re-fret the neck.  Which is a big fat pain in the butt - but it may have to happen...

What's wrong with my shape?
What do you mean I, "stand out?"

Here's where we start:

One of the synonyms for what I'm doing here is, "reaming"
I'm just going to leave you with that thought.

This neck came with screw holes already on the back.  I might have been able to reuse them but more likely I would have just been fighting them when it came time to screw the neck onto the body of my guitar.  It's best not to bump into an old hole (or make it bigger) when attaching the neck.  Better to fill them and start over.  I enlarged the existing holes so that I could glue some dowels in to seal them up for good.

Don't be fooled - nothing in my shop is level.
Even that Level has a twist in it.

I tried to level the neck as much as possible so that the holes wouldn't be angled.  I also put a foam pad under the neck so it would rock a little less.  ...at the end of the day - you're filling holes not launching rockets - so, see what works for you.

Perfect!  Don't change a thing!

Once the holes have been enlarged put a few drops of glue in there and tap in some pre-cut dowel pieces to fill the holes.  You can use wood glue or superglue (CA).  Wood glue gives you more working time but also takes longer to cure.  CA glue cures in minutes (if not sooner) so don't dally!
I used CA glue as I was in a hurry on this particular evening.

One note: I used a fret hammer to tap these in as they are like 3/16th of an inch and prone to breaking (as you can clearly see in the above picture). All this is a way of saying that a construction hammer may be a bit of an overkill for this job.  I also find it helpful to taper one end so that it fits in the hole better.

I'll cut a b--ch!
Branch!  I meant branch.

This little guy with the micro teeth is a flush cut saw.  It works great for delicate little cutting jobs just like this one.  It's not so hot for anything substantial as the blade is quite flexible but you can put it right up against a flat surface and it will cut fairly flush to that surface.

Like so...

After you are done cutting you can clean up the surface with a sharp chisel, hand plane or card scraper.  Then move on to sandpaper.  If you go right to sand paper - you may create valleys or peaks that weren't there before.  I used a card scraper and then some 100 grit sandpaper.

No one will ever see it!

How's that fit looking?

Wait a minute...

So, here's the thing.  The dowels felt pretty flush.  But the neck isn't sitting in the pocket all that evenly.  I wasn't convinced it was the change I had just made was the cause of this (hubris, much?).
So I took a straight edge to the neck.  Yep, the heel of the neck itself wasn't completely square.

For that matter - neither was my neck pocket.  I could still see little scratches from the router blade.
So, ignoring what I just said above about valleys and peaks - how does one sand something flat? There are a couple of ways...

Son of a..!

The best way to flatten the neck heel is to tape a piece of sandpaper to the top of your workbench or table saw and run the heel slowly across that with even pressure.  Just a minute or two of that (using 100 grit paper) was enough to flatten the heel so that it looked decent with a straight edge.

For the neck pocket - it's best to find something you know is square (or straight).  I used a 1 by 1 inch square dowel that I was reasonably sure wasn't warped and wrapped sand paper around it.  Press firmly and evenly while making slow passes.  

I saw another idea on the Fender website that I will try in the future: tape the sand paper to two sides of the square block but leave the other sides without sandpaper - that way you can sand up to a finished (or already squared) edge without taking any more wood off on that surface.  Simple but smart.

Looks ugly.  Feels real nice!

Don't be put off by how it looks.  Those rings around the dowels are dried glue and the pen mark is just so I know where the cut away starts.  That sucker is flat and smooth.  You can't feel the dowels at all.

That'll do pig.  That'll do.

Those two processes seem to have squared things up quite nicely.  The neck fits pretty snug in the pocket both on the sides and now on the bottom.  I need to see if there is anything that needs to be done to the 'back wall" of the pocket (closest to the neck pickup) as that was the sloppiest part of my template.

Lacey!

For now, things look good.  I should probably screw this sucker into the body.

(for those playing the home game, that was the ninth double entendre in this post.)

I'm kidding.  I don't keep count...