HKG-SEC: Preparing the SEC Joint

The job at hand is to build a neck that fits this guitar body:

The Washburn N series use the Stephens Extended Cutaway system to join the neck to the body:

This allows for very good upper fret access, so that you can play in the upper register very comfortably.

So I need to make a neck that looks like this:

This is not my neck, but itis an N4 neck.

These guitars and necks are made with computer-controlled machinery, not by hand.

This entire project is a dare. I enjoy challenging myself almost as much as I enjoy torturing myself. But this is how one learns, and how one improves.

In theory, anyway. 

On one hand, building an SEC neck requires absolute precision and has virtually zero tolerance or room for error.

On the other hand, it’s a f@#$ing piece of wood centered on a straight line with a round end. Let’s not get carried away. 

I’m not sure if I can build one of the most difficult bolt-on necks ever designed, but I want to try.

So let’s get started.

Luckily for me, other people have done the same thing I am doing. They share their knowledge, and it helped me a lot in the planning phase. 

I try as much as possible to plan a build out in my head and decide on the sequence of events so that I don’t end up making things more difficult than they need to be or making an avoidable mistake.  

With this build, any mistake on the neck was going to bring total failure, so I needed to be extra careful.

I found some drawings on the internet that someone had done of their N4 neck plan, and I copied it:

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I copied a portion of the second drawing (the part with the curve) and reversed it. Then I printed it out, making sure that it was sized correctly, and attached it to a piece of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). 

MDF cuts and sands easily but is strong enough to be used for templates. 

I cut close to the line with a jigsaw, then used the disc sander to match the MDF to the actual guitar body I have. 

Soon I had this:

Since I had a long center line on the neck piece, I could check the alignment of the cutout relative to the center line of the bridge, pickups, and neck. That’s the critical aspect.

The MDF fit into the guitar body perfectly, but the center line was off. It was parallel, but the neck center was a little over a 16th of an inch low. 

We’ll see how I rectify that situation next time.

First, I think I need to clean up my workbench!