HKG-SEC: Work the Neck

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been very busy lately, and haven’t had the time I needed to blog.

So where were we?

The neck has been shaped at the butt end, the truss rod routed for. What’s next?

I shaped the headstock, following the lines drawn from the template. I also drilled the tuner holes, which is not as simple as it looks.

The holes are actually two different sizes, with the smaller one being on the face of the headstock. This is to help support the tuner. This image, borrowed from Warmoth’s website, shows you what it would look like:

It’s not hard to do.

It’s just easy to make a mistake.

You drill the smaller size all the way through from the face. Then you flip the piece over and drill the larger size, stopping at  the right place.

The low E string hole on my neck ended up having just the large size hole.

If no one made mistakes, I wouldn’t be here.

I then shaped the fretboard. It needed to be 1 3/4″ at the nut and 2 3/16 at the butt end.

I had made a template for it, which you can see in the last entry. It’s the red trapezoid-looking thing I used to shape the neck.

I secured it to the red template and using a bearing cutter in the router quickly got it to the same shape as the neck.

Well, almost the same shape. More about that later.

Next, I needed to put frets into the fretboard. Some people say you should attach the fretboard first, others don’t. I do it off the neck for several reasons.

One, this design (SEC) would have made it hard to work on the fret ends next to the ‘fin.’

Two, I like to make sure the fretboard lays totally flat and straight so that when I glue a straight fretboard to a straight neck back, I get a straight neck.

Fretting is, again, not really hard, its just very easy to do it poorly.

The first thing I do is check the slot width. I have special gauges for this:

This way I know exactly how wide the slot is. That’s important because I need to make sure the tang of the fret is the same size. The tang is the vertical portion of the cross section you see below:

Notice the barbs on either side. That’s to help the fret stay in place. Or not, as we shall see.

On a finished guitar, you can only see the tang on the edge of the fretboard (if there’s no binding or the tang isn’t recessed. See my Less Paul build for more on that. 

Fret wire isn’t ready-to-use. You often need to modify it a bit. Luckily for me, I have the right tools to do this.

The Fret Barber from Stewart McDonald uses two small files in a vise to accurately shave down the tang.

Oh stop it.

This is accomplished by putting a spacer between the files. First, you measure the width of the tang on the fretwire. then you take the next smallest spacer and put it in the Barber. You draw the fretwire through the Barber like so:

Believe me; you do want to wear gloves.

Here you can see the setup I use for this process:

I put the Barber in a small vise to keep it stationary. The tang was about .029 if I remember correctly. So I put the .028 spacer in the Barber and drew all the wire through. Then I went to .026, .024, and finally .022, since that’s what I needed.

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Then I cleaned the frets with a rag and some acetone. I actually used nail polish remover since it is acetone.

It just smells nicer because they add a scent.

Speaking of which (?), I also stained the fretboard to make it look more like ebony. You’ll see the results in the next photo.

I needed to prep the fret slots. Using a small triagular file, I ‘chamfered’ the edges of the slots. It removes the sharp corner and any burrs, also allowing for anything on the inside corner of the fretwire where the tang meets the upper portion. It’s just a kind of insurance, really.

After cleaning that up, I check to make sure there’s nothing in the slots. Then I sand the fretboard using a radius block.

Fretboards aren’t flat; you can see a radius in the photo above.

Unfortunately, at some point in the recent past, Stewart McDonald switched from 10″ radius fretboards to 12″ radius fretboards.

And I don’t have a 12″ block.

So I used a 10″ and therefore spent more time on it because I had to take off 2″ worth of radius.

I knocked the dust off the fretboard and prepared to fret!

I don’t have a Fret Bender, because I still need to make one. Luckily, fret wire shows up pre-bent, and so it wasn’t a problem. I do want to make a fret bender, though, and the internet is full of DIY plans for it.

I started putting the frets in at the butt end. I do this because they are longer (wider) than they are at the nut end.

Notice the ebony loveliness.

Your chances of having enough wire left for a 1st fret are greater than for a 22nd fret because the 1st fret is significantly shorter!

Luckily, I didn’t have that problem. The frets pressed in pretty easily, and I secured them with some super glue. It’s not very traditional, but I’ve never been much for tradition.

After putting all the frets in, I filed the ends flush with the fretboard. This was something I would not have been able to do very easily if I had attached the fretboard to the neck, because the ‘fin’ would get in the way.

Now I had both halves of the neck ready to be glued together.

When I build guitars (and in many other cases), I try to leave anything important undone for as long as I can. What I mean is, unless I have to do something, I won’t do it just for the sake of doing it. For example, routing the bullnose shape on the ‘fin.’

It turned out to be the right thing to do, because I had made a mistake. Luckily for me, it was fairly benign.

The butt end of the red template, and consequently the fretboard, was not 2 3/16″ wide, but 2 3/8″ inches wide.

Oops.

I’d like to say I’m not sure how that happened, but I am. I failed to triple-check the measurements.

I actually noticed it earlier on in the build, but I’ve saved the pesky little surprise until now.

I had a choice: I could try to remove the excess from the fretboard, which would be tough to do, as well as involve making a new template, or I could live with it.

An extra 16th of an inch isn’t really a problem, especially for someone with big hands. And when you build a guitar neck, its always better to have a 16th too much than too little!

I have a couple of ‘Superwide’ Warmoth necks that feature fretboard overhang in the upper register:

That’s because they still use the standard neck pocket but have a wider fretboard. So there was a precedent. And my overhang isn’t even that pronounced.

Shut up.

On the bass side of the neck, it was no problem, because the ‘fin’ gave the fretboard more than enough to sit on. In my last entry, where I describe using the bullnose, I am actually routing to the new or ‘mistake’ line.

It was 5/32″ wider than the intended line. We’re not talking catastrophes here.

I decided to simply work to the mistake. The overhang on my neck was small,  but I decided to add a piece of maple to the treble side:

I put mine right up to the point where the neck meets the pocket; Warmoth has theirs at the front end of the neck pocket.

I sanded the butt end of the addition since I would be unable to get to it once it was glued in.

I could now glue the fretboard to the neck:

The hard part with this is getting the two pieces lined up while they have a layer of wet glue between them.

The easiest way is to drill very small holes in places that won’t be seen (like the bottom of the nut slot) and use tiny nails to hold the pieces together in the right way. I did something similar.

Because this guitar will have a ‘nut shelf,’ I had a lot of room to put the holes in. I also had machined both pieces to <1/16″ of their finished dimensions, so it was easy to check the alignment.

I cleaned up any squeezed out glue with a damp rag and let it dry overnight.

Speaking of the nut shelf, I needed to rout away the excess wood so the Floyd Rose nut would sit properly in its proper place.

Using a radius sanding block, I clamped it to the neck, making sure the end of the block was perfectly (or mostly perfectly) flush with the end of the fretboard.

That way, the block was like a template. Using a bearing cutter bit, I slowly routed the rosewood down to the correct thickness:

I did this after gluing the fretboard to the neck because that thin piece of rosewood would have gotten destroyed without being glued down.

You can also see the two holes  used to align the fretboard during the gluing process.

Next, I took my 3/4″ router bit (that thing is so big it frightens me) and rough-shaped the neck:

You can again see the treble-side addition. 

I did further shaping by hand or with an orbital disc sander. It often takes me a lot of time to shape a neck, since I will do some of it after the guitar is together. I play it for a while, then change it, then play it, etc.

Here’s the first ‘mock-up’ of the guitar:

It’s always motivational to put the pieces together, because it helps you envision the ‘finish line,’ so to speak. 

Once the fretboard was glued, I also notched the end of the fretboard so I would be able to access the truss rod adjustment nut.  

 Here’s a view of the neck joint:

I’m glad my mistake was something non-disastrous. It doesn’t bother me when I play it, though it bothers me conceptually.

People often ask me why I don’t sell the guitars I build.

One reason is that I feel I am still learning.

Obviously, that’s an ongoing process.

Another is that my abilities and methods are good enough for me, but not good enough that I would take someone’s money for them. I don’t feel like I can make a sale-worthy guitar with the tools (and skills) I have.

Another reason is that I enjoy doing this as a hobby. I don’t want to make it a commercial venture because I want to enjoy doing it.

The biggest reason is that I just want to keep all the guitars for myself!