carousel182

Hey everybody,

Another one of these tutorials. I see people on these boards and in other places talk about neck building like it is some impossible thing for beginners to do. wrong. Neck building is actually quite easy and can be done with minimal tools if necessary. I have a lot of tools so ill be showing you the easy way to do it with a lot of tools. I also will make suggestions for tool substitutions along the way for some of you that may be limited to a router and rasps.

So first off I will be building a strat style neck with the truss rod access on the heel (I realize this makes adjusting harder but If you have the tools to build a neck you have the tools to take it off of the body and adjust it.) The reason i am putting the access on the heel is simply for looks, I prefer the headstock to be blank. But if you prefer the access on the headstock all you have to do is route the slot differently

The tools I will be using for this project are: Bandsaw, Planer/Overhead sander, jointer, spokeshave, rasp/files, drill press, router, various bits, double stick tape.

okay the first step in making a neck is preparing your lumber. most people prefer quratersawn lumber for necks because of its stability.

I'm just using some curly maple for the neck in this build.

For the fretboard i will be using bolivian rosewood. all species of rosewood are great for fretboards. maple, ebony, zebrawood, jatoba, etc.. basically all woods that are very hard are acceptable for fretboards.

My truss rod is a stewmac hot rod truss rod. this truss rod is easy and straightforward to install, and also gives you good results. the slot for this rod requires a .218 inch wide slot that is 7/16th of an inch deep. you MUST have atleast 1/8th of an inch of wood under your truss rod so the minimum thickness of your neck is 9/16th of an inch.

The first step I take when building a neck is getting my fretboard slotted and ready. their are many ways to do this, I happen to have the stewmac mitre box which makes the task pretty straightforward. You can obviously do this by hand but it requires very accurate measurements.

Once the fretboard is slotted and completed I get my neck wood. my neck wood is 21mm thick maple. You may be wondering why I used the metric system for that thickness, I have no idea why. When this is updated Ill put everything into inches for you.

Then you want to get your neck template (in my case a strat neck) To fit this onto the board I draw the centerline 2.25 inches from the edge of the board (which is planed flat on the edge that is perpendicular to the centerline) The edge will serve as a guide for my router when i route the truss rod.


http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/...icture002-5.jpg


Now that You have everything completed with your wood selection and all of your parts gathered your ready to begin cutting some wood.

first thing you will need is a template of the neck your making obviously.

When you get your template made your ready to start cutting. trace your template onto your blank

through the center of the blank you wlil rout the truss rod slot. I use stewmac dual action hot rod truss rods. these require a .218 inch wide by 7/16ths deep inch slot.

First thing I do is measure out the length of my pocket from head to heel then I mark the length of the route on the centerline on the heel and on the head end.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/...icture001-6.jpg

When this is done I set up my router with my routing fence attachement. this allows me to route parallel to the edge of my board which is parallel to the centerline. I route the slots length.




I then route down the center of my neck until the slot is 7/16th inch deep. When this is done I route the little extra bit needed for the adjustment nut.



now that thats done, i rough cut the side of the neck out that wasnt used to route the truss slot.



When thats rough cut I draw the profile of my neck. My headstock is .5 inches thick and the neck is 9/16th inches deep on the playing surface. The heel is 21mm thick. I take the difference of the 21mm and the .5 inches off of the top of the blank.

here it is drawn out.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/...icture005-1.jpg
http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/...icture006-1.jpg

When thats done I cut that out on the bandsaw (sorry no pics)

Then I rough cut the rest of the neck and put the routing template on



I then proceed to route the neck to size with a router bit with the bearing on the top.



After that is completed I am ready to glue my truss rod in with silicon bathtub sealer. This keeps the truss from jiggling in the route and creating unwanted noise.



When this is done I scrape any excess sealer off of the top of the neck with a razor blade.

The neck is ready to be glued to the fretboard at this point. To do this I simply line up the centerline of the truss rod to the centerline of the neck. I then apply glue to the surface of the neck making sure to not allow any to come into the truss rod slot. When the glue is applyed i clamp the fretboard to the neck using a bunch of handscrew clamps and a couple quick clamps to hold it in place while i set up the handscrew clamps completely.

TIP:set up any clamps before gluing, run a dry clamp if its your first time doing this




Okay so this leaves us with only a small amount of cutting until were ready for the carve.

first things first, getting that fingerboard down to size, because right now its a square fingerboard. To do this i first rough cut the board down to the finished taper using the band saw, this is a quick 10 second step that may save you a fingerboard that gets screwed up due to tearout.

so basically i just put my fingerboard onto the bandsaw with the fingerboard on the table. i then cut the board until its about maybe 1/16th of an inch away from the neck. When this is done your ready to route it down to size.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/.../Picture011.jpg

Okay now we are reday for routing the fingerboard down to size. to do this we will use a bit with the bearing on the bottom.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/.../Picture012.jpg

You now will simply route along the neck until your board is flush with your neck. this is a fine way of doing it except it has one problem, overhang. The bearing has nothing to follow on the fretboard overhang.



To cut the overhang off I simply tape a freshly jonted piece of mdf to the top of the fingerboard, use my bit with the bearing on the top again and route. this is a simple way to get everything 100% straight.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/.../Picture015.jpg
http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/...icture016-2.jpg

At this point the neck is becoming pretty close to done, everything is ready for carving.

The first step of the carving process begins with your headstock. Up until now you probably noticed that my headstock is rough from the bandsaw. this is easily fixed with my small hand plane (pics will come up of this I didn't take any of the actual plane.)

basically your just gonna use a small hand plane to flatten the headstock out. until you have something like this



When you have that your ready to work on your fretboard to headstock transition. Strat necks have a simple taper that starts about 1mm from your nut slot and goes all the way down to the flat portion of your headstock. to do this i use a combination of a chisel and rasp. to clean it up i use a scraper and sandpaper. I first mark 1mm from the nut slot then I score the line with my chisel. I then roughed out the taper with the chisel starting at the score line and going down to almost where the fretboard meets the body. When this is done I get my rasp out and make the transition smooth. When its rasped, its kind of rough. The roughness is easily smoothed out with sand paper or a scraper or both.

guitarcam123

finally someones doing this
i was going to do this but i haven't made a neck yet

carousel182

Okay so when your ready to actually start carving your neck your gonna have to figure out the shape to do this i make a box the thickness of my neck and the width of my neck in the middle. which is around 2 inches. I then figure out the carve and then transfer that to the neck.




When this is done I take out my spokeshave and rasp, and i start taking down ths profile of the neck. to do this i first use the spoke shave to do one side of the neck, then i do the other side. after that i smooth everything out with the spoke shave so that the shape isnt boxy. then i use the rasp to smooth it out some more.



after this is done i do the heel and the headstock carve. this is simple you just shape it until it feels right with the rasp





Pretty much done with the neck here. now i just use my scraper and scrape everything smooth





After this is just sand it until everything is smooth then finish it.. there you have it the completed neck building tutorial. minus one easy step, drill the truss access hole. thats easy though, just make sure you use a pilot hole first.

metalwarrior40

sweettt. i hate all the guys that come on here an say," yea im just going to buy a neck off ebay, its to hard to build" etce etc etc


METAL EDIT: anyway you can throw neck binding in this too?

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carousel182

Ehhh well, I would but i don't feel like binding this neck, it wouldn't go with the build really. I'll show how its done though.

Absent Mind

Might be wise for guitar cam and metal warrior to delete their posts (and this one if need be) and then for you to edit your first 2nd and 3rd post (or more) with the rest of the tutorial when it becomes available so it flows from start to finish without interruption

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carousel182

I can do it all in one post cant I?

Absent Mind

Depends how many pictures you use, theres a 15 limit I think.

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Kolanski

great timing on this. I just picked up some poplar to build a practice neck before i move to more expensive wood. I will definitely be watching this thread

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carousel182

bump for an update

metalwarrior40

very nice job so far,

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Duval67

I love you.

420 FREAK

This is looking great so far. It's a great idea everyone thinks necks are a lot hard than they are. I would like to add that you can get the preslotted fingerboards from stewmac which should be easier for a first timer.

metalwarrior40

hey carousel182, is it possible to make a strat style neck with a single piece of flatsawn maple? because i cant saw it into laminates, and i have no other use for this peice.

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carousel182

yes. it should be fine as long as its dry.

metalwarrior40

thanks, helps me alot, i read a ton about how it has to be quartersawn etc etc, but i trust you more than some article on the internet.

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LeviMan_2001

oooh, i want to build a neck too, how does birch sound for a neck wood? A birch tree recently kicked the bucket in my yard and i'm thinking of building an all birch es-335 style guitar but with a mahogany fretboard. (We're remodeling and i'm gonna snatch some of the old trim)

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metalwarrior40

^ i doubt that wood would be anywhere close to dry enough to be used

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Albino_Rhino

Thanks for this carousel!
All other tutorials seem to just leave something out. This works really well, and I appreciate you taking the time to help us all out at UG.

This should be linked in to the reference threads that are stickied.

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