Telecaster build - fretboard radiusing... it begins

My fretboard radiusing block arrived this morning. As far as I'm concerned, radiusing the fretboard using my method is the absolute worst job in guitar building. It takes forever, is boring, dusty and tiring. I've seen it done with a plane in a few minutes, but I just don't have the skill with that tool to be able to do it. I've also seen belt sander / router jigs to do the job, but I don't have the space to store them, or make enough guitars to make it worth building one.   

Aluminium 9.5" radius block, here it is:

The first job was to tidy up the block at the end of the neck. That done, and obviously only rough cut, with the fretboard in place it will look something like this:

And without the fretboard:

The first guitar is going to have a rosewood bound, rosewood fretboard. I suspect that the routing for the binding will have to wait until after the fretboard is at its final shape (and possibly attached to the neck) and I think I'd rather not do that until it's radiused. I'm going to think about the order of doing this over the next few days and may change my mind.

So, I put a straight edge on the fretboard

And clamped it into its final place on the neck blank. Lot of measuring and checking here which is easier to do before the neck has been rough cut out from the blank and into its final shape. The fretboard needs to be in the correct place (nut / 12th fret in the right place) and also exactly straight down the length of the neck. The fret slots obviously need to be at 90 degrees to the centre line on the blank. 

Once it's clamped, I drill two little pins through the fret slots. These will act as locating pins later on, so I know the fretboard is in the right place. The holes they leave will be covered up by the fret wire later on. 

Then I knocked up the jig I'll be using to radius the fretboard. It' just a simple straight edge which I can run the edge of the radius block along. This will ensure that the radius is put on in both the centre of the fretboard and in a straight line:

The fretboard will be attached to the base with glue / tape and so it will look something like this in use: 

That's it for now. 

Telecaster build - neck truss rod channel

This is a similar story to the previous truss rod installation. I'm using a different style truss rod, rather than the wheel adjuster it has the more traditional nut which sits in the heel of the guitar. It's still a double action rod, so the channel is simple to rout.

First things first - these come pretty grubby and corroded. I sanded and polished the adjustment nut on the dremel.

Sanded (and clamped in my nice new vice :]):



And polished with metal polish / rag wheel on the dremel:



Shiny. I gave it a quick dunk in lacquer to stop it corroding again and left it to dry:



Then the same story of sanding the face of the neck blank flat and smooth followed by planning a straight edge off it. 
I've not used birds eye maple before - I can see that the grain is going to be problematic. I don't think the surface of the maple that I bought had been put through a sander and there were a number of nicks in it. Some of these were quite deep and would have taken a lot of sanding to remove. Instead, I filled then with superglue and hit them with accelerator to cure quickly:



Then I sanded this back (you can see some of the marks in the surface in this picture. I didn't want to plane them all back with this crazy grain and it would have taken a lot to sand some of them out):



It looked pretty good. I usually wouldn't use this method as superglue tends to dry darker than the wood around it. In this case, given the grain I think it looks ok. Don't forget also that this surface will be under the fretboard, so I'm really only worried about the grain tears that are around the edge of the neck, where they might be visible at the interface between the fretboard and the neck. 

Then I planed an edge flat and 90 degrees from the finished face: 



The grain is tricky - that plane is sharp enough to shave hairs on my arm and you can still see tearout.

Set some stops for the router: 



And crept up on the required depth:



Still creeping:



Done:



Now, the heel end is trickier than with the heel style adjuster. I've seen two ways to fit this truss rod style on the internet. 
The first involves drilling a hole the same diameter as the adjustment rod into the end of the heel. This is probably the best method, but I currently lack the tooling / jigs to be able to drill that hole accurately enough. 
The second method involves routing a larger cutout for the adjustment nut, and gluing a plug in place to fill it up. Hopefully pictures will be more useful.

I rout out the area for the adjustment nut:



And drill a hole in an offcut for the adjustment hole:



This will be used to plug up the area on the end of the heel:



I forgot to take enough pictures, but basically that offcut is trimmed down until it fits snugly into the routed out area:



Then it's glued in place:



And once trimmed, the truss rod can be finally fitted:



The truss rod can currently be taken in and out - it will eventually be held in place by the pressure of the fretboard above it. 

I'm going to have to sort a way to shape this neck using a robosander / some other vertically mounted drum sander - I don't think that the router (usual method) or my planes (unless I can get them insanely sharp) will be good enough to avoid tearout on this grain. 

As with Telecaster Two, there's now nowhere to go apart from radiusing the fretboard. I'm still waiting on the fretboard radius block to come from Guitars and Wood (I think they've closed over Christmas) - at least there's still a legitimate excuse standing between me and having to do it :( 

Telecaster Two build - neck truss rod channel

Did a bit of tidying up of the second solid body by putting a small radius on edge. I think the 50's/60's Fenders had a radius of 1/8" (c3mm). This is a 2mm radius and I've not yet decided whether to keep it or make it a larger radius (I believe the modern telecasters have something closer to 1/4" radius):



I have a very bright and directional light in the workshop which gives the crazy shadows in the pictures...

Onto the neck.

The neck for the solid body telecaster will be AAA flamed maple. This was sanded flat:



And I threw a bit of thinners on the grain. Nice:



Then the edge was straightened and planed to 90 degrees off the face;



Shavings are much nicer than dust...



I drew a centre line off the now straight edge and drew the neck on using a perspex template. Next step is to rout out the channel for the truss rod. I put a stop at the end of the neck so that I wouldn't have to worry about where to stop the router once it was cutting:



And made a first, shallow pass:



Then crept up on the depth needed to make the truss rod exactly flush with the top face of the neck. This is a dual action truss rod by the way, so the channel can just have a square bottom along its length:



The correct depth is reached:



Now a little more work is needed at the other end of the truss rod. The adjustment wheel has a larger diameter than the actual rod, so you need to cut some more wood away:



I forgot to take any pictures of this, but after a few more controlled passes of the router and a couple more stops set in place, you get this:



Which, once the end of the neck is trimmed down, yields this:



A close up:



Once complete, the wheel of the truss rod will stick out from the neck itself. I plan for the wheel to eventually be hidden under the scratchplate once it's mounted to the body, so there will be no visible impact of using this style of truss rod, but it will make adjustment slightly easier compared to the more traditional style.

The truss rod is now perfectly positioned, and the adjustment wheel set in place. However, the maple neck is actually significantly thicker than I need it to be so the next job on the neck will be to mill some of that thickness away. Before I can do that I need to know what thickness it needs to be, and before I can know that I need to have a radius'ed fretboard.

This means that there's no way to put off radiusing the fretboard much longer :(

Telecaster Two build - cavity routs

These are pretty much the same pictures as the other telecaster body so not loads of explanation. It's going to have the same pickup configuration so I'll just rout straight off the same template.. 

I accidentally routed a bit of the bridge pickup hole on my template on the last build :( To correct this edge, I used a straight piece of MDF to guide the router bit along that edge instead of the perspex:



The neck pocket is routed over several passes to 16mm (+5mm template thickess):



Close enough:



The neck and bridge cavities are deeper than my router will go with the template attached to the body. The template is removed and the router bearing runs on the sides of the pocket that have already been cut. Because I'd like a straight edge between the neck pickup cavity (c.20mm depth) and the neck pocket (16mm depth), I use a little MDF jig in the hole between the two:



Which yields a neat line, like so:




Then I drill the holes joining the neck and bridge cavity holes using the massive drill bits:



And cut the brass to line these holes. As with the previous body, this will be grounded. Almost certainly won't make a tonal / humming difference, but it seems like a good idea:



Then I dismantle one of my homemade spool clamps and use it to hammer the brass tube home (can't do that with the pricey stew mac ones ;)) : 



Yielding this:



Finally, I'd been um'ing and ahh'ing a bit about putting a contour onto the back of this guitar. In the end, I figured that since I'm not being strict on this either being or looking like a vintage spec guitar, I'd prefer the extra comfort of a contour on the back. I went for a similar size cut out as the current US standard, which is fairly large:



And started filing with the Japanese saw rasp:



It takes a long time:



But eventually, you get a reasonable shape. This isn't quite there, and needs a little finessing, but you get the idea:



Apart from the roundover on the edges of this body, this body is now caught up to the first. It weighs 5.5lb exactly.

I'm waiting on a delivery from Guitars and Wood for a 9.5" radius fretboard sanding block, but once that arrives I'll make a start on the two necks; starting with the absolutely mind numbing and exhausting job of putting the radii on their fretboards :(