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.