Telecaster build - inlay sanding and neck thicknessing

The clay dots have all been installed in the fretboard, but they're standing proud of the surface. The first job is to get them flush. This is done first with a chisel:



Then the fretboard is put back in the radius block jig and hit with first 120, then 180 grit sandpaper:



Yielding a half finished fretboard. I would have carried on through the grits to about 600-800, but annoyingly I'd run out of finer sandpapers. Sanding out the scratches from previous sandpapers is nowhere near as much work as radiusing the gretboard in the first place, so this will be a relatively quick job once I pick up some more rolls of sandpaper. the fretboard currently looks like this:



And close up:




I'm very happy with how the binding turned out; it's slightly darker than the surface of the fingerboard (because it's from a different piece of wood to the fingerboard), which makes it look like a nice accent along the edge. I'll definitely be binding the ebony board on the second fretboard when I come to do that.

With this done, the final fretboard thickness can be measured (its something like 5.8mm and will not lose any more thickness - the finer grade sandpapers will not remove much material) I could work out how thick I needed the maple of the neck to be. Given the depth of the neck pocket on the body, the neck and fretboard together need to be 1", so I needed to mill the neck down to 19.6mm.

I built a little mdf guide to hold the router flat above the surface of the neck:



and started milling the neck blank down from the back:



Once the correct thickness was reached, I set the depth stops on the router, here's the heel at its final thickness:



I progressed up the neck, making several passes at each section of the neck to get to the right depth rather than going all in one:



And the headstock:



I decided to take the opportunity now to drill out the tuner holes. I have a jig from stewmac for this, which needs little setup. I measured carefully the position of the holes from my template and clamped the jig in place. Once the first two holes are drilled through the jig (the two E strings go first), little poles are inserted:



Which the jig then slides onto:



Allowing for jig to be firmly held in place and the rest of the holes to be accurately drilled (the jig is clamped before it's drilled, unlike in the picture below):



Yielding:



Finally, I mill the thickess of the headstock down to 14mm:



The grain on the headstock is fantastic - very much looking forward to seeing it lacquered up. 

From both ends, the neck now looks like this:



and:



Next up will be the neck carve, after which the fretboard will be glued on - putting the side dots, shaping the headstock transition and the fretting will follow.