Telecaster Two build - neck on

More repetition here, I started to catch the second guitar up. 

First off, the fretboard blank I'd bought only had a single cut for the nut - I've ordered a few from my supplier, sometimes they have two cuts and sometimes the channel is already excavated. This had to be enlarged into a channel for the nut to sit in. I splashed out on a very nice Pax fret cutting saw (with a depth gauge from Guitars and Wood):

This is a really nice, high quality tool - much nicer than most of the other stuff I use :) I marked the line I wanted to cut out by placing the nut in place and tracing down the side of it with a scalpel. I then scored this several times to make a deeper line to cut along:

Then I attempted to attack the problem with the fret saw:

I very quickly abandoned this approach! I just was not convinced that I could cut the second edge of the channel accurately or straightly (?!) enough with the saw. This is definitely a tool and job that needs practice and experience, and the place to get this is not on a completed neck... 

In the end, I scored the line deeper with the scalpel, and chiselled the slot out with a very sharp chisel:

I drilled the jack hole as before and then proceeded to mounting the neck. First the holes are drilled in the body at 4.5mm (big enough for the neck screws to just pass through - this allows them to really pull the neck and the body together once it's put on for keeps). Then I cracked out the frickin laser beam and lined it all up:

A bit of tape on the first fret with the centre marked allows you to run the laser down the body's centre line and gently adjust the neck until it hits the mark:

Very little adjustment was needed here, the neck was pretty straight sat in the neck pocket. Then I carefully clamped it, checking the alignment again once clamped to ensure that the neck hadn't moved:

I then drilled 4mm holes into the neck through the holes on the body - the neck bolts will bite into these ones. I marked the required depth on the drill bit with tape - you last thing you want to do here is to drill all the way through the neck and fretboard!

The neck is bolted on:

You can see in the picture above that I carved the heel shape for the neck in completely the wrong place. I'll have to move that little radius down the neck an inch or so towards the heel. I think this came about because my template marked the position of the heel transition for a different shaped carve - one that blended much more gently that mine. It should be a relatively simple job to shift it back. 

And we can see what the guitar will look like:

I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to say at this point that I had a quick pose with the guitar in front of a mirror.... Looked pretty good....