Fretboard radius

There's almost nothing left to do before the fretboard needs to be shaped. A couple of little tidy up jobs.

I wasn't happy with how thin the veneer had become near the truss rod access hole. It was only about 1mm thick (just covered by the veneer, after the mahogany 'bit' broke duing the drilling a few weeks back), and could easily break in the future. To reinforce behind it though, the truss rod had to be moved back.

I marked where it had to move back to:

And chiselled it out:

Once done, the truss rod moved back 5mm or so, allowing for sufficient clearance underneath the veneer to reinforce it:

I used an offcut of ebony, superglued in place and held under tension with a pencil...

This will add another millimetre to the thickness, and will substantially strengthen it.

Now, it was on to the fretboard. Here's how Matt at Texas Toast does it: link. Takes about 30 seconds :( he even says he enjoys it.  Here's how I have to do it. There's more detail on this step in my telecaster build pages.

Tape the fretboard blank to a straight edge which will be used to run the radius block along (it's a 12" radius in this instance):

Masking tape / glue up the radius block:

And start sanding. Eventually, you'll sand a radius into the entire length, starting from the outside in.

Thinks to be careful of:

1. The fretboard stays straight along its length (don't sand in one place more than any other);
2. The fretboard top edge stays parallel to the bottom along the length (don't push more heavily on one end of the sanding arc compared to the other);
3. The radius block isn't pushed down too hard on one side or the other so the 'centre' of the radius ends up not being in the centre of the fretboard. 

This took a really long time - about an hour and a half, and it's boring, slow, dusty work. Eventually, you get this:

Note how the radius block is now covered with dust all across it's width, indicating that it's making contact with the entire fretboard and so put a complete radius on.

Here's the cross sectional view of the fretboard radius:

You can buy fretboards pre-radiused from Stew Mac, but I've not found anywhere in the UK that sells them. It's worth the extra cost to save this step, although you risk not getting the choice of wood you like.

Having spent so long on the fretboard, I wanted to do something that was easy and which made a visible difference to the guitar!

I attached the neck template to the neck, and rough-cut off the excess on the bandsaw:

Then after a quick visit to the robosander, the neck has its final shape. I forgot to take any pictures, but here it is 'attached' to the body:

And a close up on the neck joint - looking much sharper now, although a little more work is needed to snug it up completely.

With the fretboard radius out of the way, there's a number of jobs which are now opened up to tackle. These include the inlay work, the fretboard binding and (eventually) the fretting. I'll be ordering some trap inlays in the week, so it's possible that that will be the next job.