More fretboard finishing

I'm several weeks behing updating here! The next couple of posts will catch up :]

There was one piece of binding left on the fretboard. I chopped a thin piece to size for the end: 

Which when fitted will look like this:

Before I added it, I wanted to sand the side bindings down and do a little extra shaping of the fretboard:

The fretboard is now at it's final shape. That means:

- It is straight end to end;
- The radius is constant all along it's length; and
- The centre of the radius it along the middle of the fretboard all along it's length

The fret slots were slightly gummed up with CA glue from when I put on the binding strips. I used my fret slot cleaning tool to scrape the inside of the slots. This is an aggressive tool, and needs to be used carefully, especially given the amount of work in the fretboard to this point:

The piece of end binding I'd cut earlier wasn't quite tall enough to cover the highest point of the fretboard in the middle. I cut a piece of taller binding:

While the CA glue appears to have been very good at sticking the binding on the sides of the fretboard, I wondered if it might not work as well on the endgrain. To give it a bit of help I scored the end of the fretboard:

And the binding:

And glued them together:

After a few minutes the glue was set up well enough that I could use my fret nippers to snip the binding to the same radius as the fretboard:

Yielding a fully bound fretboard:

There's still a little CA staining on the board which will need to be sanded out, as well as sanding the board to a higher finished grit. These will be covered in the future, but for now the board can be considered complete.


I had a little time so thought I'd make a start on the neck carve. Whilst this is one of the most enjoyable stages of the build, I am always concerned about taking the neck too thin, running the risk of 'carving' through into the truss rod channel. I took measurements to make sure I knew what thickness I could go to, and what tolerances I had. You can also see in this photo my new LP neck template thing - showing what the neck should look like at the 1st, 7th and 12th frets.

I marked the centre line, and the 1st and 12th frets. My general rule is that (assuming you thicknessed your neck blank to the right thickness) the centre line should never be touched - at the end of the carve the line should still be visible. This will mean that the back of your neck is stll as straight as it was when you thicknesses the neck. 

This shows how the template will be used at the first fret:

And as the carve proceeds: 

I started chalking the template heavily:

Then pressing it against the neck:

Which showed where it touched the wood, and which bits have to be removed next:

This is a slower method than my usual - where I just free hand the shape, but in this instance I am keen to replicate a 'traditional' carve shape.

I didn't do much carving before running out of time, but here's the neck components together: