Telecaster build - neck profile

Just a small update; I started the neck profile. My method involves carving the profile at the 1st and 12th frets, then joining the two of these up. It will have a fairly standard "C" shape on the neck, the thickness will about match that of the current US Telecaster (which is about 0.82" / 21 mm including the fingerboard thickness, depending on where you read). 

First I use a profile gauge to measure the profile at the first fret off my Parker Fly:



Then I draw some lines showing the lines where the headstock will 'blend' into the neck. The lines must not be crossed with any of the carving tools, and must remain sharp till later:



And start carving, using rasps, planes and the japanese saw file. Bit further to go:



Keep going until you're about there with the profile:


And without the gauge in place:



I kept a very close eye on the thickness of the neck - you do not want to take so much material off that you go through the back of the neck into the truss rod channel - I have seen this mistake before and it's very upsetting!

I'll do the same at the 12th fret later in the week and start to join them up before moving onto the finer shaping around the heel and headstock transition. 

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.

Telecaster build - inlay dots

Compared to the fretboard shaping, this is a nice job. 

I used my homemade mould (a bit of aluminium bar with six and two mm holes drilled in it) to make some clay dots and side dots. I use Fimo modelling clay - the colour is 'light flesh':

Once they're cooked and popped out they're ready to be used:

Now the fretboard bindings are planed down to get the a bit closer the surface of the board. I don't take them all the way down for the sake of prudence - If I nicked the surface of the fretboard with the plane at this point I think I'd cry. The last bit of excess height on the bindings will be removed with sandpaper and the radius board.

Start here:

And take thin shavings:

Until the side is near to flush:

I do this on both sides.

Next up is marking the position of the dots. I draw a centre line on the fretboard, and then draw diagonals between the ends of the fretslots. These three lines should intersect, and will show the centre of each fret:

The position of the dots was checked about 20 times, I know at some point I will drill holes for markers on the 6th, 8th, 10th, 13th frets... 

The positions are marked with a centre punch and drilled:

And the dots glued in with superglue:

And I continue down the fretboard:

And a close up:

The fingerboard is very close to complete - the fretting will come after it's attached to the neck. Ordinarily I would attach the fingerboard before the neck is shaped. This time I'm conscious that a lot of work has gone into preparing the fingerboard, so I may wait until the neck is at least roughly shaped before glueing it on - that way any mistakes in the neck won't mean the lose of the fretboard as well.  

All that remains is to sand the dots and the bindings flush, and to sand the fingerboard up through the grits.

Telecaster build - fretboard binding

The next job towards finishing the fretboard is binding it. It's not a necessary step, but a nice touch since without it you can see the sides of the fretslots / fret wire on the outside of the fretboard.

I set up a pretty nasty router jig to cut a fine sliver off the side of the fretboard. I'm not proud of this, but it was safe and I figured that as this is a five minute job which I rarely do it wasn't worth making something too sophisticated :

From the side:

When the fretboard is run along the wall here, the router is set up to take about 1mm width, 2mm depth off the edge of it. I ran a few practices:

They looked ok, so I went for it, feeding the fretboard against the wall, past the router bit:

Yielding:

The end at the nut was tidied up with a chisel (which needs sharpening...):

And did a dry run to check it would be held in straight by the tape:

Before glueing up both sides of the fretboard with the rosewood binding:

And:

Next step is to trim the excess height of the binding strips down and sand the overhang on the sides back to the original width of the fretboard. Then I'll make and inlay the marker dots. 

Telecaster build - neck blank complete

Time to radius the first fretboard. This is a 25.5" scale piece of AAA rosewood and will be given a 9.5" radius.

I checked the centre line, and did a last lot of measurements to make sure that it was square and straight on the neck blank. It was:



It was tape / super glued into the radiusing jig:



And the radius block prepared with 80 grit paper:



Threw some chalk on so I could get annoyed at just how slow the progress was:



Five minutes later:



Ten minutes later. You may notice that it doesn't look very different:



I've got a whole load of these progress pictures, but rather than show them all, here's the finished product after what felt like about 14 hours of sanding:  



You need to make sure that the fretboard remains straight along its length and also that the radius is 'even' on both sides of the centre line; i.e. that the height of the board is the same on both sides of the centre line at 10mm, 20mm etc distances from the centre. 

At this point, I decided to see exactly how badly the birdseye maple that this fretboard is going onto would work with the router. I did a test, and it actually routed ok, guess I was being over cautious:



I thought it was worth going for it for real so mounted up the template and cut it out:



I then temporarily attached the fretboad and routed that off the shape of the maple neck. However, I forgot to take any pictures, so there's only a shot of the neck completed:



And another:



And without the fretboard:



And the detail of the heel. A little router burn here but as the heel is marginally oversized at the minute, it can easily be sanded off without compromising a tight fit to the body:



And finally, here is the guitar as it currently stands:



Before I can mill away the back of the neck blank to its final thickness, I'd like to have the fretboard completely finished. 

The next jobs therefore will be to bind the sides of the fretboard and make and mount the dot inlays. The fretboard will then be sanded to its finished grit.