I want to apologize in advance having gotten pretty lazy with the camera-work as my time to work on the guitar has gotten pretty limited of late — lots of teaching, not as much woodworking! A fair amount of steps went unphotographed as I found a little time here and there to push the work along. I’ll document these steps more fully the next time around. I use the typical spliced neck joint and this is the glue-up:
As you can see in this shot, several steps have been accomplished:
First, the heel block was built up. I use a vertical seam with 2 pieces rather than stacking 3 or 4 pieces horizontally (in relation to the plane of the neck). The seam is aligned with the center-line of the neck and the visible end-grain is book-matched for an elegant symmetrical appearance. After truing, I cut the tenon on the tablesaw and rout the channel for the torsion rod which will be accessed through the sound-hole. Threaded inserts were also epoxied into the tenon for bolting on the neck.
You can also see that the fretboard has been slotted, shaped, and inlaid. I use two simple routing jigs (the fretboard is atop one of them) that help me produce the fretboard taper, neck taper, and also gives me bridge placement down the road. Small pins are used to locate the fretboard and neck to the jigs and to each other. The wider piece of ebony will cover the peg-head.
The fretboard is unglued, but properly aligned on the neck with the aforementioned pins. I am testing the fit of the tenon and making sure that the neck is aligned with the center of the body. If you are observant, you’ll notice a miscalculation with the rosette — I mistakenly stopped the ends short of terminating under the fret-board. They will need to be extended – a pain, but do-able (this comment applies to most errors a craftsman must fix!). The peg-head veneer has been glued on now and the peg-head rough shaped.
Next comes the heel-cap. I angle the end that butts against the body, prior to gluing, then glue it with the neck bolted in place to ensure a tight fit with no trimming necessary. This shot also nicely illustrates the book-matched end-grain of the built up heel block.
The frets are installed while the board is supported by the routing template.
The file-holding jig in the background is used to angle the ends of the frets. The torsion rod is installed in the neck and then the fretboard is glued on. The holes for the tuners were also drilled.
Until next time!
df
