| The neck is maple, with walnut
veneer lines, scarf-jointed at the headstock. Here the headstock piece is
inverted and clamped with the neck blank to be planed flat. |
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| I thinned the
headstock blank on the table saw by cutting it part of the way through, then
reversing it and cutting again. This is much easier and faster than using a
Safe-T-Planer or other means to thin the headstock, but it's unworkable with
anything but a scarf-jointed headstock. |
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| This is the glue-up of the scarf
joint. The cutoff from thinning the headstock makes a handy caul because it
has the exact angle and simply needs to be flipped over. |
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| The heel is built up from two cutoffs
from the neck board. I cut the rough shape into it with the bandsaw. |
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| Here's the Martin-style truss rod from
Stewart-MacDonald, ready for gluing. The aluminum U channel imparts a lot of
stiffness to the neck; no further reinforcement is needed for a guitar. I
covered it with a thin maple veneer after I epoxied it in place.
This has become my favorite way to rout a truss rod
slot--clamp the neck blank in the front vise, clamp a straightedge to the
benchtop, and run the router down the neck. square up the end, and you're
all set. |
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| I used lamps (only one shown
here) to warm the neck and fingerboard to extend the open time before gluing with
hide glue. My clamps are all laid out and ready to go. You can see the Rival
hot pot in the background and in its modified form in the next pic. I cut a
hole in the plastic lid that was just tight enough for me to screw in a
small glass jar. It warms the glue quickly, holds it at a stable
temperature, and cost me a whole $8.99 at Target. |
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| The neck bolts onto the body
with a single socket-head screw that's reachable through the access panel on
the back of the guitar. The nut for the neck joint is half-inch diameter
tempered aluminum, with tensile strength similar to mild steel, set into the
stacked heel. |
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| Bolt hole alignment: I drilled the hole
in the heel first, then used the transfer punch (a pointed piece of
quarter-inch drill rod) to mark the aluminum rod. I removed the rod, drilled
and tapped it, then replaced it. I then used the transfer punch to mark the
body. |
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| The tuners are eBay specials, a
slightly unusual screwless style. I made new buttons for them out of Corian
because the original ones were heavy, chrome-plated castings, which
contributed to the neck-heaviness. The Corian also adds to the white-accents
theme of the guitar. The screwless design doesn't really save time, because
you have to make pilot holes for the locating pins anyway.
You can also see the volute here. It was a
spur-of-the-moment idea as I was shaping the transition from the neck to the
headstock. The extra thickness under the nut really adds stiffness to the
headstock transition area. I have another neck, identically constructed from
the same glued-up billet, without the volute, and the difference is readily
apparent. |
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