Groovy

After some playing with the fboard it was time to return to the neck and in particular the truss rod installation. The truss rod is still being fabricated, but now that the fboard has a fairly defined length, the length of the truss rod groove is more or less fixed. I decided a while back that the easy way out was to fit a double action truss rod. The downside with these is the possibility of a rattle in the neck, which I have noticed on several other guitars, so I am going for the traditional compression rod in a curved channel.

I followed the method outlined in the Hiscock book which has a router running on curved rails to give the height change over the length of the rod. It was further complicated by the fact that the neck laminations are tapered, so I could not use the edge directly as a guide. I had to space the curved board away from the neck by different amounts along its length to give a surface parallel to the centreline. After some measuring & checking the router was fired up and the groove was cut.

I have noticed a *slight* warp in the neck. As long as it doesn't change it shouldn't affect things greatly, but to reduce the impact of wood waving about as the humidity changes I have cut an additional pair of channels for some carbon fibre reinforcement. I will be fitting 6mm diameter carbon pultruded rod supplied by Fibretech GB. The rods should keep the neck more controlled in all planes other than just reacting against the string tension, so any further warping will hopefully be reduced.

More Fboard Work

On the fboard front, the small dots need to be 6mm discs. I cannot cut circles out freehand so I had to find another way. I had some 6mm steel bar that nearly became a truss rod so I have used it as a former. Rough cut tinted acrylic sheet was superglued on the end of some lengths of rod, and then finished off on a belt sander. The same technique was used for the other shapes, after other formers were made. The discs are still proud of the fboard surface, but that can be sorted later.

I still need to make pacman and ghost shapes to fit under the tinted perspex...