Sticking My Neck Out

The next job is to start getting the neck closer to the right shape. The neck laminates have to be fairly chunky to suit the body, but the neck is typically about an inch thick so some material needs to be removed. I don't have a bandsaw handy, so I have to do battle with a handsaw.



You cannot relate to what you are doing on the end of a power tool, and accidents (to wood and/or fingers) happen so much quicker and deeper. At least with hand tools there is plenty of scope to check that things are still going to plan. I feel a kind of respect when working with wood and it is a way of getting to know it. Let's all hug trees now!



Now that the hippy moment has passed, the starting point was to cut slots to around the right depth along the neck. This helps mentally by turning a lengthy job into smaller steps, and also keeps the depth more consistent over the length of the neck.






Once it was done (several hours of hard work) the finished result is starting to look a little more like a guitar - which is nice.

More Fboard

The fboard was taken back into work to use the milling machine one more time. The fboard was clamped up and a 1.6mm drill used to drill into the edge for the fret markers. These are going to be 1.5mm fibre-optic light guide to pick off some of the light from the main fret dots. I remembered to drill two holes at the octave marker and made sure that the dots were closer to the back face of the fboard to minimise the chance of the drill busting out the front. That would be a really bad thing at this stage.