The neck was roughly shaped with a round surform at each end before the spokeshave was introduced to it. I don't get chance to wield my spokeshave often so this was quite an opportunity. It was a job to be taken gently as gouging out a big lump of wood at this point would be rather annoying, so I removed small strips at a time in between smoothing the shape with coarse sandpaper. It has ended up with a 'D' shaped profile, with a larger radius in the middle, tightening towards the edges. The shape was blended into the headstock and onto the body at the other end until it seemed to belong together.
Once the neck was shaped & sanded to a smooth finish it was turned round and the frets were for a good sorting. After a scratch or two on the fboard I decided to put masking tape over the surface so that further work would not wreck any further. The frets were levelled with an oil stone block. It needed a fair bit of levelling as the fboard was a bit thin and wobbly once it was glued on to the rest of the neck.
I looked at getting some fret files, but they seemed stupidly pricey. I used needle files, sandpaper and finished off with wire wool. It doesn't look to bad, though I think in hindsight that the rough side of the oilstone was a bit too extreme.
The zero fret was bashed in just like the others. I had hoped that with the main frets being filed down, that the zero fret would be sufficiently proud (0.5mm ish) to do its job.
Oh. It was about the same as the rest. I thought the levelling had taken a lot more off, but I suppose to make a zero fret work properly it has to be taller fretwire. I pulled the fret out whilst pondering and then took the easy way out and sawed through the fboard at the zero fret position in preparation for a more conventional nut.
The next pic shows the newly cropped fboard and a sawn piece of copper bar that will become the nut. Why copper? I had some 6mm bar ready to hand.
The copper bar was used to mark a line on the headstock so that a groove could be made for it. I rumaged around and found a thin chisel (1/8") which was ideal. The bar was a good tight fit in the slot and then it was shaped to become nuch more 'nutly'. I carefully marked the centre point of the strings with a saw, but did not size them fully at this stage.
It looks a bit chunky and should be a good substitute for a zero fret. I don't like the idea of the nut being made out of a soft plastic as it may absorb some of the string vibration. It finishes off the the top of the fboard nicely - especially as there is no truss rod cover.
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