Guitars Part 3 - THE NECK

This is going to be a big bass with a full scale 34” neck. I intend to make full use of it’s size for the story line of the Mersey Sound Wave. I hope to create this through inlays in the fingerboard, but first, let’s make the neck.

  The material of choice is Mahogany with Black Gaboon Ebony for the fret board and Flamed Maple for the head stock plate. As Mahogany is now a protected species I try and use as little wood as possible preferring to ‘piece’ together rather than cutting out from a large block of wood.

The head angle is cut and the wood will be reversed and glued to the back of the neck after the truss rod channel has been cut.

 One of the ‘magic’ tools is double sided tape it has so many uses and is an extra pair of hands as well! Fixing the neck blank to the bench with D/S tape the router could be set up to rout the truss rod channel down the centre of the blank. This has to be done very precisely, there is no room for  error as the depth of the truss rod is only 3mm from the back of the neck!!

 The head is now glued to the neck with as many clamps as possible to stop it slipping and left overnight to harden to full strength. Now to build up the head stock. A really nice piece of flamed Maple is selected and as a ’different’ style of head is being created to fit the overall design, a fairly large piece was used. As the neck blank is not wide enough it had to grow ‘ears’ at the head stock and for this, a rummage through my box of bits. Two off cuts were found, of  Mahogany and Purple Heart that were wide enough but not deep enough so a ‘sandwich’ was made with all the wood. Like I said nothing goes to waste!

Now the blank is ready for profiling. Using the guide line principals that are used in making gun stocks, emanating from a centre line, the carving begins. All hand work now and very good for the muscles! An old fashioned Draw Knife along with a modern Micro Plane are the tools to rough out the shape then a move over to 80 grit glass paper. The shape I’m trying for is a C profile and a finished size of approx 21mm depth at the first fret to include the fret board.
Work is stopped at this point and the final shaping will be done when the fret board is attached. We can now turn our attention to the head stock.

Next.  SPOOK

Previous articles in the series

Guitars Part 1

Guitars Part 2