Official Luthiers Forum!

I woke up early today on my day off and set out on a nice bicycle ride to the neighborhood hardware/woodworking store to buy a couple of rasps and it was CLOSED! So I rode about 10 miles to the edge of town to one of the big box stores and got what I needed: a 3/8" round file, a block rasp "pocket plane", and a contour gauge.

The wife and baby were still snoozing when I got home, so I got to work. I lent my Bosch Colt to a buddy last week to use on a cabinet installation he was doing and he returned it. While talking, he mentioned that he "had a couple of tools" that I could maybe get some use out of. He came back 30 minutes later with a Stanley spokeshave and a Shinto hacksaw-blade rasp.

Needless to say, those two things saved the day and turned a boring task with rasp, files, and scraper blade into something pretty fun. It was the first time I had ever used a spokeshave!

To further distance myself from the StewMac model, I did away with the diamond volute and have a somewhat 'skewed' C shape, with the apex a little toward the bass strings to fit my hand. This thing is as straight as an arrow (21mm at the 1st fret and 23mm at the 9th) and feels like it was made for my hand.

On to final sanding later tonight and tomorrow and perhaps finishing within the next couple of days!!!

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Don't confront me with my failures--I have not forgotten them.

Congrats from a fellow Hoosier, Matthew! Nice looking neck. It's one of my favorite operations in making the guitar and I never tire of the process. I too use spokeshaves and rasps but seem to go about the task a little differently each time.

Next time consider doing a 5 piece laminate...they really stiffen things up quite a bit and also have that cool factor that further differentiates the hand-build from the factory guitar.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Thanks!

I was a little nervous about taking the knife to the partially shaped neck... The StewMac instructions said that it was almost at the final thickness, but I had to take off about 3 or 4mm to get it remotely close. It also doesn't help that I was on a week vacation out of state with 3 books on building and without the guitar. So I basically ready anything and everything related to neck shaping I could find and I'm still not sure if I really even stuck to a method.

Neck shaping and binding installation have been the two most rewarding steps so far. From here, things are really going to get good. My next milestone is a finished guitar!

_________________
Don't confront me with my failures--I have not forgotten them.