I have finally started working on my first neck. I am going to a Texas Toast Guitars workshop in September and I would like to have made at least one neck before the workshop. I have gotten pretty far today. I started with this block of wood. I have a Wen bandsaw and I cut off a piece for the new neck and used my Wen electric hand plane to plane it flat. Worked pretty well.

I also had to make a jig for cutting the truss rod slot. It holds the neck really well. After I planed the neck blank, I used my Stewmac T style neck template to rough cut the neck. That was pretty fast. I love having a bandsaw. My son and his family bought me the bandsaw. Thank you very much!

I then used the template to route the neck. I had a 1/4 inch router bit for cutting the trussrod channel. I use a 3/8 bit for the top of the truss rod. I also used my chisels a little. In the picture on the right I had a block in the bottom of the channel. I later removed that an moved the trussrod down just past the bottom in the photo. I got the trussrod from Stemac.

I fit the trussrod in nice and tight (not too tight), and then put tape over the top of it before gluing on the radiused/pre-slotted maple fret board. I borrowed the Texas Toast Guitars design (sort of) for the top of the trussrod channel.

I taped the fret board on and drilled two hole for toothpicks in the fret slots so I didn’t have to worry about the fret board moving around when I glued it on.

Here is a photo of the pin in the neck and the hole in the fret board.

then I glued and clamped the whole thing up.

Tomorrow I am going to cut down the fret board and work on the shaping of the neck.

I had to plug the holes I cut for the tuning machines. I have the 6 inline classic style and they need to be close to perfect.