S906_5 trussrods and stuff

This is a tip that will help you live with the beast. If you cut a small piece of foam (or you can use a small bead of dried silicone) and drop it in the throat of your router. It will help prevent bottoming out the bit. When the bit bottoms out it is way more likely to vibrate lose and cause destruction (ask me how I know). Use a high density foam with good spring.



Se the depth of the first cut to be half (or less) that of the trussrod. Never try to cut your trussrod slot in one pass as it is too much load for a 1/4" bit. On the second pass get the full depth. I tested the full depth (left over from previous neck) and a cut at half depth before finishing up. Always use push blocks. I use a guide line as a stopping point for the slot. On my router fence the center of the bit is marked as well.



The ALLPARTS trussrod fits exactly in a 1/4" slot except for the welded allen nut. That requires a bit of rounding. I try to make my rods extremely tight fitting (without binding) so we need to finesse the first few inches of the slot so the allen nut fits. To do this I chuck a 1/4" rasp in the battery drill.


The ALLPARTS rods are a bit thicker on the ends than in the center. To keep the slot as tight as possible I route it a hair shallow. I then use a really sharp 1/4" chisel to scrape the excess under the end and nut area. After a few minutes it all fits pretty well.



Profiling the neck involves finding a center line and attaching the template. After that we bandsaw the excess as close to the template as we can... we then further sand the edges without hitting the template.


After a pass with the 3/4" template bit we get the final profile. It seems like a lot of steps but it is the best way to get straight clean lines without tearout.



Cutting out the body. Lay the template on the wood. Then trim as close to the template as you can get with a bandsaw. Next like the neck profile we sand the edges as close to the template as we can. Follow up with a pass on the router and this is it.