S906_5 carve and then set the neck

Carve is almost done... this was a lot of work. I have to find a better way to do this in the future. Using a french curve scraper is very time consuming.




Heavy mineral oil after spending another hour removing scratches. Oil finishes require a lot of attention to detail.



Another look. I really like the brown streaks on each side. Keeps the whole thing from looking like black plastic.



Another look



Getting close to gluing the neck and need to clean up the edges of the pocket.



Starting on the neck. Using the Japanese saw rasp. Then moving to the dragon rasps. Finished out with long sanding blocks.



Almost finished. For some reason I didn't get any photos of the finished neck.


Ready for glue up. Tape everything off to prevent epoxy from getting into the grain.

Marilyn top and routing...

Time to fit the top to the neck. Take a few measurements to map the neck onto the top. It is a parallelogram so we use a center line and the distance from the face of the neck to the 19th fret. Measure the width at the base of the neck and the 19th fret. Then at the start point and end point we mark the width of the neck and connect the lines.



This is too delicate a procedure for saws or routers. The dragon rasp will work fine for the rough in then use a sanding block to fine tune the fit.



Almost there. Took a few more minutes than I thought to fine tune the fit.



The top fits pretty well but I have to trim it down so it can get clamped.



Now that it is trim lets see were we are. We need to make sure that we keep the top as tight to the neck as we can.



Gluing up the top using my clamping bars to apply pressure cross the middle of the top. As you can see they are curved on the bottome and flex when clamped on the edges.



After cutting as much excess I can with the scroll saw I use the dragon rasp to remove the rest of the excess.


Finishing up the body outline with dragon rasps as the spindle sander left all kinds of little uneven spots.



Fitting the bridge. This is my favorite ABM bridge. It is a lot more expensive than the Hipshot I normally use and only comes in chrome and gold. It is built like a tank.



I am still trying to decide on one or two pickups. I really want to do two humbuckers right next to each other but I am going to leave it with one until I play it.




OK this is pretty close. I still need to decide on bevels or 3/16" radius on the edges.



And electronics.