Ready to go. I squared up the 4 sides, marked out the center line, and drew the neck outline using the template. Incidentally, I marked the center line on the neck template first. here's how to do it accurately, because the neck tapers toward the nut, and the heel has rounded edges - so it's not as straight forward as just measuring with a ruler.
I used an angle finder (a stainless steel protractor attached to the end of a ruler via a hinge). The neck tapers at 0.84 degrees. so from the heel end, that means 89.16 degrees. 0.16 degrees is pretty hard to measure in woodworking, so 89 degrees is close enough. setting the angle finder at 89 degrees on one side of the top of the heel and at 91 degrees on the other side allows you to mark out equidistant spacing on both sides of the template. Then the points are joined with a straight line. do this again a few inches away and you end up with 2 parallel lines... mark out their respective center points, and you have an axis for the center line of the neck. you will notice that the center also intersects the with the position of the 3rd machine head (G String).
The center line of the neck is what I used for the truss rod rout, as well as lining up the fingerboard later on.
In order to position the neck template correctly over the center line of the birdseye blank, I just lined up their 2 center lines... (then traced the neck outline).
In the first pic you can see the birdseye blank, and in the second you see the center line on the template....
Incidentally, you'll notice that the birdseye maple blank looks much darker and brown than regular maple. I bought a piece that was slowly heated for a couple of days to really dry it. The process also darkens the wood. It's apparently extra stable...
No comments:
Post a Comment