RR said:
I'm totally blown away!
As a weekend woodworker warrior I could imagine the hours of labor in that guitar!
Did you do a Spanish Luthier joint? I don't care what purists say, I repaired a few one piece mahogany and limba necks. I'm high on luthier joint for short grain neck woods like limba or mahogany.
I'm thinking about all-scratch build including neck and all. I have done bodies but not the neck yet. I first have to get fretting under my belt (have all the tools) and installing the truss rod. I read this is a bit tricky. You don't want the truss rod to rattle what newbies' experiences.
Nice work.
I actually did a bolt on neck, partially because I was terrified something was going to go wrong with the neck and I'd have to replace it, and also while I was doing some research for the build I came to the conclusion that you can get just as good a connection to the body with a bolt on as a set neck,
if you make that joint tight. My big thing with this was making that neck joint a pressure fit, the thinking being that by having a tight joint here I wouldn't have anywhere in the guitar where vibrations would get inhibited. I'm not sold on different woods having a real effect on how an electric sounds, but I think the difference between a guitar that feels alive in your hands and one that doesn't is its ability to maintain string vibrations.
I would tell you to just go for it man, the neck is not nearly as hard as it seems. You just need to plan it out well, I did a full scale drawing of a front view and a profile with a detail of the neck joint. Make sure you find any funky spots on cheap paper before you start cutting through wood. I started out laying up one blank that was long enough to cut a heel section out of, and a scarf joint. Do those glue ups, clean it up and then cut your groove for the truss rod, which you absolutely need on hand at the time. I had a local saw shop grind down a 1/4" bit to the exact width of the truss rod ends, which was .23". I'd recommend using a router table and a fence, with a couple passes to get to full depth. After you get done shaping the neck all you need to do is lay a bead of caulk down in the slot, put the truss rod in and then you can glue the fret board in on top of it.
Like I said, just plan, plan, plan. You want to make sure you have the correct scale length and placement for the neck. When you design the head stock, lay out the string paths taking into account the thickness of different strings and to which side they will be tangent to the tuning posts.
I still need to improve my fretting, I think it's just something that comes with time and experience. The one I'm working on now has a bound fret board which is a different animal. A whole lot more work undercutting and filing the fret tang so it lays flat over the binding.
Go for it man, the more you work on it the more it all makes sense! (Thanks for the compliment btw!)