In this first episode of my Great Guitar Build Off 2021 entry, I’m rough building the neck. That means everything is dimensioned and ready for glueing. I prefer to finish the neck at a later stage, once the body is close to finished.

The entire process took roughly 21 hours, completed in the evenings over 2 weeks.

The first step is always to square up the material. For this build I have a nice yet somewhat cross-grained piece of maple. Once it’s straight I mark out the scarf joint, and cut a knife wall for accuracy.

I cut the scarf joint with my Japanese saw. It’s a tricky cut because of the angle, but as always with hand tools take it slow and let the tool do the work. I had a bit of cleaning up to do, but nothing too bad.

Next I cut the headstock to thickness. It’s the perfect opportunity to do it before anything is glued up and you can still clamp it properly. Afterwards it’s back to my trusty handplanes to get everything square and straight.

Before glueing the joint, I drill and insert some guide pins. These stop the pieces from slipping and save you from having to correct all the hard work you just did getting everything square and straight. A final little bonus is using the headstock offcut as a clamping caul, since it’s the perfect angle!

The next part is probably the one that gets me the most questions: cutting the truss rod channel. I started with my plough plane, but the cross-grained wood was a nightmare to work with. In the end I had to go back to my chisel for depth, with a bit of clean-up with my router plane.

Finally I drill the truss rod access hole. The hole is at an awkward angle, but starting with the drill straight before dropping it down slowly does the trick.

Once the truss rod cavity is in place, the neck can be dimensioned. The long rip cuts down the length of the neck took about 30 minutes each. I then planed the sides to final dimension with my number 6 handplane.

Next up, I start with the fretboard. First I marked a center line that was running slightly skew across the board, but in line with the grain. After tracing the neck dimensions onto the back, I used masking tape to mark the width. It’s much easier to see than pencil.

Radiusing the fretboard was done with planes initially, followed by sanding. A lot of sanding.

I cut the fret slots with a handy jig. While not cheap, it’s a huge time saver as well as being accurate. The entire fretboard was done in less than 15 minutes.

When the fret slots are in place, I can drill guide pins. These are essential to my process, since the fretboard gets taken off multiple times over the next few steps.

I prefer the “invisible binding” look where you bind the fretboard in the same wood. To do this, I mark the neck dimensions and plane the neck to size. Then, I cut roughly 2mm from the masking tape before planing to this new, narrower dimension. These 2mm are where the binding will go.

For the binding, I’m using offcuts from earlier. Before glueing them on though, I take the last opportunity to make sure the fret slot depth is where it should be.

After glueing the binding, I plane the neck to dimension once again. I also need to re-sand the radius to make sure it’s all perfect. It’s a convoluted process, but the result is great so I’m sticking with it.

The last thing to do before starting on the body, is cutting and planing the headstock wings. I use wings because of all the planing I do along the neck. If the headstock was there through all the previous steps, it would just be in the way.

Stay tuned for the body build!

Timestamps:
0:18 - Squaring the neck blank
0:55 - Marking and cutting the scarf joint
2:12 - Thicknessing the headstock
3:15 - Scarf joint glue-up
4:30 - Truss rod channel
7:50 - Cutting the neck
9:09 - Cutting the fretboard
9:50 - Trimming the fretboard
10:40 - Radiusing the fretboard
11:43 - Cutting fret slots with a miter jig
13:09 - Drilling fretboard guide pins
13:42 - Dimensioning the fretboard
14:45 - Making binding out of wenge
18:00 - Trimming back the binding to final dimension
19:55 - Final touches on the fretboard
20:40 - Cutting headstock wings
21:55 - Final reveal

If you have any question about the process, the press itself or the materials used, please leave a comment. Also please add any suggestions on improvements or better workflows!

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