THE NECK - FINAL CARVING

SHAPING THE NECK

The Final carving of the neck began by trimming the sides flush to the fingerboard, first with a spokeshave on the main part of the neck, then with a chisel at then ends where the spokeshave couldn't reach.

The neck thickness was then pared down to 21mm at the nut end, the final thickness. The thickness at the 9th fret was already the correct thickness, 23.5mm. A block plane was used to taper the neck from the nut end to the heel. This worked rather well and ensured the back of the neck ended up straight.

Next, bevels were cut on each side of the head and the heel. The idea here was to shave bevels along the neck on each side of the neck with the spokeshave, first with primary bevels, then secondary bevels, slowly letting the curvature of the back of the neck evolve in a controlled manner. I really like working with facets, but despite all the good intentions, it didn't really turn out the way I had hope for, either because of a rushed job or my lack of ability. As the primary bevels slowly emerged, it became clear that a gouge in the middle of one of them had evolved, a gouge I was only able to get rid of by a hair by thinning the neck altogether by 0.5mm. It was a close shave so to speak.

As the work proceded I resolved to carve the profile as one smooth curve, using a straightedge and light to check the straightness and even curvature of the profile, and using my hands to feel for lumps and indentation. It seemed to work fine. Cumpiano suggests that eventually this process becomes a quite organic one and after having been through it, I can see why. However, I still believe that working with facet will ensure more consistent work, even though it clearly wasn't the case this time around.

Once the profile was getting close to finished, I slowly started to work it into the heel aiming for a seamless transition between the two. The same was done at the head however these curves had to be cut from scratch. I marked a curve on the back of the head with a set of protractors, by placing one of the legs at the top of the head while scratching a circular curve exactly where the two members of the scarf joint met. This circle segment was used as a guide to carve the transition from the flat head to the neck profile. Though this was not planned, it ended up disguising the scarf joint almost completely. The carving was done with a paring chisel and finished up with a scraper.

Then came the final carving of the heel. Again the paring chisel was tool of choice. Not much had to be done to get it into shape as the existing heel was already very close to final shape. But, bits and pieces had to come off, particularly at the fingerboard joint and the area up against to the body, where glue was still present from when the sides were attached. (I'll never glue the sides on again). The area around the heel cap was also pared down to a smaller size.

To finish the neck shaft off, sandpaper was used to even out the little bumps and hollows left over from the edge tools. First 120 grit garnet paper was used, then 220 grit.

ADDING MARKER DOTS
Convention in classical guitar making dictates that no marker dots should be added. Purist will argue that one should be able find ones way around the fingerboard without these aids and adding them indicates the owner of the guitar is not a very good player.

That may very well be the case, but nevertheless I decided to venture against convention, be daringly outrageous and added not just one, but two dots, one for the 5th and one for the 7th fret. I even considered a third dot for the 10th, but I didn't like the way it looked. So there you have it: I'm a dilettante and a terribly vain one at that.

For the markers I used 13-gauge galvanized wire from the local hardware store. The diameter fits a 5/64" drill bit very well. The wire came in a 100 feet roll. I doubt I'll ever run out! It was easy to cut and it matched the silver look of the frets very well.

The placement of the dots was marked on the side of the fingerboard with an awl. The halfway mark between the frets was measured with a small ruler, whereas I eyeballed the middle across the thickness of the fingerboard. The holes were drilled with a small 5/64" brad point drill bit and a hand drill. I only have a big electrical hammerdrill and I thought it might be a bit of an overkill for the puny bit. I did consider using a Dremmel tool but I didn't feel comfortable with it not having a proper trigger. So in the end the hand tool won out.

Last, the wire was cut into two small segments, each about 1/4" long. As the wire cutters flattened the wire a little, I had to grind the end a little with a file in order to make them fit the holes properly. The segments was glued in with epoxy and once the glued had dried the protruding wire was cut down with wire cutters, then ground flush using a smooth file and finished off with sandpaper.

SHAVING NECK TO WIDTH
PARING NECK TO WIDTH AT HEEL

PARING NECK TO THICKNESS AT HEAD

MEASURING NECK THICKNESS
PLANING NECK TO THICKNESS
PARING BEVELS FOR NECK PROFILE AT HEAD

PARING BEVELS FOR NECK PROFILE AT HEEL
SHAVING THE PRIMARY NECK BEVEL
SHAVING THE NECK TO FINAL PROFILE
REMOVING FACETS WITH SCRAPER

FINAL CARVING OF THROAT

FINAL CARVING OF HEEL

FINAL CARVING OF HEEL CAP

SANDING NECK PROFILE

CHECKING PROGRESS FOR BUMPS AND HOLLOWS
CHECKING NECK PROFILE

MARKING FOR FINGERBOARD POSITION MARKERS

DRILLING HOLES FOR FINGERBOARD POSITION MARKERS

GLUED IN FINGERBOARD MARKERS

FILING FINGERBOARD MARKERS FLUSH

FINISHED FINGERBOARD MARKERS

FINISHED NECK

FINISHED NECK

FINISHED NECK, HEEL DETAIL

FINISHED NECK, THROAT DETAIL

FRETTING

This was in many ways new territory for me. Not that other processes hadn't been too but once you have gotten the hang of using a plane and a chisel, it doesn't really matter whether you are caring a brace or the heel. With fretting I felt like I had to learn to use new tools and materials.

I used LMI's FW74 medium fretwire.

PREPPING THE FRETSLOTS
Because of the compound slope and relief that was worked into the fingerboard after the fretslots had been cut, they needed to be deepened a little in order for the fret to be seated properly.

I set my fretsaw to cut cut a 2mm deep cut and started recutting the slots from the nut and onwards. It was tedious work as the saw kept jamming. In hindsight I should probably have taken the time to resharpen it and adjust the set, but as I was pressed for time I just muscled my way through it instead.

It worked fairly well on the slots below the 12th fret but once I went above trouble started. To protect the soundboard I used the plexiglass apron I used for final planing and sanding of the fingerboard, and though it did protect the top, it also made it very difficult to keep the saw in the slots. A few times the blade of the saw hit the plexiglass and made it jump out of the slot and making a shallow cut next the fretslot. I could have kicked myself three times (it happened three times).

I managed to do a fairly invisible repair by filling the rouge cuts with 5 minute epoxy mixed with sawdust from the fingerboard and scraping it flush.

Last thing to do was to bevel the edges of the slots with a triangular file to prevent tearing of the fingerboard surface if and when the frets need to be pulled out and replaced down the road.

INSTALLING THE FRETS
The frets were cut with a regular set of diagonal wire cutters. I cut them roughly 1/4" too long and placed them sequentially in a little holder I made from some scrap cherry. The first 10 frets were then hammered in with an 8oz plastic hammer, Starting at the middle of each fret working my way out to the ends. These were done with the neck supported by a block of wood. Frets number 11 to 15 were also hammered in but with the support of the bare heel resting on the workbench. Frets number 16, 17, 18 an 19 were pressed in using a regular bar-clamp and a piece of fingerboard scrap as a caul.

As I examined the results I couldn't help but notice that the frets had not gone in as cleanly as I had wish for. Most of them had areas where they weren't seated properly. Not disasterly so, but enough to be detected by the naked eye. I gave it another go with the hammering, but it didn't really accomplish much, even when pounding harder than I would think necessarry. I don't really know why that happened. I had checked the slot depth quite meticulously prior to installation and had the fret slots had insufficient depth it would have mostly likely been at the center. My unseated fret segments seemingly occurred in random places. I speculate that the saw kerf might have been too narrow for the job.

Also a product of a rushed job, no glue was applied to the fret tangs before the frets were hammered it. I only came to think of this after the task was completed.

LEVELING THE FRETS
First the fret ends were cut off flush to the fingerbard with a set StewMac's ground down end nippers. It was a really nice tool. Easy to handle and gave a nice and clean cut.

For the fret ends I had made a little jig to hold a 2"x6" diamond stone. The jig is quite simple, basically a block of plywood with a slot in it. One of the faces is square to the slot, allowing the fret ends to be dressed flush with the fingerboard edge, the face on the other side was cut to give the fret ends a 35 degree bevel.

First the little bit of fret tang that was leftover was ground down a 325 grit coarse stone inserted into the square side of the jig. Then the fret ends were beveled, first by cutting the 35 degree bevel with a 325 grit coarse stone and finished up with a 1200 grit extra fine stone. The fret ends were ground down just enough for the bevel to extend onto the fingerboard. The extra fine stone left the the fret ends with a nice semi-dull surface. I looked really slick.

The leveling was done with the diamond stones too, again first with the 325 grit, then the 1200 grit. They worked wonderfully. I tired to do keep the leveling to a minimum, but the less than perfect setting of the frets necessitated that I had to take off a little more until all the frets showed at least a little bit of flat surface on the crowns.

DRESSING THE FRETS
With a little protective steel fingerboard guards from StewMac place around the fret, I began to restore the crowns of the frets with a medium fretfile until only a thin uniform peak of flat surface was left. Before going any further I tested the levelling with Stewmac's little fretrocker, a tool that proved to be a handy little device. To my relief I only detected a few spots where a fret was protruding and needed to be taken down a hair by a light stroke or two with a fine file, but all in all it was pretty bang on.

Before the final polishing, first a piece of 320 grit, then 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper was used to run over the last bit of flat to smooth the crowns over. The final polishing was done with a little white ceramic polishing wheel fitted on a Dremel. I also have the green wheels, but tests done prior to the actual fret job proved they were considerably more abrasive, and spelled danger for creating dents and other irregularities to the frets. The white wheel, just left a nice smooth surface.

The sharp edges of the fret ends received a similar treatment.

FINISHING THE SPLIT 19TH FRET

I looked and looked to find information about how to deal with dressing the inside fret ends following the soundhole curve. Courtnall's book has no text, but a little photograph of them being filed 'free hand'. Bogdanovich' book has no information at all, neither does Cumpiano, or so I thought. Only after I had installed the frets, I noticed a sentence advising to shape the 19th fret ends before installation, under the section on installing the frets. Hmm...

Now that they were in, they had to be dealt with in another way. As The fingerboard didn't sit flush with the soundhole, a file couldn't be used. Instead I resorted to carefully grind them flush using the Dremel tool with a small sanding drum, trying only to grind away at the frets and not hit the fingerboard end and it kind of worked. The fret ends themselves ended up pretty nice, but the tangs less so. In hindsight it would have been better to follow Cumpiano's advice and at least trimmed the tangs before setting these frets. Next time!

The frets ended up with a crown between 1.02 and 1.08mm, with the lowest ones on the treble side.

BEVELING FRETSLOTS

CUTTING INDIVIDUAL FRETS TO SIZE

HAMMERING IN FRETS ABOVE THE 15TH FRET

CLAMPING IN FRETS BELOW THE 15TH FRET

NIPPING FRET ENDS

BEVELLING FRET ENDS

LEVELING FRETS

CROWNING FRETS

FINISH SANDING FRETS

CHECKING FRET HEIGHT

DRESSING FRET BEVEL EDGES

POLISHING FRETS

FINISHED FRET WORK

FINISHED FRET WORK

ADDING THE FINGERBOARD

I'm slowly finding out that Bolivian rosewood is really hard to work. Not only is it dense, but it tears easily and it blunts the edge of the tools fast. But it rings with a ping and it looks nice and has a very fine texture.

PREPARING THE FINGERBOARD BLANK
The fingerboard blank was quite oversized and had to be trimmed a bit before any actual work was done. First it was cut to width +1/16" on the bandsaw, which left a nice long stick 3/8" square that can potentially be used as fingerboard binding on a future build. Next the length was trimmed, also on the bandsaw.

I clamped the fingerboard blank onto the shootingboard and straightened and trued one of the sides to the flattest surface with a jack plane. The plane was fitted with a 50º bevel blade which virtually eliminated all tearout when it was set to a very fine setting. I deliberately left the other edge with sawmarks so the two edge were easily distinguishable as I wanted to use only one edge to cut the fret slots from. Last the ends of the fingerboard was trued to the finished edge with a low angle block plane.

I had to do the surfacing with a scraper plane. Even with a high blade angle the interlocking grain of the dense wood was impossible for me to control. The fingerboard blank started off at 8mm thickness that I had to get down to about 6.0mm to keep it a little oversized for later alterations. I took quite some time to get it down but down it went. I had to sharpen the blade a good few times. The Bolivian Rosewood seemed to eat the edge in record time making the blade very noisy and shrieking with every stroke. But, when it was freshly sharpened it took off shiny curls with a confident swooiiiiish, didn't tear and left a nice and smooth surface behind.

Once the surfacing was done, I went over the edge and ends one last time to get everything true and square.

DRILLING HOLES FOR LOCATION PINS
In order to prevent the fingerboard from sliding around in the wet glue I decided to use four location pins to keep it in place during gluing. A center line was first marked with white pencil on fingerboard face and and for marks were made with a scalpel at the center of the location for fret no. 1, 4, 7 and 11. With a 3/64" drill bit that matched the diameter of the four brads that was going to hold the fingerboard in place the four holes were drilled on my drill press.

I decided to do the holes prior to cutting the fret slot. I thought it would be easier to do it this way as the 3/64" drill bit was slightly wider than the slot. Had the drill bit been narrower, it might have been better to drill the holes after the slots were cut.

CUTTING FRET SLOTS
The fret slots were cut manually, that is, with the use handtools only as I don't have any fancy jigs for this. I used a fretsaw, a square and a caliper for this as well as a wooden stop block. To find the first five fret slot locations I used the wood block as a stop at the nut end. I set the calipers to measure a distance equal to the correct fret location minus half the width of the fretsaw kerf. The protruding depth measuring blade was butted up against the wooden stop block and the square was butted up against the caliper's beam.

The first five fret slots was cut with the aid of the calipers alone. For the rest of the slots I had to make some sort extension for the depth measuring blade. For this I fabricated a 150mm long spacer bar that was ripped into two equally long pieces. With the help of one bar inserted between the wood stop block at the end of the fingerboard and the depth measuring blade, the next eight slots were cut. The fret slots from 13 and onwards were done with two spacer bars in extension of each other.

I had one mishap. I accidentally cut the second slot in the wrong position. It turned out that the beam on the calipers had a little rebate at the bottom, and I accidentally butted the square up against that rather than the bottom of the beam itself. I quickly thicknessed a piece veneer to fill the slot, glued it in and leveled it flush to the surface and edges and cut a new slot in the correct location.

Prior to the cutting, I created a spreadsheet with the help of Liutaio Mottola's formula on fret spacing: D=S-(S/(2^(N/12))), D = distance from nut, S = scale length and N = fret number. The spreadsheet also included a column with fret spacing minus half the saw kerf width as well as a column taking saw kerf and spacer bars into account. This way I was able to read the measuring targets directly on the caliper display without having to make any further calculations.

SLOPING THE GLUING SURFACE FOR THE NECK ANGLE
Because the neck meets the body at a slight angle, a slight taper had to be worked into the gluing surface of the fingerboard from the 12th fret and onwards. I propped up a straightedge on the neck with two shims of carefully thicknessed veneer to keep it level, one at the nut and one at the 12th fret, allowing the straightedge to just touch the edge of the soundhole. I measured the taper to be about 0.4mm or about 1/64", equal to the thickness of the veneer shims.

The taper was done by scraping, mostly with a card scraper but I also used my large scraper plane to make sure the surface stayed flat. I proceeded quite slowly with this and did a lot of dry fitting to check the progress. It was quite a small amout that needed to be removed and I knew I could easily get carried away and take too much off.

TAPERING THE WIDTH OFF THE FINGERBOARD
I'm growing more and more fond of using knives for marking rather than pencils. I find it creates a more defined line and allows me to do more accurate work. This was the case too when I set out to measure and mark the taper of the finger board.

I first marked the center on each end and used that as reference to mark the width of the fingerboard, 46mm at the nut and 56mm at the twelth fret and scribes the two lines defining the outline of the fingerboard.

With the use of the shootingboardand and my trusted low angle jack plane, I worked the waste away, first with the plane set at a rather coarse setting, then gradually setting it finer as the work progressed. The last bit was done with the a very fine setting, similar to jointing the centerseam of the soundboard and back, by working from the middle down first and slowly lengthening the strokes until a full stroke would take of a fine shaving along the entire length.

CUTTING THE SOUNDHOLE CURVE
The fingerboard was then carefully clamped in position on the neck and the location pin holes were extended about 1/4" into the neck and the four matching brads were pushed in and driven a little further with a small hammer.

With my hand partially stuck throught the soundhol, the soundhole diameter was traced on the underside of the fingerboard with a white pencil. This was the first time I realized that the smaller soundhole of a 3/4 sized guitar could spell trouble for a pair of fully sized manhands. Luckily my hands are not that big and I was barely able to fit them through.

Next up was cutting the waste away with a coping saw. As advised by Cumpiano I made a little piece of backing, a 1/4" thick oiece of maple in my case, to prevent tearout. This worked very well. The final shaping was done with rasp first and then with a a file. This was also done witht the maple backing on.

As I wasn't completely satisfied with the fit, I decided to try out another cumpiano method, a sanding disc in a drill press to do the final fitting. I got a sanding disc made, covered it with some 120 Grit 3M stick-it paper and it all seemed fine.

However, this turned out to be less successful. What I didn't count on was that a sanding disc will cut more aggressively where it enters the work. Unfortunately this only became apparrent after my first attempt to true the curve as a quick dry fit showed the curve had moved to one side of the fingerboard. Even worse, that side had been sanded to short.

In the heat of the moment I saw only one solution to the problem; To sand the curve back in the middle again even though that would make the fingerboard about 1/16" short altogether. Well, that or start all over again with the fingerboard, but as the damage would only be cosmetic I chose to live with it. I am considering gluing a little piece of veneer on the end to get the fingerboard be flush with the soundhole, but the jury is still out on that one.

GLUING THE FINGERBOARD TO THE NECK
As the fingerboard already had been positioned and the location pins ready to hold it in place, the time had come to glue the fingerboard on. I had made a massive 1½" clamping caul out of plywood to go on top of the fingerboard as well as a caul for the inside of the soundbox from the 14th fret to the soundhole, that fitted around the upper transverse brace. A piece fo MDF was used as a caul on the underside of the neck and on the heel cap.

First the caul for the soundbox was put in place with with some blue tape. Again, I found it lucky that I was able to get a hand throught he soundhole to do this. It was a tight squeeze. A fairly liberal coat of glue, regular titebond, was applied to the underside of the fingerboard, and the fingerboard was carefully put in place, and the location brads tapped in a little further with the hammer.

Next the big caul for the top of the fingerboard was put on top and the first clamp was put on at the end, very lightly tightened to just keep the clamp in place. Next two bar clamps were attached into the soundhole. These were also only tightened very lightly. Next to go on was the middle one, around the 7th fret, then the last two, one around the 4th fret and one on the 12th.

Once the clamps were all on. I checked the alignment of the fingerboard and made sure it hadn't been sliding out of place in the wet glue. Little by little the clamps were tightened in the same sequence, while checking the alignment after each sequence, until all the clamps were on nice and tight and the assembly was left to dry over night.

CREATING A COMPOUND SLOPE AND RELIEF
I must admit that, at this point I stopped to make my bridge. Instead of manufacuting a dummy bridge for fine tuning the fingerboard thickness to desired string height. I though I just as well make to real deal and use that instead. But I'll describe that process in the next post.

For now I placed the completed bridge in the correct location fitted with a saddle protruding about 3mm. At the nut end I placed a 1.1mm thick shim to simulate the strings exit at the nut. I placed a straight edge on top of the shim and bridge and measured the string height, including a fret, at the 12th fret. It came out right on the money, or at least close enough to the 3.4mm I aimed for using a ruler and the naked eye.

With the straightedge I checked the flatness of the fingerboard again. I had aquired a few irregularities during the glue-up that had to be flattened. This was quickly done with my scraper plane on a very fine setting. I had made a little protective apron for the soundboard out of plexiglass that fitted around the fingerboard.

Some builders keep the fingerboard flat throughout and adjust the string height by making a saddle that is higher on the bass side but I'm not keen on that practice. For one I don't like the look of it and I also suspect that having a higher string break angle will drive the bass more which is no a desirable feature on classical guitars, where the trebles often are the weaker component. Instead I started to shave off material on the bass side to lower it and thus create more string clearance, while leaving the trebleside alone, while monitoring the progress carefully on the treble side, the middle and the bass side, to ensure the fingerboard remaind flat along the string axxis. The planing was done with the scraper plane.

Last I had to create a slight relief around the 5th-7th fret as this is where the amplitude of the string is greatest immideately after it is plucked, when played normally; Normally meaning with your right hand around the back edge of the soundhole.

Unfortunately I couldn't do this with my preffered choice of tools, edgetools, and I had to resort to sandpaper. I used 120 grit 3M stick-it paper on a 3"x6" MDF block for this, and though it was a very dusty affair it worked well. I started sanding in small strokes around 5th and 7th fret and slowly took longer and longer strokes, measured the progress and repeated the process until a 0.5mm relief was in place and finished the job off with 220 grit paper.

CUTTING THE FINGERBOARD BLANK TO SIZE

TRUING THE SIDE OF THE FINGERBOARD BLANK

TRUING THE END OF THE FINGERBOARD BLANK

SURFACING AND PLANING THE FINGERBOARD TO THICKNESS

MARKING FINGERBOARD FOR LOCATION PINS

DRILLING HOLES FOR LOCATION PINS

MEASURING FRET SLOT POSITIONS

CUTTING FRET SLOTS

MEASURING GLUING SURFACE SLOPE FOR NECK ANGLE

SLOPING THE GLUING SURFACE FOR THE NECK ANGLE

CHECKING THE NECK ANGLE SLOPE

DRY FITTING THE FINGERBOARD

MARKING FINGERBOARD OUTLINE

TAPERING THE FINGERBOARD TO FINAL SHAPE

MARKING THE SOUNDHOLE CURVE

CUTTING THE SOUNDHOLE CURVE

TRUING THE SOUNDHOLE CURVE

DRIVING IN FINGERBOARD LOCATION PINS

FINGERBOARD CLAMPING CAULS

GLUING THE FINGERBOARD

PLANING A COMPOUND SLOPE FOR THE BASS SIDE

SANDING RELIEF

CHECKING THE STRING HEIGHT