Who is using Bill Scheltema's neck radius jig???

[Mojotron]

Originally Posted by Shepherd

My first thought is huh? After reading that a few times my second thought is huh? The jig rises and falls as you rotate it due to the radius. How are you going to control the router and jig at the same time? You can make a table using scraps and you can also use it for bodies. Worst comes to worst, drill a hole in your coffee table, clamp a 2x4 to it and there's your router table. When your done cover the hole with a plant .

Right, I see what you mean - I was just thinking of controlling the router and locking in the position of the pucks with a clamp. Then drawing the router back and forth - sort of a simplified router lathe. Then I could park my plant where ever I wanted

[Canadianbreed]

I didn't even know this thread was here.

Anyways I am busy finishing up my first build, yes PU winding etc.
I do still plan to video a neck build too, but of course time is limited with 5 kids.

Anyways it looks like a few of you are using the jig, thats great.
I am glad I was able to bring something useful to the table.

Now if you still want that hand shaped feel just stop short of the fininshed routing and continue with hand shaping, you'll still have a nice straight profile to work from since with the jig takes the majority of mat'l off for you.

Bill

[pavel]

+1 on the jig.
Only used it on a test neck this weekend but it worked awesome! I'll also be adding end-stops, without them I felt like I need to hold the jig very tight/be really careful to not have the router grab the piece and route into the headstock/heel.

[wowazeplin]

Originally Posted by pavel

+1 on the jig.
Only used it on a test neck this weekend but it worked awesome! I'll also be adding end-stops, without them I felt like I need to hold the jig very tight/be really careful to not have the router grab the piece and route into the headstock/heel.

Bill has stated in the past that he fully routes the radiuses at both ends before routing the neck between, this would help to keep the router from grabbing the piece when at the ends I like the endstops though... worked well for me.

[Canadianbreed]

Great stuff,

I also added stops since then, it does make for a more worry free process.
I'm gonna have to make a couple new pucks for soft V and D shapes soon.

Bill

[Mojotron]

Originally Posted by Shepherd

My first thought is huh? After reading that a few times my second thought is huh? The jig rises and falls as you rotate it due to the radius. How are you going to control the router and jig at the same time? You can make a table using scraps and you can also use it for bodies. Worst comes to worst, drill a hole in your coffee table, clamp a 2x4 to it and there's your router table. When your done cover the hole with a plant .

Ok - I built a router table, built Bill's neck jig and did a test neck that I made out of fir. It went great - I had the neck position centered exactly but on the the test neck I went a little too high with the bit an ended up making something that resembled a banjo neck :(. I sanded it out a bit and though it's totally whacked, I love the straightness and smoothness of that test neck. I got that issue figured out and I made some pucks for a Roundback profile and I'll check those out today. Then, the moisture warped both parts of my jig so I had to glue on some pine pieces to straighten everything out again.

Great neck jig! it's great to be able to make a perfectly straight profile. Once I get some practice this is going to be the way to go for me.

[Canadianbreed]

Mojotron,

I am glad you made it and that you find it useful, it sure takes the guess work out of it. With the jig you can always stop at any point and tweak it from there, I also like the feature to be able to simply yank the neck off and take a closer look without changing the jig or router.

The one way you know your getting close is that if you rotate the neck to either the treble or bass side you can gauge how far you need to go by how close the bit is to the necks edge.

Be sure to post pics.

Bill

[Mojotron]

I'm still working on getting the pucks right on fir necks before I commit some maple to this. I used stops as you guys suggested and that really does make a big difference.

I had a couple of questions:

1) What kind of bit are people using/liking with this jig? I'm using a Bosch straight bit - kind of like this one http://www.freudtools.com/popup.aspx...arge/59_1_.jpg with a 1/2" collar and 1 1/2" long. The problem I'm having is that the steeper angle on the sides - especially at the 1st and 12th fret locations where I slow the movement of the jig at the ends - I'm seeing that the bit is digging into the wood a bit more. This ends up with a really rough cut in these spots. I'm wondering if there is a better bit for use with this jig.

2) When making new pucks, what is the relationship of the axis of rotation to the bottom/top of the neck? I'm trying to adopt these shapes http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Necks/BackContours.aspx to the jig puck and I think I have it, but perhaps I don't understand it completely? Any insights on how to adopt contour dimensions/shapes to the pucks.

[pavel]

Originally Posted by Mojotron

1) What kind of bit are people using/liking with this jig? I'm using a Bosch straight bit - kind of like this one http://www.freudtools.com/popup.aspx...arge/59_1_.jpg with a 1/2" collar and 1 1/2" long. The problem I'm having is that the steeper angle on the sides - especially at the 1st and 12th fret locations where I slow the movement of the jig at the ends - I'm seeing that the bit is digging into the wood a bit more. This ends up with a really rough cut in these spots. I'm wondering if there is a better bit for use with this jig.

I'm using a similar bit and it works pretty well. I run it at fairly high speed and take at least 4 passes/bit heights to get to the final shape, the cuts come out smooth.

2) When making new pucks, what is the relationship of the axis of rotation to the bottom/top of the neck? I'm trying to adopt these shapes http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Necks/BackContours.aspx to the jig puck and I think I have it, but perhaps I don't understand it completely? Any insights on how to adopt contour dimensions/shapes to the pucks.

Not sure how accurate the profiles on the Warmoth site are. Ideally you would want to take a couple profile traces, say at 2nd and 11th and scale/project the two profiles to the respective end pucks and offset the outline to add for the bit height.

I think it's easiest if your rotational axis is parallel to the neck top, at least that worked for me.

[Mojotron]

Here's my 4th set of pucks for a '59 Roundback contour - I'm shooting for the right shape, but also .85 @ fret 1 and .95 @ fret 12 with a 1 11/16" nut.



I think this is right - I'll try it tonight with my 4th Fir neck. The first attempt of the roundback produced a nice roundback shape, but was about .90" at the first fret and 1.03" at the 12th and had a 1 5/8" nut, the 2nd was .80 at the first and .92 at the 12th fret and had a 1 5/8" nut. That last one felt really nice though - even if it was not what I was shooting for - it had kind of an early Charvel feel. I may use those again.

[Mojotron]

Well, here's my Fir necks that I've been practicing on.


And from the side:


Going from right to left - the right most one is the 'banjo' neck, and the 4th one is all the way on the left. The latest '59 roundback pucks are real close: I was shooting for .95 at the 12th fret and .85 at the 1st fret the 4th neck ended up 1" and .87" respectively - so, I'll have to sand off about .02" off of the front puck and about .04" off of the rear puck. The nut width worked great - these pucks are for a 1 11/16 nut - that worked great.

--
Mike

[Mojotron]

Here's my jig:

The middle part:



And the base:


I used some marine epoxy to reinforce the sides of the jig's base. That's the dark stuff.

[Mojotron]

Here's what I meant about some roughness with the way that I'm doing this:



But with about 5 minutes of sanding, it's almost completely sanded out:


Perhaps this is rough because fir is so soft. I tried everything to get a smooth surface after the route - perhaps maple would not be problematic?

[Shepherd]

Those are looking good. What if you tried a wider bit? I used a 1/2" bit but on the final cut went really light just to shave off the ridges but still had to do some sanding. The fir is hard to get smooth cause the dark grain is harder than the lighter wood, really tricky to get smooth.

[52Tele_lover]

JayDawg. Im sorry if i sound out of line here, but your argument is stupid. if you look at making 10 necks, doing the jig once and then having a neck jig(of which can be adapted for different profiles) is going to make building the next 9 much easier then doing them by hand.

[jaydawg]

Originally Posted by 52Tele_lover

JayDawg. Im sorry if i sound out of line here, but your argument is stupid. if you look at making 10 necks, doing the jig once and then having a neck jig(of which can be adapted for different profiles) is going to make building the next 9 much easier then doing them by hand.

That's quite alright. I've been accused of worst!

[Mojotron]

Originally Posted by Shepherd

Those are looking good. What if you tried a wider bit? I used a 1/2" bit but on the final cut went really light just to shave off the ridges but still had to do some sanding. The fir is hard to get smooth cause the dark grain is harder than the lighter wood, really tricky to get smooth.

I've been using a 1/2" bit, the last few 'test' necks I've done I went with smaller bit height adjustments and smaller rotations on each pass and the result was better. Still not smooth, but with a little sanding they turned out great.

Thanksgiving really put a damper on my building, so I'm going to be back at it this weekend trying to perfect my pucks on Bill's jig and trussrod access holes before I commit good wood to my latest jigs.

After making 5 or 6 different puck sets, and tweaking things here and there, I did discover a couple things:

1) I think using a 1.5" section of 1/4" steel rod for the 2 puck holders instead of a section of 1/4" dowel makes it a lot easier to switch pucks.

2) The smaller puck would need to be 3 3/16" to make a neck with a 1 11/16 nut.

3) Using a table saw with a good fence, I made puck stock out of 3' sections of 3/4" plywood - cut precisely to 3 3/16" and 4": Then make a shallow cut (or use a pencil to mark the precise center of the puck stock. To make a new puck I then just use some spray glue to glue down the puck 2-D image on the puck stock and then use the long section of that plywood strip on my Rigid Oscillating sander and just sand to the line on the curved part of the new puck. When that is done, I just make the straight cut with my table saw to cut the puck off o the puck stock and I'm done. It is so much easier to sand the curve of the pucks when they are still part of a longer board - a lot safer to :)

4) To tweak the contour of the puck, it is a lot more efficient to leave the puck a little bigger in the areas/dimensions where I think I may want to tweak the contour - for me this is the top of the curve as I want the neck thickness to be exact. Then, when I want to remove a little wood from the puck to tweak the neck contour, I just remove the long 1/4" rods that the pucks ride on and then use my Rigid sander on the puck - rotating the top part of the jig on the sander and just sand very lightly in the areas I where I want to take some off: I can even leave the neck (as well as the puck) on the jig as I do this most of the time: This takes some nerve and a steady hand, but it's a lot better than taking it apart to sand off some of the puck. Of course, some 80 gt on a sanding block works great too.

[pavel]

Originally Posted by Mojotron

I've been using a 1/2" bit, the last few 'test' necks I've done I went with smaller bit height adjustments and smaller rotations on each pass and the result was better. Still not smooth, but with a little sanding they turned out great.

Thanksgiving really put a damper on my building, so I'm going to be back at it this weekend trying to perfect my pucks on Bill's jig and trussrod access holes before I commit good wood to my latest jigs.

After making 5 or 6 different puck sets, and tweaking things here and there, I did discover a couple things:

1) I think using a 1.5" section of 1/4" steel rod for the 2 puck holders instead of a section of 1/4" dowel makes it a lot easier to switch pucks.

2) The smaller puck would need to be 3 3/16" to make a neck with a 1 11/16 nut.

3) Using a table saw with a good fence, I made puck stock out of 3' sections of 3/4" plywood - cut precisely to 3 3/16" and 4": Then make a shallow cut (or use a pencil to mark the precise center of the puck stock. To make a new puck I then just use some spray glue to glue down the puck 2-D image on the puck stock and then use the long section of that plywood strip on my Rigid Oscillating sander and just sand to the line on the curved part of the new puck. When that is done, I just make the straight cut with my table saw to cut the puck off o the puck stock and I'm done. It is so much easier to sand the curve of the pucks when they are still part of a longer board - a lot safer to :)

4) To tweak the contour of the puck, it is a lot more efficient to leave the puck a little bigger in the areas/dimensions where I think I may want to tweak the contour - for me this is the top of the curve as I want the neck thickness to be exact. Then, when I want to remove a little wood from the puck to tweak the neck contour, I just remove the long 1/4" rods that the pucks ride on and then use my Rigid sander on the puck - rotating the top part of the jig on the sander and just sand very lightly in the areas I where I want to take some off: I can even leave the neck (as well as the puck) on the jig as I do this most of the time: This takes some nerve and a steady hand, but it's a lot better than taking it apart to sand off some of the puck. Of course, some 80 gt on a sanding block works great too.

If you are building up a set of different pucks, consider making them larger to also accommodate Strat headstocks. The pucks end up being wider/taller, mine are roughly 4 1/2 and 5 1/4 wide at the base.

[Groovey Records]

Originally Posted by 52Tele_lover

JayDawg. Im sorry if i sound out of line here, but your argument is stupid. if you look at making 10 necks, doing the jig once and then having a neck jig(of which can be adapted for different profiles) is going to make building the next 9 much easier then doing them by hand.

Well I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say crazy like a Fox.

I couldn't imagine a nicer neck then the one Jason hand made for me from my description over the phone. The neck transitions from a soft V to a hard V to a U going from .85 to 1.00 made out of one chunk of Rosewood.

[Groovey Records]