Old 2"x10"x8' Floor Joist Telecasters

I have considered it. There are some beautifully figured chunks of that species, fer shure. I just haven't pursued it because I consider myself very much "in the learning stages" of building guitar bodies. I'm afraid having a pretty slab of that wood might be too big of a temptation to wait until my skill level catches up to the quality of that wood. Decent guitar-sized slabs of Myrtlewood usually fetch a fair price, also.......

I am however checking into some Juniper for messing around with. I know it's not the easiest of woods to work with when building long bows (no laminations-"self bows"). It has lots of knots, twists, and such. It makes really nice looking stairwy rails and trim, furniture, and the like.

But in the central part of the state, as I undertand it/am being told, some government entity is paying property owners to cut Juniper trees down. This is so what small mounts of rainfall that area gets will give more water to native grasses and other plants. Near the towns of Mitchell, Spray, Fossil, and Service Creek, there are quite a few downed Juniper trees. I saw it when I was there deer hunting a few weeks ago. I have a potential source of some I plan to check on tomorrow. There's enough of that stuff laying around that I could screw up several Telecaster bodies, and not feel too guilty about it.

 

Juniper sounds interesting too . I googled it and it has a lot of character in the grain , also seems to have a number of knots . I only mentioned myrtlewood as my parents saw a grandfather clock made of it while passing through Oregon many years ago and my dad had to have it . It is a wood with very unique grain patterns , as you know . Good luck with the project .

 

Don't forget to add some pictures!

I used Fender Yosemite pickups, fairly cheap and sounds like a Tele.

 

I've made a number of guitars from similar wood - all of them turned out great.

 

My first build I used a mighty mite neck and I’ll tell you I was pleasantly surprised. Got a modern 22 fret neck, rosewood finger board and satin finish on the back. Came with a nut that I only needed to open a hair for my preferred wound strings and the frets were well finished. On my second build I used an all rosewood WD neck. That one is nice also. My two cents.

 

For aftermarket necks I don't think you can beat Warmoth. I've assembled several guitars with them, they have required very little fretwork and you can custom order whatever you want if you don't find it already made. I have also used three Mighty Mite necks - they are fine, all required a bit of fretwork. No experience with anything else, I mostly roll my own.

You can buy electronic components at any Radio Shack or similar store, but they probably won't have what you need in stock. Most of the lutherie suppliers have good quality pots and caps - I often buy from StewMac when I'm ordering other stuff. Yes, they are a bit more than Radio Shack but there is no hassle.

And for what it is worth, I've built some teles with Fraulins and Budz and other expensive boutique pickups but I put StewMac's golden age ones in my personal guitar and two others and they sound very much like a telecaster.

 

I've had a lot of Allparts necks come through my shop over the years. They are a good bang for the buck and have the vintage look. Truss rod nut is at the back. They are MIJ from what stickers I've seen.

https://stratosphereparts.com/new-f...-neck-tele-maple-chunky-baseball-bat-tmo-fat/

 

I make my own necks, but not that style. I only do two piece with double acting rods installed under the fretboard. I mostly make non-Fender style guitars and simply don't care for F style necks. I can show you how to do that - both with a Fender head and with angled scarf joined heads (Gibson et al).

If you want a good description of how to make a one piece neck with a skunk stripe, including the angled jig for drilling the truss rod access, get Melvyn Hiscock's book (you should have it anyway). He is due to have a new edition next spring but don't wait - hundreds of people have built hundreds of guitars using the current one.

 

I was born and raised in John Day, OR. LOTS of Juniper up there, and all I remember about it was that it is flexible and quite pitchy. My father built an oversized Cribbage board for a friend of his one Christmas, and he whittled the pegs out of Juniper. He wiped them down with rubbing alcohol maybe 10 times, they were still a bit sticky 3 years later. Let us know how your experiments go, I'm intrigued...

 

I've found the one piece neck to be the most challenging neck because it is more complex than just routing a slot and sticking in a double rod.



Some have found this thread helpful

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/lets-make-a-neck.755300/


A true one piece neck like a Fender maple neck requires a jig to make a curved slot for the single rod. If you really want visual accuracy on the truss rod anchor hole at the peghead, then you need a fixture to guide a long drill bit at a 3 degree angle.

This is also a good thread by Jack Wells.

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/building-a-one-piece-neck.79699/


I'd suggest you use the Ed Hawley ( Ed's a member here) drawing found here to make the curve for the truss rod.

Ed's awesome thread:

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/53-cnc-build.83286/


It's called Neck. PDF.

https://www.gitarrebassbau.de/viewtopic.php?t=6




If you have access to a cnc router, then the arc can be cut with that which eliminates making the jig that jack wells shows in his first few posts in the thread I linked.

 

1 piece neck - that's a rough place to start on your first neck build - been there done that. Learned a lot. Learned a lot what NOT to do.
Marty gave some good build threads to study above.
Look up some old build threads by Colt Knight on this forum too - very helpful.
I used those threads to guide my 1-piece neck efforts - you can see those starting at post #12 here:
noobcaster-build-along.

Don't regret the time I spent with 1-piecers, but I won't do any more of them. Double action rods only for me.
We love pics if you start down that road !
/mike