one piece flamed maple neck with 2 way truss rod

[asax]

I decided to attempt a one piece flamed maple tele neck with a two way truss rod.
I had two pieces of quartersawn flamed maple and decided to use the plainer one for my first attempt.
here are the results:

The truss rod is a stew mac low profile truss rod installed from the back with a bloodwood skunk stripe over it. Adjustment is from the heel end. Medium jumbo frets, bone nut, and gfs vintage style tuners.

 

[Thin69]

Pic is kind of dark to see stripes.

 

[LeftyAl]

I could see flame but, how about some close up pictures

 

[asax]

Starting material was a board from ebay and a pattern from the web.

traced the outline, and then used a straight edge and bearing bit to make the bottom edge of the blank parallel to the center line. The parallel edge was used to sit against the fret slot miter box so that the fret slots would be perpendicular to the midline

 

[asax]

the miter box has piece of a hacksaw blade with the teeth ground off sitting in a slot in the bottom.

This thin strip of metal registers in the slots of a maple fretboard bought from stew mack.
The maple fret board is double stick taped to the bottom of my blank.

For each slot I just slide the blank up to the next slot of the template underneath.

 

[asax]

All the slots cut, then band sawed rest of neck.
The straight sides were fine tuned with a straight edge double stick taped to neck and a bearing bit on the router table.
The curves on the headstock were finished on the oscillating spindle sander, not the router table. I was afraid of tearout.

 

[asax]

The 22nd fretboard overhang was cut with a handsaw. The rounded contour of the neck heel was done with files. I could have routed to a template but I was afraid of tearout.

 

[trev333]

Cool idea for the slots.... buy one fret board and use it to make many necks..

 

[asax]

The stewmac low profile 2 way trussrod was laid out, and marked onto the the back of the neck

My truss rod jig has a 1/4 inch slot for a straight 2 fluted router bit.
The back edge of the jig rides on a straight edge clamped to my router table
The neck is clamped to the jig so that the slot is centered on the center line of the neck. This picture is from my strat neck build

The slot runs off the heel end but stops just short of the head stock.
A board clamped to the headstock end of the jig stopped the jig by contacting the right side of the router table at the end of each pass

The slot was cut in multiple passes.

 

[asax]

A skunk stripe was bandsawn then sanded to final thickness with a fence clamped to the spindle sander.

the fence was tapped over by just a a hair for several passes until the strip would just fit into the slot.
rounding the radius at the end was done easily and suprisingly accurately with sandpaper. no router and no jigs.

a couple minutes with a blockplane leveled things nicely.
Next step is reaming the heal end of the slot for end of the trussrod.

 

[RickyRicardo]

How deep is the channel? I usually go 13/16 with a two way rod otherwise you run the risk of popping out the skunk stripe when you adjust the truss rod. That also depends how much you take off the back for the contour at the first and second frets. To be safe I always soak the skunk stripe with CA after it's in and before finishing. I did have one pop out on me recently and that's because I went 3/4" deep and the contour was pretty narrow (.82 - .83) at the first fret.

I looked at the rod on StewMac's site and they say a 3/8 deep channel but that would be for a two piece neck. Most two way rods you buy are that height - at least the ones I buy off of eBay are. Some have suggested that the two way rods are only meant for two piece necks and I've used them mostly successfully for both.

 

[asax]

Pic is kind of dark to see stripes.

This piece has a very subtle flame. I used it as a practice run for a really nice piece I didnt want to mess up.
this picture shows the really flamed piece I was practicing for:

(link removed) (link removed)

How deep is the channel? I usually go 13/16 with a two way rod otherwise you run the risk of popping out the skunk stripe when you adjust the truss rod. That also depends how much you take off the back for the contour at the first and second frets. To be safe I always soak the skunk stripe with CA after it's in and before finishing. I did have one pop out on me recently and that's because I went 3/4" deep and the contour was pretty narrow (.82 - .83) at the first fret.

I looked at the rod on StewMac's site and they say a 3/8 deep channel but that would be for a two piece neck. Most two way rods you buy are that height - at least the ones I buy off of eBay are. Some have suggested that the two way rods are only meant for two piece necks and I've used them mostly successfully for both.

I routed the channel 3/4" deep leaving a 1/4" for the fretboard side. The rod itself is 3/8" tall and 1/4" wide. This leaves 3/8 for the skunk strip before neck contouring. I like a fairly thick u shape neck, It should hold up.

 

[asax]

Reaming the heel end of the slot for end of the trussrod:
Unlike other truss rods I have used, (Luthiers mercantile 2 way), the stew mac rods are slightly wider at the adjustment end.
This means that the deeper potion of the slot needs to be reamed to a round shape to fit the wide nut.

The reamed area:

Stew mac sell a tool to do this. Instead I found a drill bit that matched the size of the adjustment nut.
I drilled a hole into a board for a drilling jig. I then slid it onto the back of the neck with the socket protruding.
I then clamped the jig to the table, marked the location of the neck, removed the rod, and clamped the neck to the table: (better picture of the jig from my strat neck build)

the rod is in as far as it goes with the adjustment end protruding through the drilling jig.
I penciled the location of the neck on the table, removed the rod then clamped the neck down.

even after using the jig I still had to enlarge the hole I made with slightly larger drill bits to get the rod to go.
Big tip: if you need to make the hole a tiny bit bigger run the drill backwards so the larger drillbit doesn't feed itself into the hole uncontrollably.
This step was a big pain. Ive done it for two necks now and it was a big hassle both times.

 

[asax]

Pic is kind of dark to see stripes.

the tele neck blank was quartersawn straight grained with a very subtle flame. ($14 on ebay). It was a practice run for a much more expensive piece that I am using on a build right now.
This is really figured board is the one in front. It's going to be a 70's style strat neck.

 

[asax]

thicknessing the headstock:
I used a bandsaw to cut away most of the excess headstock thickness.
The final thickness was brought down with the drum sander and fence.
The smallest diameter drum was used to make the cove shape in front of the nut

 

[asax]

Marking and drilling for the tuners did not work out the first time.
The hole for the D string was too low. I made a custom dowel to fill the hole so I could redrill it in the right spot
I took some scrap wood from the neck, made a square plug which I then chucked in the drill press and spun against a rasp to make the plug.
This is before the repair.

 

[asax]

The neck was radiused using a 12 inch radius sanding block with 120 then 320 adhesive sand paper.
I clamped the neck to the benchtop, with a straight rail next to it keep the motion straight and even

the neck was scribbled with pencil and sanded until all the marks were gone

It only takes about 15 minutes to radius a neck this way.
The sanding beam is expensive but it's great. The 2 rolls inch adhesive were from amazon:
ABN 2-3/4" X 20 Yd Golden Longboard Dura Yellow Stickys PSA Sandpaper Gold Roll Sandpaper (120 Grit) $14.99 for 20 yards!
320 Grit DURA-GOLD Premium Gold LONGBOARD FILE SANDPAPER 2 3/4" x 20 Yard PSA Roll $34.96 for 20 yards.

 

[asax]

Next I drilled for and installed the dots. I bought a bag of 50 from all parts.
I resanded with the sanding beam and 320 grit to level the dots after the glue set up overnight.

 

[asax]

I used my home made fret bender to curve the fret wire just slightly tighter than 12 radius

Before placing the wire I used the stew mac gauge yo insure that the slots were deep enough

I had to slightly deepen several slots:

blue tape acts as adepth guide.

Hammering in the frets:

The ends of the frets were then filed flush with the neck then beveled at 35 degrees,and smoothed in the corners.
Final fret work was done by first making sure neck was flat ( I would have used the truss rod if it back bowed from the pressure of the frets in the slots). Then I used a sharpie to mark all of the frets. 320 grit in the sanding beam was used until all of the frets were even.

I let the neck sit for a while and repeated this step again and used a fret rocker. Finally a diamond crowning file and stew mac fret erasures were used to recrown and polish the frets.

 

[asax]

Making the tele body:
I found a mill in Oregon that could ship me a 14 inch wide alder board.
The board was long enough for 1 strat and two teles.

the blue prints were found online and printed up full size at fedex/kinkos.
One strat, one tele, one thinline tele.