I treat the whole neck as a seperate woodworking project. That means that I completely assemble and finish it before I attach it to the body.
This is an area of building where everybody seems to do it differently. In general that means that all the methods work yet all the methods have some drawbacks. I'll describe my method and point out the good and the bad parts of each step.
- Thickness the board. If you have a pre-slotted board make sure you only thin from the opposite side where the fret slots are.
- Cut the fret slots if you don't have a pre-slotted board
- Trim to final length. This is important so that the board is properly positioned on the taper jig.
- Taper the board. I use a table saw cross cutting jig that has some hold down clamps. If you are binding the board, taper it smaller by the width of the binding. Glue on oversized binding and sand flush on the top and bottom of the board. Now, using the taper jig trim the board to final dimensions. One disadvantage with this approach is that the fretboard binding will be the thickness of the fretboard. Some like their binding to be a little deeper than the fretboard. For that you'll have to route the slot for the binding after the neck is trimmed flush.
- Insert small brads into the board or neck as index pins. At this point the neck has not been tapered at all and is still square. Use as small of a pin as you can. They will be permenently installed in the neck.
- Glue board onto oversize neck. Press the board onto the neck. If your pins are nice and sharp they should press into the soft neck wood. Otherwise, drill matching holes in the neck. I've used titebond, epoxy and Urethane glue. I think I'll stick use urethane for awhile. I cover my work board with wax paper and lay the fretboard onto it and then lay the neck on top of that. I clamp the whole thing to the work board. The work board acts a a cull. I don't bother with a cull on the neck side since any clamp marks will be carved away when I care the neck.
- Flush trim the side of the neck on router table. I use a bit where the bering is on the shaft. Notice that my fretboard is not radiused or fretted at this point. That is one of the weaknesses of this approach. I can't use pre-radiused or fretted boards. I could make a cradle to hold the board but that is a lot of work.
- Attach a support block to the neck underneath the fretboard extension. Since is use a bold on neck this support block is build much like the head block on the guitar. This keeps the fretboard extension from flexing when I radius it. I also use this when fretting.
- Radius the fretboard. I tighten the truss rod a bit at this point so that there will be some relief when I losen it after I dress the frets. I use the Stew-Mac sanding blocks. Because the board is mounted to the neck, I'd have to make some fancy holder if I wanted to radius the board with some router jig.
- Add position markers. I don't use fancy jigs here. I just measure the midpoint between the frets and drill by hand with a brad point bit in my cordless drill.
- Add frets. I run a triangle file in the fret slots so that they reduce chipping. I pound my frets in with a plastic hammer with no glue. The down side to this is that the frets will get a bit flattened in some places requiring that they be redressed. I suppose with a holder of some sort I could press the frets into the board but I've never tried.
- Fill in the fret slot ends with ebony dust and superglue. Sand edges smooth.
- Level and dress the frets, set the relief, etc. If I forgot to tighten the truss rod when I radiused the board, I tighten the truss rod a bit and file the frets level. I recrown, polish etc.
As I stated earlier, this is just one of many ways to do this. I suspect that there is nobody else who does it exactly the way I do. That is probably true of most builders.
Mike Mahar38533.4121180556
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