Official Luthiers Forum!

The last 6 guitars I have built (4 of which I have just done in a batch) have all had a .025" drop off in front of the nut that tapers back into the straightness of the rest of the fretboard within the first 3 frets. I have had to do extra sanding, truss rod tweaking, and pay extra attention to fret leveling as a result. I'm not quite sure why this has been happening to me. I block sand a 12" radius with a 8 inch wooden block by hand. It obviously must be my technique where I must apply too much pressure and or time towards the nut end of the board.

Anyone else have such issues or surprises after your guitar is nearly completed and your leveling the board to do fretwork?

Mark the board with pencil (chalk or whatever else) before sanding so you can monitor your progress, and periodically check where you are and remark the whole board to make sure you're not starting to stray. The neck tapers, so there is much less wood to remove at the first fret than the 21, so if you just do the same number of strokes it's easy to sand a taper into the neck. That would be my guess.

With a longer block and good technique, it's easier to keep it straight but even so you can taper it by applying uneven pressure.

I think I will radius the fingerboards before gluing them up next time. I think it happened to me because the necks were flexing in the middle while radiusing and so it sanded a bit more towards the ends.

With the shorter radius boards, it's much easier to wander and sand an uneven radius when radiusing by hand.

I rough my radius in on the belt sander and finish it up with the 18 inch long aluminum radius beam from Stewmac. It covers most of the fretboard, much less chance of wander.

If you are radiusing completely from a flat fret plane, there's a LOT of room for error.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I radius with a 4" or an 8" long radiused sanding block. I use a 1" x 4" on either side of the board, just wide enough to let the sanding block slip through on either side. This lets me control the side to side movement, so that the block doesn't wander from end to end. I also sand a while from the heel end, then flip and sand from the nut end. I get good, consistent results this way.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.