Making the fret markers

Removing the excess wood from the neck blank to bring it to near it's correct thickness.  Conveniently this offcut will be used to make the fret markers to give the impression that they go right through the fingerboard as part of the neck.

 Phew, that took a while... 

Marking out the fret markers.

and cutting to shape.  I'm making two out of each size shape.

 Yep, these will look good, not to carve out the shapes for them to sit in.

Marked out and cut.  Using a scalpel to cut the outline and then very carefully chiselling out a 2mm hole...

 ...and done.  Had a couple of edges lift up that needed a bit of superglue to stick back down.

Glued in with a mixture epoxy resin and  rosewood sawdust.  This is so that any small gaps around the inlay will be filled automatically and colour matched to the fingerboard.

...and sanded down to the 12" radius.  I also soaked superglue into the much softer meranti parts of the fret markers in order to harden them up so they don't wear out as quickly

Fingerboard...

 Using a fret scale tool from Guitar & Wood luthier supplies I marked out the frets based on a 24.625" scale length.

 After making sure the edges were true, I used a set square and Japanese pull saw to cut the fret slots.

Then using a Guitar and Wood radius sanding block I shaped it to a 12" radius and got the thickness down to the line.

 

...and then cut the taper

Unfortunately some of the saw marks from when I split the fingerboard blank didn't come out with the radius sanding so had to be filled with rosewood sawdust and glue.  It shouldn't look too bad when the fret markers are added.

Playing with some fret marker inlay ideas.  This sycamore veneer whilst very pretty is far too thin to be used

 However it did allow me to play around with some ideas...

 I think I prefer the markers to point upwards towards the headstock.

 Cutting some maple for the fingerboard binding...

 Nice 3mm thick maple binding strip.

Binding should look good...

After gluing the binding on I drilled the side marker holes and used rosewood sawdust and glue to fill the holes in the maple and then sanded it back.

I think that looks pretty damn tidy!

Channels...

Using some tape as a depth stop I made a start on removing wood for the carbon fibre reinforcement rod channels.

Half way through the first.  It's easier and neater to drill lots of sequential holes and then join the dots with a chisel than to try and carve the whole channel with just a chisel.

Thats the first done...

...and the second.  Unfortunately the tape moved and I drilled a little deeper in a few places than I'd intended so I've added a little meranti and glue filler, hopefully this won.t come through the other side when I carve the neck profile.

And some chiselling...

Thats one, and on to the next.

And now two rod channels

Now for the centre truss rod channel, oh my maple is much harder to drill than meranti...

A couple of hours later and we have a truss rod channel.

Drilling with a brace and bit into a sloping surface for the truss rod adjustment hole was erm... interesting...

Not too bad even if I say so myself!

That's the carbon fibre rods glued in with epoxy resin and trimmed to size.

Here it is with the truss rod...

Oops, made the truss rod channel a little longer than required...

... and easily fixed with a small cube of maple.  The truss rod is held in place with a few globs of silicone sealant which will stop it rattling in the channel but wont stop it from working.

Headstock angle shaping

Cutting the headstock to the correct thickness

 

Then stuck onto the neck blank with some double sided carpet tape in order to get the 15 degree right on both edges of what will be the scarf joint.

And after lots of planing and sanding smooth

The sloping part of headstock part will eventually be glued on to the underneath of the neck when it has been cut to it's correct thickness to make the overall headstock angle.