With the neck mostly shaped, I moved on to the next steps – pickup and neck pocket routing.
Routing
This is a set neck guitar and the fretboard is always in the way when it comes time to do the pickup routes, so I at least started them before gluing the neck in.
Since this build has the inlaid pickguard, what I did was screw the pickguard in place and hog out the pickup routes through the pickguard and into the body.
Then after I was done hogging with the drill press, I switched to using a router and template, again routing through to the body.
I was going to keep going and do the full size singlecoil routes after removing the pickguard, but realized that the end of the neck was going to be going through 2 of the 3 pickup routes and would need to be re-routed after the neck was glued in anyway. So, I worked on the neck pocket route next.
This process was pretty similar to the pickup routes, except that I lined up the neck centerline with the centerline of the body and set the end of the neck where I wanted it in order to keep the bridge and pickup placement correct.
Once I knew I had the neck exactly where I wanted it, I taped down pieces of wood on each side of the neck to act as my straight edges for routing.
While I had the router out, I used it on the back of the pickguard. I had previously drilled the holes for the pots and routed a slot for the 5 way switch.
The wooden pickguard is too thick for the switch, so I routed a recessed area into the back of the pickguard. I also recessed the pot holes a bit while I was at it.
The Glue-up
Now that all of that was done, I was able to move on to gluing the neck to the body. This is the point in the build where it really feels like it becomes a guitar.
Inner Pickup Routes
The next thing I did was level off the neck end and finish up the pickup routes. Since the fretboard was now in the way, I had to prop up the templates with a piece of mdf on each side of the pickup area.
It’s a little difficult to get the template lined up precisely when it’s floating above the surface like that, so I triple checked all of my measurements then proceeded to routing.
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Heel Carving
I actually started carving the heel a little bit before gluing the neck. I pretty much just dry-clamped the neck in place and planned out the area where the neck was attaching to the heel of the body. I then moved the body and pre-carved that section of the neck.
I didn’t want to do too much to the body part of the heel until after the glue-up so that I would have a flat area to place my clamps.
So, after the glue was dry I did the rest of the heel shaping.
I started with an angle grinder to rough it out, followed by a gouge, razor files, and coarse sandpaper. Here’s how it looks all cleaned up.
The Final Touches
To finish up the build, I cut a truss rod cover out of a piece of mother of pearl, drilled holes for the bridge studs and pilot holes for the screws, and did a lot of fine tuning of all the little details.
I did a pre-finish test assembly to see if any more adjustments were needed and it showed me that I needed more room in the pickup and wire routes, so I did that.
Final Sanding
For this guitar, we are aiming for as light of a natural color as possible and a thin open pore feel. To achieve this I am hand applying a crystal clear water based polyurethane. Because of this I sanded to a higher grit than I do with a sprayed finish. I ended up sanding to 400 grit.
Before sanding, I steamed out any dents I found in the wood with a wet shop towel and a soldering iron. This decompresses the wood fibers in the dent and the dents basically disappear.
After the dents were removed, I sanded with 120, 220, 320, and 400. I stopped to wipe down the wood with water in between a couple of the grits to raise the wood grain so that it doesn’t end up raising from the water based finish.
I sanded the truss rod cover up to 800 grit.
The hand cramps and lower back pain were worth it.
Time for finish!
Stay tuned.
Next post: Finish, Frets, and Assembly
