The LS Redwood/Yew Competition Guitar Build

While I wait for some veneer for the headplates, I thought I'd get ahead and make the fingerboard.

As you may remember the fingerboard for this guitar is a a piece of Brazilian Rosewood, this piece is straight grained and quartersawn and comes from a salvaged piece of 19th century furniture that my supplier got at auction.  This is a quality of wood that is just not available now, so we are lucky that old brown furniture is unfashionable now.

First job after squaring the edges and thicknessing is to cut the fret slots, the scale on this guitar is going to be 645mm, sometimes known as Martin long scale.  



As you can see I cut the slots in a jig, the FB is double stick taped to a template which is indexed on a pin in the jig.  When all 20 slots have been cut (there is actually room for 21 on the FB but I like to keep the end of the board solid, and who on an acoustic has ever used fret 21, many don't go past 5! ).



Once all of the slots have been cut the board has to have a radius sanded into the surface, I use a 16" radius on my steel string boards. This is sanded in using radiused sanding blocks.  This means that the fret slots are now deeper in the middle than at the edge, now I could just have cut them deep enough in the first place so that they are still good after sanding in the radius, but that would mean the slots being over depth in the centre.  So, after radiusing I use the fretting saw, with a stop attached to it, and re-cut the slots.  The stop ensures that the bottom of the slot matches the radius of the fingerboard and the slots are the same depth for their whole length.

Last job for now is to taper the fingerboard.  The nut width is going to be 46mm, with the spacing at the bridge 57mm.  I like the width at the 12th fret to be 2-3mm larger than the spacing at the bridge, so the centre line is found and the widths at the nut and the 12th fret marked off and the taper drawn on.  This is then cut on the bandsaw and planed to the line.

End result is a tapered, radiused, fret-slotted board.  Which has gone from the one on the right to that on the left.

Colin

Well, slot head it is, so better cut the little slots and put more of my expensive wood into the dust collector. I've decided building guitars is a matter of buying very expensive woods, then throwing half of it away!

The clamps are removed and the blank cleaned up, we end with this, a layer of BRW pear and black on both faces of the headstock. I usually use a layer of black on each side of the pear, but with the dark BRW this layer wouldn't be visible.

Next the pattern is transferred to the head and the sides marked with a marking knife, then cut on the bandsaw and cleaned up to the knife mark.  A Marking knife is much more accurate than a pencil line and gives a more definite line to work to.



The slot head routing jig is clamped to the head, making sure to index the tuner positions, and the tuner holes drilled through the guides.



Then a 1/4" downcut bit in a router fitted with an 11mm guide bushing is used to incrementally cut the slots.

Here you can see, after a couple of increments that the tuner holes are starting to be revealed.



After a couple more increments the slot is cut right through, but is not totally smooth on the sides.



So, the guide bush is changed to a 10mm one and the sides cleaned up by removing 1/2mm all round, to give a clean slot.



And the end result of putting another £10 of shavings in the trash.



Of course there is a lot more work to be done on the head, but it's 1:00 o'cock and time for lunch dum-di-dum-di-dum-dum  (Genesis, I Know What I Like).

Colin

Now that the head is shaped it's time to move on to the rest of the neck.  First of course its going to need a heel, but before I can make that I have to establish the final angle the neck needs to make with the body.  I know that at the saddle position I need a gap of 2mm taken from the surface of the neck before the fingerboard is in place, so to find the angle that the face of the neck heel needs I place a 2mm spacer at the saddle position and using a straight edge on the top I place my protractor against the body and along the straight edge, the angle on the protractor gives me the angle I need for the face of the heel block.  As usual it is around 1.5deg.



I glue up a heel stack, and also cut the same angle onto the neck, where the body junction will be.  The extension will support the fingerboard and fit into a recess that I'll rout in the body's head block (you'll see this later).

Next day I can start to rough shape the neck on the bandsaw.



I then like to shape the transition from the head to the neck shaft, at the moment this is only a first shaping which will be refined later.



Then the heel is roughed in.



Finally it's a case of join the dots and the shaft is given a first profiling.



As I said there will be refining and final shaping later, but here is the neck sort of in place on the body.



Starting to look like a guitar now.

Colin