New Guitar Project: Les Paul Junior Build – Part Five

We’re working on the neck. 

Down at the heel end, I needed to figure out how thick the neck needed to be. On a Les Paul, where the neck joins the body, the fretboard should be right at the top. Like this:

Since the mortise was already cut, I just needed to see how deep it was, then measure that same distance from the top of the neck without the fretboard.

That way I could mark out the neck and cut off the excess on the back of the neck with the table saw. 

I also used the table saw to rip the neck blank to just over 2 1/4″ wide. I leave it ‘plump’ so that I can work it slowly down to where it fits very snugly into the mortise. Ideally, you should be able to pick up the body by holding the neck.

That was before I rounded the corners of the neck. Once I did, it fit up against the end of the mortise.

I used a template I made (after the HKGSEC neck template problem) so that I could rout the final dimensions in the top of the neck; 2 1/4″ where it joins the body and 1 3/4″ at the nut.

I cut away the excess on back of the neck and started shaping it. Rather than using the router, I tried a different approach.

In my internet research over the years, I had seen reference to a Japanese Saw Rasp, and during one of my trips to Japan I was lucky to find one in a hardware store. It’s a great tool for luthiers (and me), and it makes shaping the neck easy and almost  fun.

I started by rounding the neck at each end to provide reference points:

Then I shaped the whole neck between those two points. 

It is at this point in our narrative that the photos run out.

Once I got the neck shaped, I shaped the heel and the volute (photos later). This neck doesn’t need a volute, but the wood was there and I wanted to experiment with something I hadn’t done yet. 

I glued the fretboard onto the guitar, put in fret markers on the face and sides, and fretted it. Then I glued the neck to the body.