Neck and body work

It is time again for a little update. I continued my work on the neck. Next job here: create a channel for the truss rod with a router. Before I picked up the router I assured that the side of the neck was straight by sanding it on a sanding block since it should guide the router:

When finished the neck was fastened to a bench with two clamps. The router was set to mill in the middle of the block. You cannot mill the full depth at once so I had to do it in stages of about 2 mm.

The end result with the truss rod and the Jacaranda fret board:

And with the Truss rod inserted:

Now the neck is ready to be glued to the headstock. This is a tricky job since such a big gluing area tends to slide when you clamp it. One way to get around that is clamping both part to the bench during the procedure. Another way is to us two little nails to prevent both parts of slipping away. I used the last method:

While the neck was drying I did some more work on the body to prepare it for the top. Since the cross bracing is shaped to an arch the sides and the neck and tail block also need to have a slope to give as much gluing surface to the top. With a flexible wooden slat I checked the curve from every angle towards the highest point of the arch. Anywhere I discovered space between the slat and the body I needed to file the slope a bit steeper. As you can see the neck block needed quite some shaping:

Next time probably the top will be glued to the body.