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constructordeguitarras -> RE: Neck carving---hand vs CNC (Mar. 24 2019 1:37:50)
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quote:
I would be grateful for any guidance that anyone can give me, though I suspect that the real answer is "carve necks, in fact, carve a lot of them".
I have found that after carving a lot of them and developing a procedure, as Andy says, that carving necks has become pretty easy and only takes an hour or two.
I don't carve the heel before assembling the guitar. After gluing on the fingerboard, putting on the frets, and beveling the fret ends, with the neck in a vise I trim the neck flush with the long edges of the fingerboard using a drawknife and chisel. Then I carve the curves of the heel that lie against the guitar sides, from the back to the fingerboard, with a #1 gouge. Then I use a chisel to carve the "hyloid" curves on the head to the nut area. Then I lay the guitar on a mat on my workbench and use a small convex plane to reduce the neck thickness in back of the first fret and tapering to the splice joint at the head. Then I use a small block plane to taper the neck from the back of the first fret to where the joint with the heel stack lies. I get this straight and when I do the rest of the shaping I avoid touching the center line. Now I shape roughly with a small sharp drawknife. (For some reason, I have an aversion to spokeshaves.) Next I shape the heel with a knife and the #1 gouge. (A Hock instrumentmaking knife blade fitted with a long wooden handle works well.) Then I shape the transition to the head with a (Swiss carving) knife. Then I use those hand-set rasps from France. They really do cut faster and better than the ones commonly found in the US. I start with the 9 and then go to an 11. Now I use 80 grit sandpaper. For sanding some parts of the heel and the hyloid curves, I have a 1"-diameter piece of dowel that I have coated with cork to use as a sanding block. Then 120, 150, and 220 grits. Done.
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