Seems we have a lot of junior builds around here, but its been a while since my last one so why not.
As always, I will try to do things a bit different to Gibson's offerings.
This one will be a laminated birdseye maple neck, with birdseye maple fretboard, likely a mahogany body
Its going to have a bridge and middle humbucker, so will need a different plate design and control layout too
but lets start with some wood
3 BE maple neck blanks, and a matching fretboard. They all need cleaning up, but are already showing some really nice figure.
The plan is to get at least 2 necks with angled headstocks from this. Either by gluing all 3 blanks together and cutting two laminated necks from the big block, or cutting the rough profiles first and seeing how many I can fit on each blank. I could get 3 scarfed necks, but its not my preference
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I also have plans for a new hollowbody soon - but I will be learning just as much when I show that one. I'm hoping I can get a neck from this wood suitable for it
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I do have some concerns about tear out in the planer with BE maple, so they may get a spritz of water and very small passes if there is any issues on the first pass
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Its probably worth me talking about grain direction as it affects BE maple quite a bit.
The birdseyes appear strongest in flatsawn wood, perfect for fender style necks but that isn't what we are making here. The planks will look more like flame than birdseye when viewed on the quarter
You can see how that works on a typical fender. Strong birsdeye on the fretboard face, strong on the back if the neck, but the figure stretches out to look like flame as the neck carve curves round
Like this
The back of my neck will look quite different as it will effectively be quartersawn once I have laminated the flat sawn planks together. That will give a flamed look in the middle, with strong birsdeye at the edges. But the addition of a seperate flatsawn fretboard will keep the normal birsdeye look from the front
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Very simple next to the neck, but I think that's going to work wellq
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Like all mahogany, modern stocks do tend to be a bit heavier, but this one is okay.... should balance well with the maple neck
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Got the neck balank all glued, planed and marked up
Then I remembered I want to get an arch top neck out this too, so changed one if my cutting lines
Plenty of heel to play with for both styles of build now
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Benedetto does mainly build 3 piece necks in his book... although he cuts the lams separately before gluing together. I do it this way to ensure i have my fretboard face planed and sorted first.
the one below is exactly what we should get here
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I will see what the weight of neck and body are like, and if they feel like they will balance well once i'm further along. Currently I'm expecting the finished guitar to be well under 8lb, but I haven't weighed as many of these through the process
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