Starting with some thicknessesed stock, for my dual truss rod I first drill a hole for the truss rod but and then use my jig I made a while ago for routing the truss rod slot
I am covering the truss rod slot with a slightly curved filler strip such that I presses it down in the middle to prevent truss rod rattle
I did the filler strip I’m two parts. I did the end part separately such that I can make the bottom part follow the curve of the nut
Now ready for the router table to get the neck to the final shape. Minor chip in the filer strip at the top but not the end of the world since it will be covered. Something always doesn’t go quite to plan
The fretboard will have 22 frets so will put that on later (if it had 21 frets would shape at the same time)
Fretboard was glued to the shaped neck with fish glue (makes life easier if you mess up). Then used a router to confirm the fretboard shape to the neck for the majority of it with the exception of the end part .
For the end part I created a “template” for the end part by wrapping tape around the 21 fretboard template (to make it a bit wider). I referenced a warmoth neck to work out exactly how the new template should reference to the last fret.
I’ll have to done some final hand shaping as my adjusted template was a tad wider then the actual neck so there is half a mm or so material to blend/remove my hand
I’ve put tape on the bottom of some parts of the neck to lessen any damage if I accidently knock it. Steaming dents out of hard wood is actually not as effective as soft woods
The fretboard is made of cocobolo which is one of my least favourite woods to plane given how easy it is to create tear out if you are not careful
If the wood wasn’t so tear out prone it’s much quicker to rough the radius out with a hand plane. However cocobolo is always a risk. Perhaps can be offset with a high angle frog plane (lie Nielsen has an offering but not quite flash enough for that ATM)
