Following my fairly successful ukelele build recently, I decided up the stakes a bit and have a go at building an electric guitar. I’d never built a guitar before.
I would start by making the neck. I used oak which came from some salvaged hat and coat stands – I had to cut them to length, thickness plane them and then laminate two pieces together to give me a workpiece which was the right size. Then I could mark up where the headstock and nut would be, and also where the neck would meet the body.
Next I needed to cut a slot along most of the length of the centre of the neck for the truss rod (which I’d already bought on eBay) to fit in to. This would later be hidden beneath the fretboard. I used the tablesaw to cut the slot, by making two passes and moving the fence inbetween to give me a slot that once refining with a chisel and sandpaper, was wide enough to accommodate the truss rod.
Then I did a bit of shaping to the neck, roughly cutting out the shape and profile of the headstock. I used the belt sander to refine the shape.
I used combination of a couple of rasp files and a spoke shave to start shaping the neck, and smoothed it over with sandpaper and a cabinet scraper.
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