First True Cuts, Or, Something Reminds Me of a Guitar

With all the ingredients in place I decided to put a blade on the band saw and make my first meaningful cuts - all the previous cuts were to clean up the laminate, or test a theory.

I put the Lenox Neo-Type blade on the bandsaw, because it's 3/8" wide vs. the Zona's 1/4", and I have a theory that it would be more boxed in by the blade guides for these critical cuts.  At first I thought it was too big, but it tightened in nicely. I used the blade tension indicator on the saw and left it right at the marker for 3/8" blades.  Though I wouldn't trust that indicator with my life, it seemed to work pretty good today.  I put the guides in pretty tight and set the bearings close behind the blade - they spun continuously while I was cutting, but hardly at all when I wasn't.  I trued the table with a square and made a test cut.

Nice test cut, nearly perfect 90 degrees.  Ooh la la.

I marked up the board based on the measurements from Warmoth and some double-checking I did with the LSR nut and the neck on my G&L S-500, which is different in length but not in scale or width.

Then I fired it up.  I left the pencil lines, because there's no way in hell I'm getting away without sanding to the final width (after I profile the back of the neck, leaving much less to sand).  With a circular saw you might slice right to your target, but me with a band saw?  Not so much.  I fed slow and carefully.  There's an interesting hysteresis in making these cuts, because band saws cut at an angle to the theoretical line of the blade.  When I turn too fast away from my current path, it takes time to get started on the turn, and then it overshoots, and then it takes more time to get back then I think it ought.  And overshoots again, if I'm not thinking ahead.  I think that's because the blade has a finite width (in this case 3/8") and takes time to go around corners.  Splitting the distance and putting my line in the "natural" path of the blade must be a skill that I don't know yet.

I did alright.  Good enough, I believe.

That old saw (odam!) about "just get rid of anything that doesn't look like a guitar" comes to mind.  I am really happy with these cuts.  These cuts don't suck.  I was also worried about air voids in the laminate layers, but looking around the edge of the piece I don't see any such.  It's a clean, tight wood/epoxy/glass sandwich.

Next up:  I'm not sure.  I have to think about it.  Maybe cutting the truss rod slot while it still has a flat back.  Maybe first beveling off the back perhaps 15 degrees (in effect, starting the shaping/profiling process early) in order to remove some wood, then get these edges straight and true and relatively final, while leaving plenty of flat on the back to easily cut the truss rod slot.

Also, this thing seems very strong.  On the one hand, I have no idea how much an unprofiled maple neck of similar dimensions bends when you stand on it in the middle with the ends up on blocks, but this one doesn't seem to deflect much at all.  I was somewhat surprised.  Is that a good thing?  Who knows?

It doesn't matter right now.  Today was good, and I'm going to leave it that way.