Truss Rod Installation and Fingerboard Prep

I installed the truss rod per StewMac instructions, with dabs of silicone at each end and a couple points in the middle.  I didn't know how close to get on top-to-bottom clearance of the brass end blocks in the slots, so I shimmed them up 8 thousandths with two tiny sheets of steel snipped and filed from an old feeler gauge.

Since they were under the silicone, I figure they won't rattle.  If they do, I can always remove the guitar neck, make careful preparations, and light the POS on fire.

The next day I cut the fingerboard edges to the taper of the neck.  I did this by laying the face of the neck, which is just about to final width, on the un-curved back of the fingerboard.  I centered it and ran a pencil down both edges.  Then had a problem, because I wanted to use the bandsaw but didn't want the down-running blade to pull chips out of the fingerboard face.  Even with tape I was concerned about that.  So I transfered the lines to the front, which is inexact - the lines on back were a copy of the neck taper, but the lines on the front would be perfectly straight like my straightedge.  Now, I made those edges as straight as I could with sandpaper and my Surform cheesegrater, but it's still not the same.  So I resolved to leave the pencil marks when I cut from the top of the fingerboard.

It worked okay.  Here's the neck with truss rod installed, and the tapered fingerboard:

Here's the spoke nut of the truss rod sticking out the heel of the neck:

I couldn't figure out how to drill a 3/8" hole into one edge of a 7/32" notch.  For a week I carried the neck in my car, thinking to ask someone if I could borrow a drill press.  I kept forgetting, and also wondered if there'd be a way to clamp such a long piece end-on - maybe by turning the work table vertical and rotating it out of the vertical axis of the drill, clamping the neck to the vertical work table at a careful angle?  Then finally I decided to just make it happen freehand, even if I had to hand-ream the thing with a naked drill bit.  I used an electric hand drill with a 5/16" bit that I placed into the deep end of the slot, measuring the center as carefully as I could.  I used this bit a little like a drill and a little like a file.  Then I moved up to the 3/8" and repeated the operation carefully.  It worked.

This highlights another issue I have with any long-running project:  fatigue.  On the one hand, I knew I could get away with screwing up the hole in the heel of the neck a little bit, because it would hardly be visible.  On the other hand, I could have done it much more safely, for instance by clamping a 3/4" thick piece of hardwood across the end of the neck and drilling through it as a proxy piece of wood (compensating for the empty slot).  I didn't find out about that trick until after I used the drill.

I am most vulnerable to the temptation to take a shortcut when:

1. I've been blocked for some time  from working on the project, either by technical barriers or lack of time, and I feel the need to "catch up" to some imaginary timetable
2. There seems to be no one correct, clean way to approach the task, and no way for me to decide between the two, other than by making somebody else do the work

Any project, large or small, can be seen as a struggle to take exactly the time required by me to do the job as safely and correctly as possible, no more or less.  Once I start comparing my performance to some mythical notion I have in my head, I'm liable to go all freestyle.  Sometimes that works.

I am a monkey.