Mahogany Body and Neck Pocket

I want the center core of the body to be a good solid type of "tone wood".  I went to the local Ring's End and they had 3 feet of 5/4 by 6" mahogany.  I don't know mahogany but this stuff looked nice to me, and it is moderately hefty.

I cut it in half and glued it to itself with Franklin Tightbond.  I didn't do a very good job.  That stuff went on like peanut butter and I slathered it.  When I clamped, the boards started sliding off each other.  I ended up drilling a couple of small holes in each end (very fast) and inserting some thin smooth bolts through the holes (tightly fitting), then piling a bunch of weight on the resulting stack.

The glue line is thick as hell.  It left some annoying gaps around one edge.  I'm going to have to fix this up somehow.  But it's not going anywhere, I think.  I know there's enough glue in the center.  There's nothing simple for me - I can't even glue a board to a board without getting all turned around and confused.

Then I cut the neck pocket.  I started by placing the neck on the end of mahogany, centered it, and drew some outlines in pencil.  I freehand routed a quarter inch down inside these lines, try to draw good clean edges, until I realized that would never, ever work - I was going to put it into the wall and wreck the pocket.  So, like usual, I made a jig:

I always make a jig.  Viewed one way, this whole project has been an endless succession of single purpose jigs.  I made this one by clamping those two long boards to the sides of the guitar neck at the heel, laying it on the body core, and clamping and nailing everything together like a Rube Goldberg device.  You can see where I had to hack away chunks of the crosspiece to make some router base clearance.  I extended the pocket about a centimeter to make room for the truss rod spoke nut sticking out the neck heel.  Here's the completed neck pocket with the Freud 1/2" flush cut top-bearing router bit:

The neck fits well.  Not only well - it fits beautifully.  It fits so tightly and firmly that I feel like I have no right to such a wonderful neck pocket, not the way I cut it:

Then I ordered parts for the next phase:  attaching the neck to the body and installing bridge/pickups.  I'm going to use threaded inserts for this because I don't trust the soft basswood with bare wood screws.  I had some brass ones lying around, and I'm glad I tried installing one in some scrap neck laminate, because it broke off at its drive screw slot.  Brass is no good for this.

I ordered a box of 10 steel threaded inserts from McFeely's, 10-24 with a 5mm hex drive and 9/32 outer hole size.

I ordered two pickups through Amazon:  an EMG 81TWX and a 89XR.  These are both dual-mode pickups, each containing a humbucker and a single coil in switchable arrangement.  They come with push-pull volume pots to toggle between modes, as well as active tone controls and all the wiring I should need.

TOTAL COST SO FAR:

$592 - Previous steps
$38 - 3 board feet of 5/4 x 6 mahogany
$24 - flush cut router bit
$5 - steel threaded inserts
$260 - EMG pickups
-------------------
$919 total cost so far


OUCH.  I figured I'd spend about a grand.  But actually doing it is totally depressing.