Nut and Tuners

I finished cutting the nut slot to width for the LSR nut.  I used a pull saw to get it close, and a file with masking tape on its short side to get the width correct (so I could take off material on the vertical face of the slot, without digging it any deeper).  I used needle files to flatten the bottom of the slot.  By the time I'd finished, the fit was tight but i'd undercut the slot on the bass side toward the first fret, just slightly.  No big deal I think.

This nut doesn't have fore and aft pressure on it like a locking nut, even thought it might look similar.  The nut has little pairs of ball bearings for each string to slide upon. So the two provided screws, tiny though they are, will hold it fine.  The instructions say to use some weird-ass drill size, and only that size - the danger, according to the instructions, is in twisting the screw head off.   I used a 1/16" which is a few hundredths too small, because I always think I know better.  It worked fine.  I put a little fishing reel oil on the threads before I put them in.  I used all of the shims provided.  If that's not enough, I'll make my own shims out of feeler gauges.

Then it was time to mark the location of the tuner holes.  The first method I used worked very poorly:  it consisted of push pins with fishing line between them running in the approximate position of real strings.  It was too hard to eyeball the lie over the nut angle, and too hard to mark the lines on the headstock under the fishing line.

Next I made a jig to suspend a length of aluminum angle stock over the neck from the heel end, and taped a piece of paper to the neck with the correct string spacing (gotten from my G&L S-500, which has nearly the same dimensions).

I used my trusty 6" ruler to drop the vertical down to the paper on the heel end, and to the headstock in two places on the other end.  This worked well because that ruler centered itself well in the ball bearings of the nut:

The I double-checked everything and made the lines:

You can see my attempt to sanity check the spacing.  I put the line delineating the row of tuner hole centers across the string lines, then measured the distance between each of the holes. I was a little annoyed and disturbed by the fact that they weren't perfectly regular, and that more importantly that the intervals got bigger going toward the nut/bass side.  Then I realized they should get wider because the string lines are a wee bit farther apart toward the nut, as they converge from heel to nut.  Okay.  Good enough?  It had better be, let me tell you.

Basswood doesn't like to be drilled.  It shreds a bit.  The tuner holes are 3/8", as specified by the StewMac instructions for the Steinberger Gearless tuners.

I brought the neck upstairs to look at it in daylight, thinking that it was nice-enough looking to be treated like family, finally.  It was at this moment that I nearly lost it:  I realized that the direct line from the nut to the centerline of each tuner goes right through the string-clamping knob on the tuner to the left, if that clamping knob comes to rest perpendicular to the string lie!  I was all like, "Oh BLEEPETY BLEEP BLEEP, you BLEEPETY BLEEPER!"

I was stumped and very worried.  I searched the internet to little avail, but did discover many pictures of these tuners on standard Fender 6-in-line headstocks.  I compared my headstock to the S-500, and it looked very similar, both in tuner spacing and cross-string angle. Yes, I could put some other tuners on there, but these things were bloody expensive!  WTF?  I clamped a string into the bass tuner and discovered two things:

1. Probably, if the clamping knob is perpendicular, I can muscle it around another quarter turn to make it parallel
2. Because of the peculiar spaghetti-slurping operation of these tuners (pulling the string down into a hole), the clamping knobs wouldn't always be in the full down position - room for strings to go under them

I'm relying on point 1, because point 2 depends on it - wouldn't want to tighten a string, dragging a clamping knob down into the next highest string and bollocksing up the works. I think it'll be okay.  

The nearly-completed neck:

Next I'm going to start working on the body.  It's time to:

1. get this thing strung up and arranged properly
2. pickups in
3. frets leveled
4. intonation and setup
5. take it all back down and put it into its final shape, which means headstock shape, proper contours, body shape
6. finished all wood parts with whatever stains or coatings I decide to apply

I'm ordering the pickups in the next week or so.  The bill for that ain't gonna be pretty.  More later.

Fret Not - Refretting a Brand New Neck, and Breakthroughs

I knew putting the frets in would be fraught with danger, and that I would do a less-than-perfect job.  Accordingly, I launched into it without even thinking and put the frets in with a plastic faced hammer after bending the fret wire.  I forgot to round over the sharp edges of the fretboard.  Some of the frets didn't seat well.  I beveled the edges of the fret slots too deep in places.  When I ran my file along the side of the fretboard, some of the frets rocked in their slots under my fingers.  All kinds of little things went wrong.  It was another low point in the journey.

Enough of uncertainty!  I decided to remove the frets and refret the neck already.  This time, I'd glue them in like a freak.  I've read all about the right way to do it, and that gluing is not required.  And how, if I ever want to refret this thing for real in the future, gluing can contribute to a bigger mess. I've read it all.  It didn't work out like that, okay?

I tapped out the frets from the edges where they hung over, because I don't have a pair of end-nippers that's totally flush-ground.  Of course the fingerboard chipped out in several places.  All the chips stayed where they belonged except for one, by the edge, which I will fill later with an epoxy/rosewood dust mixture.

First I rounded the fretboard edges properly.  Then I cleaned out the fret slots with a pull saw, deepening them slightly to accommodate glue in capillary fashion.  I surmised that the reason for some of the unseated frets was inadequate curvature of the fretwire, especially near the nut; I had enough fretwire left (almost a whole 2 foot length) to increase the curvature and redo 1-5 new.  Others I rested in a concave cut at the end of a 1x4 and tapped with the hammer to bend deeper.  The rest just went in.  There was enough grab left in the fret slots to hold them flush.

After I was satisfied that the frets were seated well, I put a fine tip on the glue and went off the hook.  This stuff is so watery it wicked everywhere.  I think it shows in the following picture:  some of it went down the grain from deep inside the fret slots and popped out in random endgrains in the area between frets, like running down a wormhole.  Amazing.

Well, they ain't going anywhere.  Sure, it looks crappy.  I'll try some toluene to clean it up.  While the glue was curing, I made the rough cuts to widen the nut slot for the LSR roller nut, which is wider than a regular nut and pushes toward the first fret.  I made the vertical cut freehand with the pull saw, and the bottom cut with a coping saw.  I would never have done either of those things before I started this project, but I was able to do it and not screw it up.  Yes, I'll be cleaning up the slot with needle files (very carefully).  No, it's far from perfect.  Yes, it will take me longer than it takes anybody else.  But I'm going to cut a really good nut slot freehand, and it's going to work well and look nice when I'm finished.  That's amazing to me.  I'm learning a lot.

I discovered something incredibly new about filing today that's also blindingly obvious.  While beginning the process of filing the fret edges flush to the fretboard, I started to get discouraged.  It's a lot of work, and those frets are hard.  Maybe they're not stainless, but they're not very soft either.  But by running the file down the frets until they were all about the same height, I found it going faster than I imagined it would.  I realized that when I took care to keep all the fret overhangs even, the file works on them all at the same time, and long even strokes do all the work magically.  I knew that, but now I really know it in my bones.  It's one of those little things that open my eyes a bit.

Currently I'm still evening the fret edges.  My file is not attached to a board like those fancy ones you can buy, so it's not as smooth as it could be.  But I'm using what I've got, which I got for free.  After that I'll bevel them a bit (less is more - you can't put it back) and clean up some of the CA.

Bending Fretwire and the Start of Fret Installation

Fret wire must be bent to approximately the radius of the neck at the fret in which it is to be installed.  Most authorities suggest bending it a little tighter than that.  In my case, I've got a conical (compound) radius neck that goes from 10" at the nut to about 14" radius at the end of the board.  I settled on 9" as a good radius for the whole thing.

Bending fret wire is not a simple matter of grabbing both ends and pulling them together into a circular shape.  I know, I tried it!  What happens is that the wire starts to bend non-asymmetrically, so that tang that is supposed to go into the fret slot is not perpendicular to the plane of the bend.  In fact, there is no plane of the bend, the thing starts to curl up.  Above all the fret wire must be straight when viewed from the top, and a curlicue ain't gonna cut it.

Inspired by fret benders described at various places on the internet (themselves apparently inspired by this fancy StewMac version), I made my own.  It's stupid looking:

The metal roller is two larger washers with a thin small washer between them - this makes a slot for the fret tang to ride in.  The two rubber rollers are (I think) part of the suspension system for a ceiling fan.  You would force the wire through the bent path so that its face runs against the rubber rollers and the fret tang rides in the metal washer roller.  Unfortunately, when you try to use it like this, the crummy little axles (a 3" threaded rod and two 5/16" utility knife handles) go all non-perpendicular and the wire starts bending wrong and gets bound up in the washer slot.

So I made it a two-sided contraption with 1" pine for spacers and the roller axles going through both pieces:

Well, it worked!  I guessed at the distance between the metal roller and the line drawn between the axles of the rubber rollers.  The produced a radius of about 12" or so (estimated).  In the next picture you can see the fret wire near a 9" radius line drawn on a plastic table:

Then I drilled new holes in the boards so I could move the metal roller about 1/4" closer to the line connecting the rubber rollers.  Then I'd run the wire through the new configuration:

And tighten the radius in stages.  Important?  I don't know.  Accidental?  Completely.  This second bending stage did the trick almost perfectly:

Then I modified my 60lb bag of tube sand  (yes, tube sand - apparently we have that in Connecticut) into a 25lb bag of sand, to use as a neck rest when I hammer the frets in:

Very exciting!  A whole day spent bending some wire - but it was free, and it could have turned out far, far worse.

Fingerboard Attachement and Neck Profiling

I made a lot of progress and failed to document it.  I got excited, and I wanted to get a lot done this week.

The fingerboard is attached to the neck.  I first cut it almost to width.  I put a staple in either end of the neck, pulled one leg of each out, and cut them into a low point.  This helped to locate the fingerboard on the neck when I pressed it to the neck face.  I then wrapped the neck with 3 yards of waistband elastic from a craft store - I got the idea from a StewMac how-to email, but I declined to buy a full pound of 40" elastic bands from them.  What would I ever do with them?  After that I placed a straightedge on the face of the board and weighed it down.

The back is nearly profiled:

I clamp the neck to the edge of the workbench like so, on a piece of hardboard with some carpet padding on it to protect the fingerboard:

The epoxy layers actually help the contouring process - when they're roughly parallel or diverging at a constant angle, you're making a regular shape.  The neck is going to be a pretty pronounced vee shape.  There are two reasons for this:

1. Easier for me to profile - flat is simpler than curved
2. I need to keep the neck thickness pretty high overall to keep enough wood/glass back of the truss rod, so the rod doesn't blow out, but that makes for a very chunky neck.  I can get my hand around it better if I flatten the curve and make a vee
3. Bonus reason:  it just happened and there's no going back

I'm doing all this work with the Surform loaded with a convex grater, and a round rat tail file with big teeth.  It makes a giant mess, but the bits are heavier than air and thus far less dangerous.

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.

Finalish Neck Thicknessing

I wanted to make the headstock 1/2" thick, and main part of the neck 3/4".  I could have done it a couple ways, I guess:

1. Band saw the wide way, then clean up with the router and thickness fixture
2. Route in increments until complete

I don't trust my band saw skills or my band saw setup enough for the first approach.  The second approach, however, filled my entire basement workshop area with a fine sawdust.  Why was I not informed about this?  It's everywhere.  Everywhere!  In fact, I thought I would be working on this guitar until I died of old age, but now I think I'm racing against lung disease.  Thankfully, I think that was the last of the major thicknessing operations.

Here's the nasty-looking step-down in back of the nut, which will need some serious work with the Stanley Surform cheese grater:

I think I'll clean up some of these messes and then see about finishing up the truss rod and attaching the fingerboard, in preparation for fretting.

Shaping the Neck to Almost Final Width

The band saw I used was not accurate enough to make the neck sides perfectly flat or straight, and really blaming the tool is rather sad.  It's because of me.  So now I have to take the sides down.  I use a Stanley Surform with a flat grater to get pretty close, and then 120 grit sandpaper for the final approach.  However, the amount of surface area is key to sanding progress so I began to profile the back of the neck so I didn't have to flatten all that wood.  Like so:

I made a thing to hold the neck on its side where I can grate it properly:

I grate the neck with a Stanley Surform.  It gets pretty good traction if I apply a little pressure.  I think the fibergass/epoxy layer gives it a hard time.