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Problems with my first project

While shaping my first neck, I trimmed some material from the back side of the headpiece to make it less boxy looking. After I drilled the hole for the machines and sized them up during a test fit, it looks like the strings are going to be kind of high, maybe too high for the 1/4 inch piece of hardwood I planned on using for a nut. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken the material off the face of the headpiece instead, but my thinking was that if I made any mistakes, they would be on the back of the neck instead of the front.

If after the strings are installed, and it turns out that they are too high, what are my options, other than make a whole new neck? Are there tuning pegs that have shorter shafts that I could use instead?

Thanks for your input. I am documenting my project and posting pics as I progress...

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Permalink Reply by Bluesdog on April 27, 2009 at 12:22am

I have a simpler solution you could try, when your winding your strings up wind the whole string onn instead of cutting a whole lot of string off past the tuner and the coil wraping around the tunner will force the string down to the bottom of the tunners post when you tune your guitar. That should thake the string as low as it can get.

If that doesn't work you could also just take the tuners off, make a raise-plate with holes in it and glue that to the back of your headstock. Put the tuners back on and the tunner itself wil sit lower.

Hope this helps and good luck on your build.

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Permalink Reply by Zeb on April 28, 2009 at 2:59am

Rather then try to answer all your questions I will take another approach. (www.lmii.com/CartTwo/Video.asp) This is a link on Luthiers Merch Intl that has a couple dozen videos on all types of things. One shows a Guy carving a neck . Theres an explanation of neck rod types. Good basic luthier stuff. Quite a bit of it.
When I started I bought a book on building an electric guitar. It answered a ton of questions and gave me some basic direction. I built a Saga guitar kit and it came out well. I did not glue the neck as directed however. I drilled and installed inserts that allowed me to shim adjust the neck later on. As a result I have a guitar that plays very easily and has a decent neck set. The book showed me how to adjust the rod, the nut and bridge to obtain a good neck relied and string action. It gave me clearences that will be needed to understand what your trying to accomplish. I would recommend that anybody considering building their own instrument get some base line information. By that I mean a book and or a kit. A decent kit should have direction on set up and finishing. Grizzly Tools has some nice inexpensive kits as well as books. The ukulele kit is well under $50. LMI , Grizzly, Stewmac are all vendors with kits etc. They also have tuners , pickups etc for building your own. Enjoy the journey. Good luck . Chuck