Posted by Jason Nelms on March 28, 2010 at 10:21am
I picked up 4 Red Oak neck blanks from home depot. I don't think they are 100% straight though. Anyone have any tricks that don't involve me buying a tabletop planer?
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I use a 3 foot long block of walnut that is perfectly flat and attached sandpaper- I've also used a wide, perfectly flat level and attached 80 grit sandpaper to it. Works great. You can also use finer grit to level frets, if needed.
Here's another tip I started using to check for straighness-
1.buy a Tsquare from a drafting dept or in my case a yard sale- remove the wooden end and recycle it .
2. paint the long clear part black
3. Lay the black piece perpendicular to the top your fingerboard area and hold it up to the light. It will be obvious how straight your neck is!
First of all, we all need to do the best job of sorting when buying from the big box stores, not just for straight, but for grain... ideally have grain running vertically (perpendicular) to the surface that will be the fretboard or top of the neck.
If you're building fretless, a little inward bow (end of the neck higher than the belly) wont hurt at all. beyond that, if you have a tiny bow, it (1) can be fixed by the flat board/sandpaper technique and (2) it probably isn't a problem any way...
The more you build, the more you will learn what is "good enough"....
Alan - do you leave the board flat and move the neck or do you create a handle for the sanding board?
Leave the board on the workbench (you may want to clamp it down). A neck can be sanded back and forth parallel to grain.
Laminating is just gluing two or more pieces of wood together to get a bigger piece. A laminated neck is much stronger, far less likely to warp under string tension (not much tension under 3 strings anyway), and won't absorb string vibrations (more string energy turned into sound). A laminated neck can look really cool, too, if you use contrasting wood like maple/oak/maple.
Laminating will NOT make a warped neck straight! in fact, it's hard to glue neck pieces together that are NOT trued up first. If I were to laminate up a neck (and I might in a while) I'd clamp the pieces of wood up with a bunch of bar clamps. Check CAREFULLY to make sure all the pieces of wood are in line with eachother; for some reason when you glue and clamp pieces of wood together, they will want to slip and slide past each other. If this is no more than 1/16 or so, it isn't the end of the world -- use your flat sanding board to true everything up again. If it's more than 1/8", well you have a lot of sanding to do. When the glue is hardened up to "Old chewing gum" stage, scrape it off. It can be scraped off when totally dry, but that's a lot more work. Do NOT wipe up glue with a wet rag; that will just drive excess glue deeper into the wood and could mar the final finish.
I don't usually use oak for musical instruments. It's a good, though wood but it has open pores that need filling if you want a really first-class finish. If you are looking for the genuine folk-art look, this is no problem.
But do check out the local vocational school, and community colleges etc.
Alan - do you leave the board flat and move the neck or do you create a handle for the sanding board?
Alan Roberts said:
Jason Nelms said:
Heh- No table saw either. I could possibly get access to one if needed. I saw a handheld planer for about 25 bucks but didn't know if it would work for this application. Hmmm. ..
Don't know about the handheld planer
But here's a VERY low tech solution that will only cost a few bucks: get a large VERY FLAT surface (I suggest going down to your local junkyard and trying to find an old mirror or window glass). Use self-adhehsive sandpaper or sandpaper and rubber cement and attach to surface. This is a sanding board that EVERYONE should have. I use it to true up the sides and neck of guitars etc before attaching soundboards. That's ONE job that can't be done with power tools without wrecking everything. You can use it to true up a neck block, it will just take you 15 minutes or so. Just call it "upper body workout."
The high school thing is a good idea. The county vocational school is right down the street from my work. Could you explain what is involved in laminating? I am a complete and total novice when it comes to being "handy".
Vince Stark said:
Laminate..... Or take them to your local high school wood working shop. They're usually more than willing to help.
Heh- No table saw either. I could possibly get access to one if needed. I saw a handheld planer for about 25 bucks but didn't know if it would work for this application. Hmmm. ..
Don't know about the handheld planer
But here's a VERY low tech solution that will only cost a few bucks: get a large VERY FLAT surface (I suggest going down to your local junkyard and trying to find an old mirror or window glass). Use self-adhehsive sandpaper or sandpaper and rubber cement and attach to surface. This is a sanding board that EVERYONE should have. I use it to true up the sides and neck of guitars etc before attaching soundboards. That's ONE job that can't be done with power tools without wrecking everything. You can use it to true up a neck block, it will just take you 15 minutes or so. Just call it "upper body workout."
Heh- No table saw either. I could possibly get access to one if needed. I saw a handheld planer for about 25 bucks but didn't know if it would work for this application.
Alan Roberts said:
Sure. Got a table saw? You can EASILY build a jig that would work just like a planer. I could scan the plans and e-mail it to you.
Replies
Here's another tip I started using to check for straighness-
1.buy a Tsquare from a drafting dept or in my case a yard sale- remove the wooden end and recycle it .
2. paint the long clear part black
3. Lay the black piece perpendicular to the top your fingerboard area and hold it up to the light. It will be obvious how straight your neck is!
First of all, we all need to do the best job of sorting when buying from the big box stores, not just for straight, but for grain... ideally have grain running vertically (perpendicular) to the surface that will be the fretboard or top of the neck.
If you're building fretless, a little inward bow (end of the neck higher than the belly) wont hurt at all. beyond that, if you have a tiny bow, it (1) can be fixed by the flat board/sandpaper technique and (2) it probably isn't a problem any way...
The more you build, the more you will learn what is "good enough"....
the best,
Wichita Sam
Leave the board on the workbench (you may want to clamp it down). A neck can be sanded back and forth parallel to grain.
Laminating is just gluing two or more pieces of wood together to get a bigger piece. A laminated neck is much stronger, far less likely to warp under string tension (not much tension under 3 strings anyway), and won't absorb string vibrations (more string energy turned into sound). A laminated neck can look really cool, too, if you use contrasting wood like maple/oak/maple.
Laminating will NOT make a warped neck straight! in fact, it's hard to glue neck pieces together that are NOT trued up first. If I were to laminate up a neck (and I might in a while) I'd clamp the pieces of wood up with a bunch of bar clamps. Check CAREFULLY to make sure all the pieces of wood are in line with eachother; for some reason when you glue and clamp pieces of wood together, they will want to slip and slide past each other. If this is no more than 1/16 or so, it isn't the end of the world -- use your flat sanding board to true everything up again. If it's more than 1/8", well you have a lot of sanding to do. When the glue is hardened up to "Old chewing gum" stage, scrape it off. It can be scraped off when totally dry, but that's a lot more work. Do NOT wipe up glue with a wet rag; that will just drive excess glue deeper into the wood and could mar the final finish.
I don't usually use oak for musical instruments. It's a good, though wood but it has open pores that need filling if you want a really first-class finish. If you are looking for the genuine folk-art look, this is no problem.
But do check out the local vocational school, and community colleges etc.
Alan Roberts said:
Vince Stark said:
But here's a VERY low tech solution that will only cost a few bucks: get a large VERY FLAT surface (I suggest going down to your local junkyard and trying to find an old mirror or window glass). Use self-adhehsive sandpaper or sandpaper and rubber cement and attach to surface. This is a sanding board that EVERYONE should have. I use it to true up the sides and neck of guitars etc before attaching soundboards. That's ONE job that can't be done with power tools without wrecking everything. You can use it to true up a neck block, it will just take you 15 minutes or so. Just call it "upper body workout."
Alan Roberts said: