I carved the neck with rasps and a spokeshave. I built a stand to hang the neck off the edge of my bench to support it and give me access to each side. I just carved on it until it started feeling good in my hand. This was the most enjoyable part of the whole thing I think.
Isn't it just though. Making necks is my second favorite part of making guitars (after stringing them up for the first time and playing them!)
So, a couple of things. I haven't had the guitar in my hands, of course, so I can't go into the kind of detail I would if you brought it into the shop, but you said you have a background in drafting and art, so you should understand the concept of the fair curve. There are a couple of places that look a little less than smooth, though that could be the picture. If you want to make your guitars look professional, that is one of the most critical things you need to look out for. The best way to test this has nothing to do with your eye, but everything to do with your thumb. Run your thumb around the edge, and you will feel any bumps. What I'm seeing here could very well be an illusion of the photo. The only real reason I bring it up is that it is the single most common mistake beginners make when building electric guitars.
There are two areas in particular that I wanted to point out. First is your volute. They are important, in my view, if you are going to use a Gibson style truss rod (I don't know if you did or not), but yours is a little clunky looking. Next time around, I would try to refine the shape of it, and to sort of "hollow" out the neck side of it a bit. It appears to have a bit of a slope, maybe just a hint of a concave curve going from the shaft of the neck into the peghead. It is much more comfortable to have a quite pronounced concave curve there. (This is hard to describe in words - three dimensional curves do not lend themselves to speech very well). The two pictures (excuse the ugly chipped and burned through finish - it was an early prototype for one of the guitars I'm making now, but it shows some of what I'm talking about) actually have LESS concavity than I would like to see (by quite a lot), but you can hopefully see what I'm talking about. You almost want it to mirror the U shape of your hand between your first finger and your thumb. I would also suggest at least trying to make the volute smaller. Customers don't like Volutes much in the first place (because they were used on all those seventies Gibson's, I think, which is silly because the volutes were just about the only GOOD thing on those guitars), and they particularly don't like big ones. It doesn't take much to make up for the truss rod pocket, so it is usually good to keep them small. I don't know if you are planning to try and sell these, but if you are, keep that one in mind.
The second thing I'd work on is the shape of the relief in the treble side cutaway. I would shift the line up toward then neck a bit more, and away from the horn. There are a couple of reasons for this - first of all, it is more comfortable for most people (I mean, you're trying to improve access to the higher frets, right? that means you want the thumb to be in as normal of a position as possible. Bringing the back closer to the thickness of the neck (though on a set neck, the transition can never be completely smooth) is what that is all about. Then again, you have just about all the frets clear of the body anyway, so you could also just do without that relief all together and not cause any real problem.
As for your jack - I've always found them to be a real PITA. If you want the best jack attachment (though this is an opinion, but then all of this stuff is) go with an
Electrosocket. They aren't all that fancy (I hate the finish, and I just buy the "chrome" ones, which I take to get plated), but they really work extremely well, and look very clean. I just wish they would plate them to begin with, because getting them plated costs a flippen' fortune.
On other thing I noticed is that the control divots (or whatever you want to call those things) look like they are probably smaller than you want, but you'll figure that out when you put controls on there. I sure did the first few times I did those things. Even with smallish knobs (I use dome knobs), they need to be bigger than you would expect. That could be an optical illusion as well, though.
Now, as I said, I haven't had the guitar in my hands, so take all of this with a grain of perspective salt (I can't really see all the details), and of course these are all opinions. On the whole, I think you are on the right track workmanship wise - though I would encourage you to go a little further afield on the shape. It looks an awful lot like David Mcnaught's guitars, and while it is all well and good to be influenced by other builders, it's a lot more interesting to come up with your own stuff. Keep working on it, keep refining those details, and keep sweating the small stuff. Oh, and take every opportunity you can to get your hands on really nice guitars. All the words I've put in this post will only take you so far. These complex three dimensional curves ARE complex to understand. You will garner a much greater understanding of them by feeling other peoples guitars than by reading anything I have to say.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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