Search results

Frets were dressed, and sanded with the 12" radius board to level them. More later.

Frets glued in with 5 min epoxy.

The neck taped off to avoid glue spillage.

Meanwhile, the back of the neck was shaped with the belt sander, the fretboard radiused, and the fret slots recut to correct depth and width. Here is a piece of the fretwire cut down to measure the correct depth of the slots.

I beat it with a hammer on an anvil to flatten it.

What to make frets out of? I was thinking of HO gauge model train track, but I couldn't find my boxes of train crap. But there was a bunch of fence wire out on the property.

This is a jig making a 12" radiused sanding block to sand the fretboard. The router swings back and forth, and the block is raised a little with each pass to make a new cut. The block was about 10" long, and sandpaper was glued to the radiused portion with contact cement. (I don't have a pic of...

The dowel was turned smaller for the side markers, then similarly fit into holes.

This was cut into sections, and these were glued into 1/4" holes.

Next, the fretboard. I took a scrap of walnut left over from the truss rod plug, and turned a dowel using a hand drill and belt sander.

Glad you're enjoying this - I had a great time building it. Here's a pic of the copier, after a hugely enjoyable day of tearing it down. (If there's anything I like better than building something, it's tearing something apart.) And this doesn't even show the two bins of sheet metal and plastic...

A nut made from a 3/8" roller shaft was threaded on the headstock end for truss rod adjustment.

I installed the rod and made a plug from a scrap of walnut, which was glued in and cut/sanded down.

I threaded the other end, and drilled through from the headstock to the truss rod slot. (I had to make a long drill bit from another roller shaft.)

This would fit into a recess in the heel end of the slot.

I built up a weld on one end and shaped it to a hook, so it wouldn't rotate or move longitudinally.

For the truss rod I used 3/16 diameter roller shafts from the copier. One wasn't long enough, so I welded two together.

Here's a neck pdf - it's the one I used. http://www.drivingblind.org/NECK.pdf Make sure you print it the right size so the scale length is 25 1/2" (you'll have to print it on several sheets of paper and tape them together.) If you print it so the distance from the nut to the 12th fret is 12...

More later.

I made another jig to cut the truss rod slot. The truss rod has to be bowed slightly in the neck to work properly, so the slot has to have a curved bottom.