LUTHERIE

Step 12: Completing the Neck

Like a hungry trailhorse, I can now smell the barn, and instinctively quicken my pace in anticipation of the reward at trail's end. It is time to finish shaping the neck and getting it ready to mate with the uke body for the final time. This being another critical juncture in the construction, I am some what nervous at the prospect of getting the shape of the neck just right. There is also the fingerboard to attach, the peghead veneer to overlay, the pegholes to drill and the nut slot to carve.

Again using my original cedar practice neck as a jig, I clamped the neck into the vice and, using a coarse rasp, began shaving away material in facets. This is a situation where you need to decide whether you feel comfortable taking off a lot of material quickly, or remove a little at a time. I was feeling confident enough with my rasping to choose the former. It took less than 15 minutes, cutting with the coarse rasp and smoothing with a medium half-round file to achieve my ideal profile. I went with what Martin Guitars would call a "modified low oval," which is a shallow "C" profile. Keep in mind that your fingerboard will increase the thickness of your neck when it is attached.

Years ago, I built a small wooden sailboat and built a mast out of laminated Fir. I used the same technique here; faceting the corners and then faceting the facets' corners until I had a half-round section. Final shaping was done with 100-grit no-fill sandpaper, blending the neck shaft smoothly into the heel and peghead valute. I left the outermost edges unfinished so that I could blend them in with the edge of the fingerboard when I attached it.

I traced the peghead shape onto a very thin piece of mahogany that I picked up at a hobby shop, and trimmed it near the line with the bandsaw. I glued it to the peghead with TiteBond and, when it was dry, trimmed the edges flush with my sanding block.

You can use any wood veneer that you choose for this, but I wanted my peghead to match the uke body.

Using a 3/8" brad-point bit, I drilled the four pegholes. Placement is a matter of personal opinion, but I used a Martin concert uke for reference. The brad-point bit is great because the sharp, extended point centers the bit on your mark without "walking" off center.

Because fingerboard alignment with both the neck and the body is critical, I re-attached the neck before gluing down the board. Because I chose to extend the board down to the soundhole, Spanish-style, I wanted that placement to be perfect. Getting it that way proved to be a real hassle.

Remember when I said that fretting the fingerboard before attaching it was merely a matter of personal preference? Well, I now know why some luthiers do it the other way. If you drill very small holes in several of the fret slots and insert pins through them into the neck, your fingerboard won't slide around on the glue when you try to clamp it down. It took maybe six tries to get mine lined up exactly the way I wanted it! I think the fact that the TiteBond was starting to set up and became quite tacky was the main reason that it finally worked at all. In retrospect, I think that I would still install all but two frets before gluing the fingerboard down, and place my registration pins in those slots. After the glue dried I would then install the remaining frets. Live and learn!

Removing the neck from the body again, I placed it in my jig and performed the final shaping with my sanding block, blending the curve into the edges of the fingerboard. I then carefully smoothed all with successively finer paper until I had the shape as perfect as I could get it

I trimmed the heel to the desired length (about 1/4" shorter than the body depth at the headblock) and cutout, glued and trimmed the tortoiseshell heelcap

Finally, I cut the slot for the nut just above the top of the fingerboard. I cut through the peghead veneer to the neck material and then beveled my cow bone nut to conform to the angled bottom of the slot.

At this point all that remained was final sanding of the neck in preparation for applying the finish. I carefully smoothed all of the sharp edges with 220-grit paper, before going over the entire assembly with 220 and 320-grit paper, finishing up with 4000-grit Micro-Mesh.

I am in a bit of a quandry about when to attach the neck to the body permenently. I am debating the merits of applying the finish first vs. finishing the instrument as a whole. Likewise, I need to look into whether I want to use glue in addition to the two bolts fastening the neck to the body.

Stay tuned, We're almost there!