Attaching a neck and placing a bridge

Well we are coming to the end . . . .

First the neck screws needed to be a bit shortened as the body is only 1 1/2" thin . . . with a standard neck pocket depth that makes the screws poke through further so as to not get them through the neck the tips need to be cut off . . .

So here they are screwed to depth through a piece of scrap plywood, and an cutting disk on the Dremel makes short work of the ends we don't need . . . I knew they were cut before as the heel they came out of was contoured but the apparent difference in the original length is puzzling . . .

Next the holes in the body were drilled out to 3/16 using first a step bit ... to make sure the final hole was centered on the original 1/8 hole ... and then a regular 3/16 twist bit . . . why 3/16, glad you asked, that's the smallest size the necks screws just 'drop through' the body (5/32 was to small) so as to have no chance of a 'jacked' screw . . . a screw that actually holds in both pieces of wood but when put in pushed the 2nd piece away from the first and resulted in a gap between the pieces. With a standard neck plate there is NO need for the screws to have a 'hold' in the body wood so I make sure to 'eliminate' any chance of it.

And then we put the neck on . . . and can figure the placement of the bridge.

Oh and the moral of this pic . . . alway test your stain on ALL the wood you use . . . the cherry stained very nicely, the maple . . . not so much, I may want to sand that back.

Drilling the first hole for distance, the mark is just below the end of the dowel there that was originally used to locate the body halves after separations. The central screw was then used to locate the other two screws with a square using the centerline (I had already checked that the neck was pretty much dead on) and finally all three holes drilled.

And the bridge is in place . . . ALWAYS . . . put some wax on your screws, it makes them go in so much easier and reduces (if not eliminates) the chance that you'll break one as long as you have a pilot hole that's at least close to the appropriate size.

And then it was time to transplant the tuners. This thingy is a pin vise which holds a small bit (not sure how small I just sized it against the retaining screws for the tuners). While standard drill with a 3/8 chuck pretty much bottoms out at a 1/16 bit this thing can hold a 1/64 or possibly smaller bit . . . and because it's driven by hand you can even leave the tuners in place, and use their eyes to locate the holes right there. Once again, wax your screws before putting them in . . . if there is anything more annoying than a tuner retaining screw broken at the face of the wood in a guitar headstock I haven't discovered it yet.




And I use a 10 mm socket to finger tighten the nuts on the tuners . . . some tuners may need a deep socket but these were just fine with the standard one.











And here she is . . . all strung up for the first time (standard loose unmodified Tusq nut and all) . . . I'll need to shim the nut, clearance over the first fret of all the stings are fine - except - for the e which BARELY clears it and buzzes like a bee when plucked hard. Relief at the 12th fret is about 1 mm and somewhere around 1.5 - 2 mm at the 21st after tightening the truss rod so that's about right but the nut needs to be raised 1/2 - 3/4 mm or so to get enough clearance over the 1st fret. I'm thinking a 1/8" brass (or is it bronze what I have) shim and then sand down the bottom of the nut a little over 2 mm on the treble and about 3 mm on the bass side . . . I'll experiment with some copper tape first to see what raising the treble side will do.









Next up finishing . . . . and this point only the back has a layer of stain to see what it would do . . . not so great on the maple is the verdict I think, but I do like the color of the cherry after the stain so I think I'll keep that. Then we have the electronics, and the control covers, and the pickup rings. I have some black/white/black pick guard material that will be used first but the pickup rings will eventually be bronze (or is it brass), as will be the cover for the pickup selector switches and the truss rod cover.