I have never made a bass before and wanted to do a practice neck before I shell out the $$ for good wood. I work @ the home depot, so thats where I will most likely buy my supplies. if I made a 3 piece laminate neck out of poplar/red oak, would it actually be usable or am i better off just making it from pine?


p.s. anyone that needs a handheld router: the Dewalt 3 piece router combo set just went from $289 to $150 in New England (possibly elsewhere) as an unadvertised price drop to clear out this model.

I think that for a practice job pine would be cheaper.

I don't think I'd use poplar for a neck, isn't it very soft/weak. If you want your practice neck to maybe be usable then oak and maple would be better.

The drawback to doing a practice neck with pine is that it's going to make you think carving it will be easy. Big difference between carving pine and carving red oak :)

Big difference between carving pine and carving red oak :)
Well I can't say... we have no red oak here. Maybe you can send me some to see if you are right :smug:

They don't have maple at HD in New England? I'd just use maple, especially if there is a remote chance that you will actually use the neck. If you think things through and are careful, chances are good you'll end up with a funtional neck.

Dennis

Well I can't say... we have no red oak here. Maybe you can send me some to see if you are right :smug:

I'd be glad to except it all got put in the woodstove :p

all we have right now is pine, poplar and oak. Hemlock if i ripped down a stair rail.

I did one out of pine first. It gave me confidence that I could shape something that I couldn't draw on paper. To my mind there's an advantage to going to harder wood when you do it for real: it'll go slower so it's harder to go too far. A good result with pine will yield a great result with maple if you have patience. Just my own feeling about it. Also don't forget: SPOSS (shoulda practised on scrap, Sparky). It's a lot less stress that way.

Here are my real and test neck. I had some wood left so I decide do my test from the same woods of the real one.

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o207/eleonn/Proyecto/100_4100Medium.jpg

Edit: The good thing about using for the practice neck the woods you are going to use in your real project is that you will know how hard/easy the real job is gonna be. For example when using multiple laminates sometimes it can be a bit tricky to get an even profile when using hard and medium hard density woods like myself.

Use real woods and treat it as if you are making a real neck. The desire to not waste good wood will make you think longer and you'll also learn a very useful technique. That would be improvisation skills to fix any issues as you move forward. Also at the end you'll have something that you can use, or worse comes to worse you have a piece of art to hang on your wall. :)
Good Luck,
Dirk