Thinning neck contour and re-finishing

[Ninja>Pirate]

Hello all, I have a warmoth jazz neck here, and I simply love the fret work but the back contour is a bit too chunky for my liking. I'll list my idea on how to get it down a bit and if anyone has any advice on what techniques to use or things to avoid please chime in (never done this before).

-use a caliper to measure the thickness at the heal and at the nut
-use a paper cutout of something to get an idea of the radius
-sand down with a coarse grit to take off most of the material
-measure again once it feels good
-sand with finer paper
-refinish with tru-oil

Does anyone have any sanding blocks or techniques that allow the paper to be bent slightly?

[shrigg]

Sanding won't do much very quickly. Rasps and scrapers are what my luthier suggested when I asked him about this very topic on my Warmoth Deluxe 5 neck. Also a contour guage will help a lot, allowing you to measure a neck you like the profile of and compare it to yours accurately.

[Diogenes]

Something that may be worth noting is that reshaping the neck involves removing wood which changes it's structural integrity. Altering the neck may introduce dead spots and affect stability and the neck's response to climate changes.

It's a hit or miss proposition... spoken from experience.

[Ninja>Pirate]

Honestly it's already like a rock, these steel stiffening rods are kind of overkill IMO. I'm willing to risk it.
Thanks for the advice shrigg, I didn't know what a contour gauge was called. I'll look into some rasps.

[mongo2]

I'll use a half-round 4-in-hand and a small Sureform plane followed by a Sandvik cabinet scraper, then several grades of sandpaper 120 - 320 backed with a sponge sander followed by 0000 steel wool, and finally finish.