As promised, more pictures in this update. It was neck carving week, and I lucked out and got to carve with the first group on Monday. Neck carving is such an enjoyable and rewarding experience...although I overheard many people grumbling about it. They were probably grumbling because their lack of patience caused them to have to make a new neck from scratch.
Anyway, I neglected to bring my camera on Monday, so I unfortunately did not get any pictures of the carving. However, I threw together a little "guide" of how we did the brunt of the neck carving.
This is how my neck turned out. It feels pretty nice, although plenty thin for my taste. I think it will feel better with strings on it.
Unfortunately, I made a serious mental error when I was sanding down headstock. For whatever reason, my mind was out to lunch while my hands were still pushing the neck through the thickness sander. Needless to say, the headstock was too thin. The good news is the "repair" for that kind of mistake is a really sweet back cap.
Making a clamping caul
Preparing the "hippie sandwich". Each laminate is 0.031" thick.
I glued each laminate on the headstock one at a time. Because they were so thin, they bent to the contour with ease.
I chose to use polyurethane glue which is not water based in order to prevent any warping that the thin laminates might like to do. However, poly glue creates an awful mess. Luckily, it cleans up a lot easier than you'd think. It also sands without gumming up the paper.
And the end result! Side-view:
And the volute:
I have some finish sanding to do on the neck, but it is all straight, flat, blended, and comfortable.
In other news, I routed out the control cavity (after hogging out the majority of the material with the drill press).
I also made some really cool wooden knobs by hand. I got them all to within 0.005" of each other at final shape. Brownie points to whoever can guess how I did it without a lathe!
Alder with walnut caps to match the body.
Caps squared off
Roundover
I think it's gonna look nice.
I have also started coming up with ideas for the optional third instrument. I will start another thread for that one.
Firstly, I do not understand how the 200k resistors are able to isolate the tone pots. Can someone elaborate? Second, if I were to add the resistors to the circuit as described, wouldn't they have a considerable effect on the overall tone? Thirdly, if I were to leave the resistors out of the circuit, would each tone knob still function as 50% of overall tone? Ugh...I hate being such a novice. Thank you for the help.
