NOS Neck Blank

[Microbass]

I picked this up years ago on the assumption I’d snap a headstock off of my Grabber or G3. That never happened and I’ve since forgotten about this.

I’m contemplating finishing it myself but I’m not 100% where to begin. How I do even tell if it’s a useful piece of wood?
The truss works, although the anchor has a bit of rust.

I’d plan to go for a flame or Birdseye maple FB, probably get someone to do the frets. Finish with nitro and a black headstock. The back of the neck has a good profile already, the scarf joint hasn’t been completed but won’t be a huge amount of work.

This would serve hopefully as a replacement for my G3 has the neck has a ski jump.

Any thoughts?

 

[reverendrally]

I reckon you should get the ski ramp fixed on the standard neck and build this up as a fretless neck. Thanks for sharing it with us.

 

[dwizum]

I’m contemplating finishing it myself but I’m not 100% where to begin. How I do even tell if it’s a useful piece of wood?
The truss works, although the anchor has a bit of rust.

To me, it would be "useful" if it was straight and true - no weird kinks or twists. Check the top surface against a straightedge. Also, I'd make sure there were no big knots or other obvious defects.

What part of fret work is making you think of farming that work out? I remember being intimidated by fretwork when I started, but honestly it's just not all that hard. Especially with youtube videos and instructional material from places like stewmac which show the steps in detail (just ignore their insistence that you need all their special tools!) There are a lot of steps but they're all pretty easy and you have room to correct most mistakes as you go. You could always buy a fretboard already slotted and radiused, that cuts the complication down quite a bit. Then it's just a matter of gluing it on, hammering the frets in, filing them flat, and re-crowning them. You can get two fretboard blanks and consider one a practice. Or just cut your own slots in a piece of scrap and fret it for practice.

 

[dwizum]

PS I think it's pretty cool that you're going to work with an old factory piece like this. I'm in the middle of building an electric guitar from an old Gretsch body from the early 60's.