Leaderboard

With the neck blank done, I could start trial-fitting the wings and top. I joined the book-matched ebony top and cut out the broad shape. I also cut the alder back wings slightly oversize and a couple more strips of ebony between them and the neck and dry fitted them to make sure everything was going to end up in the right place: The ebony will have a sheet of constructional maple veneer (1.5mm) as a demarcation: All good so out came the sash-clamps: The neck is the top face of the original billet and the length between the top wing front join to the tail is angled the 3 degrees to give me the required neck angle. Double check that I've got it right before the next stage:

I want as much of the body weight to be towards the rear, but don't want it to be overall too heavy, so a couple of weight-relieving chambers in the front horns will be helpful. I like any use of router to be fully captive, so use the same approach that I use for pickup chambers... I start with a Forstner bit to hog out the bulk: Then use chisels and carpenters mallet to accurately cut the outline to around 10 mm deep: And then, and only then, use a top-bearing router bit to smooth the sides and cut to final depth: And, as I have the router out, I cut the channel that will be between the two pickups and through to the controls chamber for the cable runs:

I am in the same vein... Keith Levene Geordie Walker John McGeoch ...and if I may give a special mention to the often overlooked John McKay (Siouxsie and the Banshees second guitarist) without whom I don't think Geordie nor John McGeoch would sound quite the way they do.

This is going to be a through-neck and so the first thing to do is, generally, to sort the neck. 'Sort' means choose the timbers, assemble the laminates, incorporate the neck angle into the blank, calculate the headstock angle, calculate the body depth and the neck depth... ...but you can't calculate the neck depth until you know exactly what the fretboard thickness is. So, actually, that's where I started - by radiusing the ebony fretboard blank using the excellent G&W router jig: Then fifteen minutes sanding with a sanding block removes the router marks: So now I can do all the neck calcs and cut the maple/ebony/maple blank: The neck angle is around 3 degrees, starting from where the top body 'horn' meets the neck, and I generally opt for a 10 degree headstock angle.