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Finally got around to starting this, only roughed out at the moment, had a refret to do for Single Coil which took yesterday arvo and a bit of today to finish, and the missus demanded my attention for bathroom refinishing

So I now have a roughed out kwila neck, though its as thick as fuck, hoping the jigsaws up to thicknessing else I'm going to be making a thicknessing jig for the router.

Torn between making a template, but as per usual I'm thinking freehand - I know I'll end up making one if I ever do another tele neck but at the moment I really can't be arsed!

Thank you kindly for seeing to my guitar.
Pictures of nice wood Oh, my!?

are you braving the no truss rod with the kwila? I have a half finished kwila neck here that I chickened out and put a rod in there...I sort of got the neck joining headstock area "wrong" so I think its a little thin and might be prone to snapping. Might need to glue some extra wood on there to strengthen..just can't be arse at the mo

Always wondered about getting some kwila decking and seeing if you could make a neck from it.

jeremyb wrote:Always wondered about getting some kwila decking and seeing if you could make a neck from it.

well thats all i'm using

I do have some planks as well, but I have started with the decking

Yep, no truss rod involved. At the end of the cliche, if it becomes an issue I can route one in from behind eh. I'm happy enough putting one in - thats probably the easiest part of the build for me! - but Adrian reckoned it wouldn't need it so I'll go with that

Had kwila decking at a previous home and man did the mongrel splinter!!

Would be pretty as a neck I'm assuming?

Bg wrote:Yep, no truss rod involved. At the end of the cliche, if it becomes an issue I can route one in from behind eh. I'm happy enough putting one in - thats probably the easiest part of the build for me! - but Adrian reckoned it wouldn't need it so I'll go with that

Wheres JB when you need him

willow13 wrote:

jeremyb wrote:Always wondered about getting some kwila decking and seeing if you could make a neck from it.

well thats all i'm using

I do have some planks as well, but I have started with the decking

Is decking thick enough? I've use decking and cut it in half to use as fret boards, but didn't check to think if it would do as a one-piece.

Lostininverness wrote:

willow13 wrote:

jeremyb wrote:Always wondered about getting some kwila decking and seeing if you could make a neck from it.

well thats all i'm using

I do have some planks as well, but I have started with the decking

Is decking thick enough? I've use decking and cut it in half to use as fret boards, but didn't check to think if it would do as a one-piece.

If you're building an Ibanez RG style neck, it would be plenty.

well this is a big chunk of quarter sawn I got from Adrian, I wouldn't recommend it for decking use....

Lostininverness wrote:

willow13 wrote:

jeremyb wrote:Always wondered about getting some kwila decking and seeing if you could make a neck from it.

well thats all i'm using

I do have some planks as well, but I have started with the decking

Is decking thick enough? I've use decking and cut it in half to use as fret boards, but didn't check to think if it would do as a one-piece.

25mm decking is plenty if you put a fretboard on it..not thick enough for a one piece

yeah 25mm would be, unless you want skinny neck!

Ok, more movement here, I'm taking photos so will upload at some stage.
The neck is now approaching the right size for the guitar. I had to thickness about 10mm off it. I could have made a thicknessing jig/box thingy for the router but I decided that would be a fanny about.

I have 3 routers, one is in a table, so I basically removed the 10 mm in two passes leaving little islands at 200mm ish intervals (about 8 mm wide) so that once we got down to the final thickness I just turned the neck over and chiselled the islands off. This really worked well. 20 mins later, the neck is the right thickness (chunky!)

Did the same sort of thing with the headstock, that needed about 12mm off the top, no worries. Then put the big radius in twixt nut and headstock with the belt sander (clamped to my bench)

Only slight fubar moment was a small amount of wood chipped off the front of the headstock when routing. 10 mins, superglue and some of the copious amounts of sawdust sorted that.

Tested my dot markers, will take a pic tomorrow, but basically, alluminium tube (9.53mm... its in imperial) drill the hole, put in the tube, fill with epoxy and sawdust, or I might go with black woodfiller. Side markers are 3mm brass rod.

More achieved today than expected though!

Cool, I like that idea of aluminium dot markers with a black filling. Although white would be my preference.

jvpp wrote:Cool, I like that idea of aluminium dot markers with a black filling. Although white would be my preference.

Yeah, I've gone natural in the end, had to drop the size of tube to 1/4" too (6.6mm ish??? they sell it in imperial) The big stuff just wasn't going to fit between frets on the dusty end. Shame because the wall was thicker too.

Anyway just a daft quad of pics, to show where I'm at. Sadly I'm renovating the bathroom at the same time, so my build time is halved dagnabbit!

ok top... my sight is shot to shit, so I should have used the big magnifying thing I have. But didn't. 4 frets slightly out of whack and one dot marker a mm or so out



arbitrary boring profile shot, got a couple of mm to remove from the face of the headstock yet.


Fixed breakout on the end of the headstock, epoxy and kwila dust...


And a quick mockup of the aluminium dot markers.


very quick, I'll be reshaping with a scalpel on the real deal, if I can be arsed!