How to Quickly Carve a Guitar Neck | Building the Temple Guitars Router Jig

have you guys ever spent hours and hours hand shaping a guitar neck you've got it where it feels amazing and you want to be able to duplicate that exactly on other necks well if you're doing it by hand this could take you a lot of time a lot of careful measurements there has got to be a faster way right correct today in this episode of homebuilt workshop we are going to build the temple guitars neck profile routing jig check it out now for me shaping a guitar neck is one of the most satisfying parts of building a guitar there's so many options you can choose for profiles for shapes you can really customize it to the player but what exactly do you do when you come across the perfect profile that you want to keep and be able to reuse for future projects well if you're anything like me you probably spend way too much time taking a ton of careful measurements maybe making some custom profile gauges and then when it actually comes time to transfer those measurements to a new neck it takes hours and hours of careful shaping sanding filing to get anywhere close to those measurements and that is where this jig comes into play now these jigs are nothing new i've seen these around for quite a while but the cool part about this set of plans is that it's totally customized to my individual neck jason over at temple guitars takes your neck dimensions applies them to his template and you get your own basically personalized set of plans to build your own jig the only thing different for me is since these plans come from the land of oz is that they're all in metric that's a new one for me i had to go get some metric tape measures and rulers and things but with that all taken care of we are ready to jump right in and start making some cuts i'm gonna build this thing entirely from off cuts of plywood that's the cool part you don't really need anything specific use what you have on hand so these are my four pieces that are going to make up the outer box of this jig but before we attach them into a rectangular box we need to cut a couple of slots in here that's going to provide some guides for the carriage once we get that assembled we need to get that milled in there first then we can glue this thing up before i mill the slot i want to show you my setup here i've got a quarter inch straight cutting bit in my router i've got a guide block clamped onto the side that's going to give me a straight edge where i can run the piece along actually we're going to do it this way because it's got to go in the right rotation but for demonstration purposes i've raised the bit up so that i can line it up with my center line as close as humanly possible now i'm going to lower that back down and i'm going to do this in a couple of passes i don't want to take too big of a cut break the blade have the piece wander or something like that i want to try to keep this as accurate as possible we're going to go all the way down and we're going to stop right about here i think i'm going to bring this mark over to the edge that way i can line it up here and know exactly where i need to stop we'll just do this put a little mark that's the front edge of the bit that's the back edge of the bit now i'll be able to run this in until our mark lines up there that'll give me a rough idea of where i need to stop and then once the bit comes all the way through i'll run it down very carefully to the final depth i'm going to cut this slot in several passes by raising the bit after each pass until i get all the way through the piece of plywood once the bit comes to the top that's when i'll go to my exact final length and let's make sure that it's centered oh man nice now we'll head over to the drill press to drill a couple of holes where we're going to later mount a couple of skateboard bearings now we'll just apply some glue to the ends of the plywood we'll glue this thing up into a box nothing out of the ordinary here just a normal glue up i was going to use some pin nails to reinforce the joints to help hold everything in place but my pin nailer seems to be broken once the glue dries i'll just reinforce these joints with some screws this would be one spot where you could customize this to suit your style maybe use some finger joints or some dovetails make it your own so that makes up the basic frame there's still a few things we need to add to it but right now i'm going to set this aside and work on cutting down the pieces that are going to make up the carriage that goes inside this frame [Music] so these are the pieces here that are going to make up the top of the carriage this is the portion that the guitar neck is going to mount to and then it's going to have some pivots on the side and that's where we're going to get our guitar neck shape as we swing this thing in the jig what we need to do is mount these little blocks on the end so that we can install the pivot exactly in the center it needs to be halfway down into this carriage and the other half will be into this block so i figure with a piece of plywood i can glue that in place then i'll know right where the center of the two pieces are where i can drill a hole right in the center of this carriage so we need to draw a center line on here and then glue these blocks on i'm trying to be as accurate as possible for this entire project that's why i'm using calipers to make some of my measurements i don't have metric calipers so i had to do some math to make the conversions my head still hurts from that once i got the center line on there i transferred that line to the end of the plywood this is going to help me drill the hole for the threaded insert now i know i just mentioned i was going to glue this block in place but i decided it would be easier to change later if i need to if i just use some screws for now now i'll just drill the hole for the threaded insert this is one piece that i've changed from the plan i'm using a different size axle i don't think it's going to make much of a difference but that's part of the reason that i screwed this block in place i can change it later the original plan called for a 16 millimeter axle i'm using a quarter 20 bolt so now on the carriage i want to glue a strip of plywood that i've cut on the back it's really just kind of a strengthening rib just to give it some support that way when you're working it it can't bow and it keeps everything nice and solid a three-quarter inch piece should give it plenty of strength probably more than it needs but i'm trying to mess around [Music] there we go now i'm going to rip down a couple of hardwood runners that'll get attached to the top of the frame these will act as a guide for the base of the router so now i can take the frame i'm going to flip it upside down i've got these little spacers that i'm going to place in the bottom that's going to set my rails just a little bit off the top with the runners in place on the spacers i'm going to use a couple of clamps to hold them in place while i secure them with some screws i decided i'd use screws here again in case i needed to make any modifications later all right now we can move on and cut the guides that are going to actually form the contour of the neck so what i'm cutting out are just the outlines printed at a hundred percent from the template i'm gonna use these as a cutting template to cut out these guides on the bandsaw i've got one that's gonna make a knob this really doesn't matter so much on the shape i'm just using the one provided in the template and then there are two different sizes of the template which is going to guide our bearings later on the way this works took me a little bit to understand but once it kind of clicked in my brain it makes perfect sense this is basically the shape of the guitar neck blown up so whatever shape you want your neck this profile needs to be on here to this scale after cutting out the pieces on the bandsaw i'm going to use my bell grinder to carefully sand to the line finally i'm going to sand a flat spot on the top of the cam this should be the profile of the guitar neck but i'm going to make a flat spot for testing just so i can see how changes made to the cam will reflect on the guitar neck and finally i can drill the center where it's going to get attached to the carriage just in case you guys haven't seen it before when you're trying to line up a brad point bit with a hole that you've punched you can always lift the piece up line it up and then when you bring it down it's going to be nice and aligned sometimes that's a little easier than trying to move it around underneath the bit just bring it up done and on the cams i'm going to drill a second hole which will be used to help locate the cam in the right position this is another change i'm making from the original design i'm going to attach the cam to the carriage using a bolt once i snug everything down i can line up the locating hole with the center line of the carriage and i'll use that as a drill guide to drill the hole for the threaded insert which will attach the cam to the carriage i did make a small mistake right here this hole should have been sized for this smaller screw not the same size as this it's not going to make a huge difference but it will give this a little bit of play when everything's tightened down still so i may end up making a new set of these wheels after i get this thing up and running this locking screw is another change that i'm making to the plan from the original design and i believe what this is going to allow me to do is to make different shapes of these for different profiles for necks then i can swap them out as needed to create different neck profiles without having to change a whole lot of stuff i'll be able to just remove this set screw pull the piece off bolt the new one on that'll have the exact same hole it'll indicate everything right where i need it to be and i think it'll be kind of a cool improvement i'll be able to have a bunch of different profiles if i need and change them out as necessary so now i'm going to work on a little bit of assembly i'm going to remove this bolt this is just a temporary one and i'm going to install some longer ones those will act as the axle kind of i'm not a hundred percent sure what size i'm gonna need for these bolts we can change that out later on if we finally need a longer or shorter one now we can install the bearings that the profiled rollers are going to roll against these are just standard skateboard bearings just going to use some washers and a bolt i drilled the hole i went one size under the sides of the bolt that way it's going to be more of a snug fit to help reduce play with the bearings installed they both spin freely and there's no play which exactly what i want i don't want there to be any slop in there that could give us a little bit of variance we can take our carriage i've installed the hand wheel just with a piece of threaded rod i've also made a couple little wooden bushings i guess we'll call it let's see what those are for later it's going to make this turn a lot easier i've installed one on either end those are going to go to the outside of this frame so we can slide that in we need this carriage to stay up against those bearings but we want it to be able to move pretty freely so there's a few different ways you could do this you could do something like rubber bands which is what jason did in his original version you could use springs which is what i wanted to use but honestly i couldn't find any in time to get this done so we got some elastic bands these are actually some pieces of kind of a bungee cord i've tried a couple different things this one i stitched together with a piece of leather sewing thread but i think what i'm going to end up doing really is finding the length and just tying a knot in it for now it's going to work fine so what we're going to do is take our elastic band and for now i've temporarily just put some little nails up here that i can hook the band over that's not going to stay but it's going to work for now as i kind of work out the details of this so now you can see the wooden bushing is really just going to reduce a lot of friction as this thing rotates it's going to be able to provide a lot of upward pressure but it's not going to bind up on the bolt or the axle and keep it from turning springy that's exactly what we want so now what i need to do is take the carriage back out i need to work out some blocking to hold the guitar neck right along that center line i'm not going to really cover that process here because it's going to be specific to your design your guitar neck there's there's some variables there but i think what i'm going to do for the heel end is basically cut a block that fits on the carriage that has my neck pocket in it so that i can set the neck right down in there we'll do some sort of clamping device to hold the heel in place and then at the headstock we'll just have to make some sort of blocks some way to secure it in place i'm gonna do that step off camera and then we're gonna try this thing out so i think i've got my neck blocked in i think we're ready to give this thing a test run let me show you really quick what i've done for blocking again your blocking may be different depending on the shape of your neck and how you choose to do it but this is how i did it so down here at the heel end of the neck i just took a piece of mdf and i cut the exact same neck pocket into the mdf that way i can just set the neck right down into that pocket and then i just screwed on a piece of plywood to kind of act as a clamp to hold it down so the neck pocket locates the neck where it needs to be this little chunk here just holds it down eventually i'll probably add some threaded inserts maybe some knobs something like that so i can clamp it down without having to use these screws up here at the headstock end pretty much the same thing piece of mdf cut out the end profile of my headstock you'll see i've got two different ones here i build all of my jigs as best i can to accept left-handed and right-handed this way i can just flip it around and it will land right back in here everything is in the same spot and also just a really rough piece of plywood to act as a clamp again i'll probably upgrade that to some sort of thumb wheels something like that later on down the road here you can see the neck in the cradle this will be our operation i've made a base plate for my router that fits right here in these grooves and i just want to point out these runners that i installed earlier i had to lower those down from where i originally installed them so that i could get the router bit close enough to the guitar neck i couldn't get it to go far enough down so i had to remove these lower them down make sure they're nice and level and attach them again one thing that's important to know at this end you're going to need to do something for a stop so that your router does not go too far i've just got a pencil mark on here right now and since this is a test neck i don't have anything in place for that but you do need to add something it'll make it a lot easier you'll have a hard stop both ends i need to add something at either side that way it can only go so far i've got a straight cutting bit in my router i'm going to turn the guitar neck on its side and adjust my router bit so that it's just off the surface of the neck this is the maiden voyage you ready let's do this [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] ooh and there we have the beginnings of a guitar neck oh i like it and there we can see the neck profile starting to take shape i need to make a few more passes on this after i modify these neck profile cams i intentionally left mine with a very flat top on here i wanted to understand a little bit better the relationship to the shape that i make these cams and what i'm going to get on the neck very flat profile on the top of the cam very flat neck same thing on the other side we also have a flat top so i need to work on some custom profiles for these cams in order to get this neck profile down to where i want it that's the cool part of being able to replace this like i said you can make a whole bunch of different profiles for different necks whatever custom profile you want to have you just make these to match it's going to work so there you have it guys you want to carve a guitar neck a lot quicker there's an easier way it does take a little bit of time to get this thing together and everything dialed in just so but once it's done i think it's going to be awesome again being able to customize these cams is going to come in super handy i'm going to put some links down below to temple guitars if you guys are interested in checking out his plans i know he'd appreciate the support thanks a lot for watching guys i hope this helped you out in some way we'll see you next time cut well before using stay home man gets you every time can't stand it but it's so important you

Channel: Home Built Workshop

Views: 108,264

Keywords: Home Built Workshop, Jeff Baker, Hayley Guitars, Guitar Building, Hand carving a guitar neck, how to quickly carve a guitar neck, guitar neck carving jig, guitar neck router jig, carve a guitar neck with a router, temple guitars, temple guitars guitar neck routing jig, carving a guitar neck, router jig to shape a guitar neck, fretboard radius jig, guitar neck shaping with a router, how to shape a guitar neck, personalized guitar templates

Id: XeMCD6pyjYo

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020