Making a Guitar Neck and Fretboard By Hand

you know I'm fretting a little bit about people being bored during this video all right I know it's been a little while since I've posted a video on my channel so thank you for sticking with me and I want to talk a little bit about what I've been up to lately but I'll do that at the end for now let's get into this so I just finished building my third guitar and I actually just posted a full build video on the forest furniture YouTube channel so go check that out if you haven't seen it yet you can even go watch that now if you just promise to come back and finish watching this they probably aren't coming back are they anyways the full build video kind of glosses over a lot of things and there's just so much detail in making a guitar neck and fretboard from scratch that I figured I would go a bit more in depth with this video so I've made two other guitars in the past but for both of those I've used pre-made necks and at this point I figured it was time to dive in and give making my own a shot and I figured I could make this video as kind of giving a first-timers perspective in case there's somebody else that has been thinking about giving it a try as well so the first step is to cut a template and trace it onto your neck blank and as you can see here I have a centerline marked on my template the centerline might be the most important part in all of this as everything is in relation to that line with everything traced out I could figure out where my nut was going to be and from there I could figure out where my truss rod would be installed as you want the end of the truss rod to be pretty much in line with the nut the truss rod needs to be a perfect fit when installed into the neck to work properly and the one I was using was 7/32 of an inch thick but luckily I had a router bit that was exactly that size so I used my router table to get the majority of the cavity out from there I could fine tune it and of course the tightening nut at the top of the truss rod was slightly wider so I had to do a little chiseling to get it right not too bad and I was able to get a perfect fit with the truss rod in I no longer needed my neck blank to be square and parallel so I could first rough-cut the next shape then get it to final dimension with my template and a flush trim bit [Music] [Applause] with the neck at a good point I could start working on the fretboard which is very possibly the most difficult thing that I've ever made difficult not impossible so I started with a piece of bird's-eye maple that was a bit wider and a bit longer than my finished fretboard size with all four corners square and with that I'm ready to start cutting my fret slots getting the frets perfectly spaced is extremely important and you can find proper fret spacings on line but they're not easily measured distances so I opted for getting a fret spacing ruler which took all of the guesswork out of it with my frets marked I used a square and a marking knife to establish a line that I could easily start a saw kerf in and at this point the fret slots don't need to be cut to a certain depth as I will dial that in after I have radiused the fretboard so all fret boards have some sort of radius to them and it's usually a matter of personal preference but I decided to go with a twelve inch radius for mine which is fairly flat there are different ways to radius a fretboard but I decided to go with a sanding block with the proper radius carved into it you can buy these pre-made but I figured I would have Greg knock one out for me to sand in the radius accurately I attached to guide rails to my table saw with double-sided tape then did the same thing with my fret board making sure to line up my centerline on the fretboard with the center line between the guide rails [Music] with the fretboard radius I could finally glue it to the neck the fretboard needs to be glued to the neck extremely accurately so that all of the frets are perpendicular to the centerline and so that the nut lines up with where we had it marked originally and a way to do this accurately is to use two small locator pins so that the fretboard doesn't slide around when gluing up you also want to prevent as much glue as possible from going into the truss rod cavity so some blue tape is used to cover it up when applying the glue and then removed just before clamping once the glue had dried I could then flush trim the fretboard to the neck then start shaping everything and I started with the headstock the headstock needed to be trimmed down so that the strings are pulled over the nut when on the guitar and I use my table saw to cut away the majority then use my spindle sander with a fence clamp to it so I could sand in the transition to the fretboard with the headstock shape I could drill a hole for access to the truss rod and this is where I made my first big mistake I don't really know what I was thinking but I drilled way too low and actually went underneath the truss rod I didn't go all the way through so I plugged that hole and REE drilled and the crisis seemed to be averted but I promise you it will come back to bite me soon you'll see at this point I was ready to start carving the neck and again the shape of the neck is very much based on personal preference but one of the techniques to get an even neck car is to first carve the shape at both the first fret and the 12th fret by hand this makes it much easier to get it right and to get those fairly close to the finished shape then you essentially use whatever method you want to carve the space between those two frets [Music] I was able to mostly do that especially as it was my first time doing this but I did go a little too far at the 12th fret so I have a slight indentation in the finish neck also remember just a minute ago when I said that truss rod hole I drilled would come back to bite me well it did and when I was carving the neck I found that hole on the bottom side not the worst thing in the world but certainly not the best I could then drill in some holes into the headstock for the tuners as well as drill some small holes on the side of the fretboard for the side dots [Music] and from there it was time to put in the frets and the first thing I needed to do was cut the fret slots to their final death you can see here the piece of tape on my saw blade indicates how deep I should be cutting I then needed to bend my fret wire and they sell fret wire benders online but they are pretty expensive I was able to buy the parts for this for like $6 they're all parts that are used for sliding doors so I think I saved like 130 bucks not bad there was a little bit of experimenting with where to place the wheels to get the bend right but you essentially want to bend the fret wire slightly more than the radius of your fretboard and I was pretty much able to get just that I then went about hammering the frets and this might have been the most difficult part for me I think it probably could have used a better hammer for this and a lot of what I read online said that setting the frets after carving the neck would be difficult and I can see why trying to support the rounded side of the neck enough to hammer in the frets was not easy so I think if I were to do this again I would definitely hammer in the frets before carving the neck another overpriced tool for guitar making are the fret end cutters they are essentially regular end cutters that have been ground down so that you can trim the fret right up against the fretboard so I figured I would just make some myself [Music] from here it's all just fine-tuning the frets so I started by chamfering the ends and rounding them over they make fret end files that are angled to get this chamfer just right but I just used my leveling beam and held it at an angle that I thought looked good each fret then needs to have its end rounded over and all of this is just so that there aren't any sharp edges against your hand while playing I bought a small fret end file for this which was very useful as it has one smooth edge that won't Mar the fretboard as you're doing this from there the frets essentially need to be leveled as hand hammering in frets will never be perfect and I know mine certainly weren't so the first thing is to make sure the fretboard is perfectly flat by adjusting the truss rod next I masked off the areas in between the frets to protect the fretboard then mark the top edge of each fret to help indicate where the high and low spots are while leveling then it's just a matter of using a perfectly flat surface to sand or file the frets and in my case I'm using a leveling beam [Music] once the frets are level they'll most likely have a flat spot on the top of each one so they need to be shaped again so a bit more marker on each one then by using a triangular file you can slowly bring them back to the desired shape the marker will show when you've rounded the fret to the top center of each one when there's just a thin line of ink left after the frets are back in shape some fine sanding and polishing can get the frets smooth and shiny and the final thing to do with the neck before getting everything put together is to install the nut the nut slot needs to be cut to the exact width of your nut material and it also needs to be cut flat across the fretboard instead of following the radius I just used a couple small chisels to cut out the recess then set the nut in place by taking a pencil that's been cut in half I can mark a line that's even with the height of my first fret then sand the nut to just above that line I then glued the nut in place with just a bit of CA glue then got strings onto the guitar with the strings in place I could file in the individual string slots into the nut using special nut slotting files I assumed this could be done with other tools but having the proper width files really took all the guesswork out of it [Music] and with that the neck was finished all right thank you as always for watching I really appreciate it hope you enjoyed this one like I mentioned at the beginning I know I haven't been posting much here but that's because I have teamed up with Chris Salamone over at four-eyes furniture I have been posting videos on his channel lately and we're hoping to maybe get some stuff going on here but go subscribe to his channel if you aren't already but just to explain a little bit about what we're doing we figured that by working together we can offer so much more to everybody more videos and more content and more things outside of YouTube like plans on top of that we're also just trying to make this whole thing more sustainable for both of us designing and building a brand-new piece of furniture a few times a month is crazy but then on top of that producing and filming and editing these videos is even crazier so by going at it together we are trying to make this whole thing a much more long-term endeavor for both of us all right short and sweet let me know if you have any questions or any guitar making tips I'm still learning obviously and go check out the full build on Chris's channel alright that's it for now until next time like I said at the beginning while making this video I was spreading about people being bored but hopefully at least some of this will possibly strike a chord I used that pun in the other video - sorry that's all I got [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shaun Boyd

Views: 91,968

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, how to make a guitar, DIY guitar, diy fretboard, how to make a fretboard, how to make a guitar neck, how to cut fret slots, how to cut fret slots by hand, cutting fret slots, handmade guitar, custom guitar

Id: _Y7TIb1nn3k

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019