Ibanez SA Series - Neck

Time to look at doing the neck.  I want to preserve the neck that came with it.  It is a Maple Neck with a rosewood fretboard.  I will do an inlay on an ebony fretboard and replace the rosewood one but the hard part about neck construction is already done...  I of course went to Andy Depaule's Website to look at his choices.  He by far has the greatest variety of pre-cut inlay that I have been able to find.

As usual I went through all different combination for weeks on end, but finally decided on the thorn vine.  I like vines because they can be somewhat free form.  You only have to really worry about the width and not if everything is square to the fret.  The difficult part is there are a lot of pieces and trying to get them all to line up the same way more than once is very challenging
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I first soak the inlay in a bowl of hot water to melt the adhesive.  I now weight the cardboard down because if you don't the board will move as it absorbs water and the inlay falls off into a big pile which you get to sort out.  This of course is a lesson from experience :-)

Once pieces are removed from their backing I like to lay them out.  This serves as both practice and a check of the design.  The vine length can vary depending on the angles you put the vine together at.  You will want to pay attention to frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15 and at least 17 as those traditionally have a marker associated with them.  With a vine I try to make sure the leaves are in the right frets.   So I now draw out a fretboard on a board so I can ensure I am "in the lines".  I will refer back to this often.

Once that is all done I  then have to transfer the pattern to the ebony fretboard.  I first put whiteout on the fretboard and assemble the pieces as I go. Usually I will white out one fret at a time, placing the inlay down while it is still wet so that it sticks.  Care must be taken to pay attention to the angle of the vine or you could end up with a real problem towards the end.  Always remember, you could hand cut a piece or two for a transition if you were really stuck.

I then scribe around each of the pieces of inlay.  Scribing is to inlay, what sanding is to a supreme finish.  It will be the basis for the routing.  I try to scribe lightly the first time, in case the white out doesn't hold.  But with each pass I will press a little harder and deeper.  The idea is NOT to cut into the wood but clearly leave an outline within the white out. Any scratching of the wood is just a side effect, not the main intent.

 That's where the chisel comes in...  I usually will use a chisel and hammer to 'reinforce' the outline,  Now cutting into the wood is the main intent.  You don't have to go deep.  What you are doing is creating a stop line for the router.  It will sound and feel slightly different the closer you get to it.  It is a nuance but if you can develop it, a very handy one.

 All of the planning, measuring and scribing so that we can route!  I won't go into all the different bits and sizes, I use mainly a 1/8, 1/16 and 3/32 bit and assorted chisels and knives if needed.  I will say it takes time to develop the ability to inlay.  It is a skill and skills are learned.  So I am learning.

If you were accurate in your scribing, the routing is fairly straight forward.  I use a hand held dremel with a precision stand that works well for me.  You need to watch for "runs" where the bit grabs the wood and goes.  Split outs can happen depending on the type of wood.  I am not worried about fret lines at this point.  I just cut right through them.  When I am done gluing I just recut the frets.

I work my way slowly and methodically down the fretboard.  I always hold the piece up to the outline just as a double check, re-scribing when necessary.  Again as long as your scribing was spot on you should be good.  If not you will either need to redo the scribing and etching or go where it takes you.  Because once you are off your pattern it is very difficult to get back.  Again, scribing is the key.

Usually I will start with the big bit and do the leaves.  I will normally only route a 1-2 fret space at a time.  I want to make sure that the shell fits and if I need to do some small adjustments it doesn't have ramifications to something that is already cut.  So fret by fret I go. On average a fret area takes about 20-30 minutes to etch, route and fit the piece in.  But speed is not the goal here, accuracy is.  You get a feel for the bit and the way it bites the wood after a while.

I am going to try something a little different with this one in that I will stop around fret 5 and glue it in.  Then continue, stop and glue another 2 or 3 times until I am done.  Then I can do a second glue time to fill the small holes and crevices.

Here it is glued.  If I continue at my current pace of 2 frets a night I should be able to do my second glue and sand on Labor Day.  I will then pop the fretboard and sand the neck done and do the inlay on the headstock.  The body is drying... this one is starting to come together!

Continuing on down the fretboard.  Notice I tape the pieces I haven't glued in yet.  When I use my compressed air I frequently blow them out of their slots and onto the floor so now I tape them which works well.

Here is the lower half scribed.  I have a pretty good outline here.  I will then reinforce it with the chisel.  Depending on the width and the bits I have available I will decide where to start and end.  Changing the bits is a time consuming process if done frequently, so it is good to plan to maximize your time with a particular bit.

Here is the design.  I had to change it slightly from the original design.  Sometimes I get a little confused and can't get the pieces to line up properly, so I just throw them in a pile and start from scratch, which is what I did with the lower roots.  It did however come out fairly close anyways.

I have routed as much as I felt comfortable with the larger bit.  Now I am ready to start using the fine bit and shaving away the excess.  It is a slow process.  A lot of running the drill, blowing the sawdust out, stopping the drill, trying the piece, repeat...  Of course when you get impatient is exactly where you will make your mistake.

Here I have fitted the inlay into the routes.  I am not worried about the fret lines at this point.  Once everything is glued in I will have to re-cut the fret scores and then put frets in.  I am pretty happy with the overall fit.  I would say this one of my best fingerboards so far, but I still have a long way to go...

Here it is as I work down the fretboard.  I will do the inlay over a period of a few hours.  You kind of get in a zone and just groove along.  You have to be very focused and deliberate on your placement of pieces since the margin of error is really small.  Once I have completed routing process I will fit all the pieces in and evaluate, tweaking here and there.  Hopefully no big errors.  Then I will take all the pieces out and arrange them on my layout board and then fill the routes with black epoxy.  I then cover it with wax paper and clamp it and let it dry for at least 24 hours, 48 or more if I can.

 
While that is drying time to address the neck.  I am going to use the neck that came with the guitar.  So the first thing I need to do is remove the hardware, and pop the fretboard off the neck.  I do this with a iron, no steam.  I  put the iron on hot, put a folded old t-shirt between the fretboard and the iron and heat it up.  I then work a spatula like tool in between the fingerboard and neck.  It takes some time and patience but I have done this several times now and it is a pretty simple procedure.

I will also be putting a faceplate of mahogany with a trinity inlay over the face so I will sand this down to the wood.  I will remover the truss rod and scrape and sand the neck down to bare wood.  Then  I need to consider total thickness of the neck and fingerboard with what I want on the bridge.  The thicker the neck because I am adding height on the fingerboard, the higher the bridge will need to be adjusted.

I chose a sappalle (sp?) Mahogany blank from LMI.  I will glue this to the face and using a scroll saw trim it accordingly.  The piece was quite a bit a thicker than I thought, as an afterthought I would have been better served just doing a veneer.  I will do an inlay of a Trinity in it.

Using my scroll saw I was able to trim it to shape.  Then using my spindle sander on my drill press I will shape it to the design of the old face.  Then I need to decide what I want for tuning pegs and drill the appropriate diameter hole.  I checked on the body which is still drying and it is looking very good.  Still some issues in the pickup area, but we will see what polishing will do for it.  I will probably look at polishing the first week of October.  Finish the neck and decide on the type of bridge.  This one is starting to come together!

I need to drill the tuning peg hole before I get to choose where the inlay goes.  I can approach the drilling from the rear or from the front.  If I approach from the rear I already have the hole as a guide.  However it tends to break out this way.  I got some splintering around a couple of the holes which you will see later caused a minor issue which the tuning peg washer will cover up anyway.  Having done that I could now position the inlay.

As with any Inlay project I applied a liberal coating of white out and stuck the pieces.  The trinity is actually three inter locking pieces.  I stuck them and aligned them with the angle of the face plate and using a scribe created an outline of the shapes.  I felt like I got a very clear outline.

Then taking a chisel I provided a stop line for the outline.  Using my Dremel Router I routed the interior.  I had a bit that was almost perfect in size, perhaps a tad wide and used that for 80%.  I used my thin bit for the rest and clean up.

Once routed I then mixed up my black epoxy.  I applied that and filled the outline then pressed the pieces into place.

I then covered the area with wax paper and applied a caul, clamped and let dry for 24-48 hrs.   I am seeing a little longer dry times with this new epoxy.  Once it dried, I removed the caul, sanded and cut back the faceplate closer to the headstock.  I then finished up with the drill press sanding bit.  I then sanded the face to about 400 grit.  I had to trim the bottom of the faceplate where it meets the nut.  This was a bit a tricky and had to be perfectly square.  I then took the prepared fretboard and placed it on.

The work usually moves fairly quickly during this process and again I forgot to take detailed pictures.  Placing your fretboard on the neck is an exacting process.  Any deviation and there will be some type of consequence.  So it is measure once, measure twice, and why not a third time?  Once I have the placement to my satisfaction I clamp it and then drill three small holes through the fretboard and into the neck.  These will help keep the fretboard from drifting when I glue it.  Then I go ahead and glue and clamp it.

Then using a band saw or scroll saw I trim the excess of the fretboard away.  I then use the sanding bit on my drill press to bring it in close to the neck but still leaving a fraction of a mm for hand sanding where I can put a small radius on the lip.  I made a fretboard once and it was too sharp on the edges.  You can also get carried away and do too round also where the bottom and top string don't have a straight fingerboard under them.

Here's a peak at what she might look like when done.  Looking pretty nice in my opinion. 

Here's the headstock after a couple applications of shellac.   I will build up the coats and shine then let it dry for a month.  The grain has a great 3D look to it.

Next is fretting the neck.  Once the body is done I need hardware!