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So I was gluing my fretboard onto the neck yesterday, and this morning I took off the clamps and the fretboard was split nearly end to end. After removing it, I discovered that I did not have the neck flat. It was crowned across the short way. In addition to my own idiocy, I am finding the other problem is the carbon rods in the neck are keeping me from leveling the neck effectively.

Next time, I will probably bury the CF a bit deeper so I only have to level the wood.

Any suggestions for my current efforts or future prevention would be appreciated.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

You need a edge sander and a jig to hold it flat and square . If you dont have those, its not gonna be easy . lotsa hand sanding .

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An edge sander and a jig???

I'd just go with a plane and maybe a scraper, but that's just me.

But seriously, I try to true up my neck blanks before cutting into them, then pick a face for the fingerboard, and don't touch it until you glue the fingerboard on.

After fabricating neck blanks (I like laminated necks) I pass the blanks (in "board" form - maybe 3" wide) through my drum sander on both sides. This provides a flat edge to which I can glue my fretboard (also flattened in the same fashion on the edge to be glued). (then I cut the blank into the appropirate pieces for the scarf joint and stacked heel.) I tried to flatten with a plane once, and quickly realized I was chasing high points all over the neck. With this method, it's "one and done". If you're using one-piece necks, you can do the same thing, but if your drum sander can be raised high enough and you pass it through before cutting the neck shapes out of the blank.

Assuming you are gluing the fret board on with epoxy, a "work around" for this neck would be to slightly hollow out the underside of the fret board where necessary, so the edges will make contact with the sides of the neck. This might be easier than trying to level the CF rods in the neck. The epoxy will fill the gaps under the fretboard.

You do not want to touch the CR with your nice sharp plane.

Planeing carbon fibre ... hmmmmmmm how well does that work btw.

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

"Planeing carbon fibre ... hmmmmmmm how well does that work btw."

Not well. It chews up scrapers, too. And bandsaw blades also don't like CF. I use a hacksaw to cut off the excess and a long, flat sanding block to level the top of the neck shaft. But burying the CF makes a lot of sense; putting them deep in the neck increases their effectiveness as well as making leveling easier -- as long as you don't expose them when you shape the neck!

Cured carbon laminates actually scrape quite nicely - it works better than sanding it because sanding requires a lubricant to prevent the epoxy from clogging the paper. The problem is that the scraper setups you use for scraping wood are different that what you want for Carbon. For Carbon, you want to use fully hardened tool steel with no burr. One easy way to get this is to grind an old plane iron to 90 degrees and use that. Another alternative is to use carbide machining inserts.

Since there is no burr, you get dust and not shavings, so good dust protection is needed. Carbon dust is bad for you.

-jd

Thanks for the ideas, everyone. I can tell you that planing CF with a small squirrel-tail plane will shoot CF splinters into your hand.

I have a 6x48 belt sander, but it seemed to be exaggerating the crowning. I've been going at it with a narrow block and some sand paper. I'm not sure how I ended up here, but I'm pretty close now. I'll make sure to avoid it in the future.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

Jeeze guys, tough crowd. Of course, I was not suggesting planing Carbon Fiber.

I thought about this, as well as gluing a layer or two of veneer in to then level. tT got me to wondering. Does the soft spot created by installing the truss rod make the center of the fretboard dead? I've not noticed it myself, but could imagine it. I always try to keep my truss rod as shallow as possible so I don't need to worry about it when shaping the neck, but maybe I should put it deeper and cap it with wood to give the fretboard uniform solid support???

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

Hmm - that's interesting. Perhaps the carbon fiber is in the middle and the sandpaper is having a tougher time with it than the adjacent wood? Caveat is that I've never built with carbon fiber, so I really don't know.

On the plus side, I called LMI on Tuesday afternoon and today (Thursday) they had new blanks sitting on my front porch!

Thanks LMI!!!

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom