Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok, Hesh, I'll bite. How can you tell he fretted with board on neck and neck on guitar?

Unfretted board was on the neck in earlier photos. Since it's a bolt-on neck I'm not sure why you would fret on the guitar since it's so much easier with the neck off. for bolt on necks, I fret with the board on the neck but the neck off of the guitar. I level and dress with the neck on the guitar.

So John, what did you do? Hesh needs to know

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Congratulations on a fine looking instrument.

I need to make a display of my ignorance (it's never very hard for me to display my ignorance). The carbon fiber appears to be yarn or twisted fiber that is simply applied to the bracing. I understand that carbon fiber can impart stiffness in certain applications, but is that true in this particular application? It has the appearance of something very flexible that is simply laid on the wood and glued. How does it work? It's a serious question. I really don't understand.

I did it just like Steve describes. I fretted the fret board when it was on the neck, but the neck was not bolted on to the guitar. I like to wait until the end to fret so that I can fret with the fret board as level as possible. I do the final level with the neck on the guitar as the extension could move a bit. Not so much with the bolt on bolt off as the extension is supported.




Thanks,

The fiber is epoxied on top and under the brace. The Carbon Fiber is very resistant to stretching. When a brace is bending one side is compressed and one side is expanded. So the carbon fiber is resisting that expansion thus imparting a lot of stiffness to the brace relative to the weight of CF. The farther the cf is away from the neutral axis of the brace (the spot where there is a transition between compression and expansion) the stiffer the brace.

_________________
http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Okay, John. Thanks for the explanation. I at least understand it in theory much better now. Thanks again.
Patrick

cphanna: Think I-beam........!!
Tom

_________________
A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Nice job John! Keep us posted on how the guitar opens up please.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Well I got it half wrong since the neck was not on the guitar.

What fretting with the board on the neck and the neck on the guitar does for you is afford us the opportunity to level the board, eliminate any body hump, and induce fall-away if that flips your switch and know that before a single fret is driven home that the fret plane and neck shape is as intended. Additionally we want more relief on the bass side and less on the treble side and half the time there is no telling how it will come out. Leveling on the guitar also affords us the opportunity to mill relief where we want it, correct where the relief may be too great, and even slightly change the neck angle too to compensate for a slightly over set and under set neck.

The last advantage in my view of leveling the board on the guitar is the opportunity to mill the board into a compound radius simply by working the leveling beams in a direction that traces the string paths. I'm a fan of compound radius board and this gets me where I want to go.

When you do get to fretting the instrument after all of the above has been addressed very little effort is required once the frets are in to level them. But, you still can't know what you have until one does the final mark, check, and level.

Hesh, I believe this guitar has a neck attachment design very similar to Taylor in that the extension is fully supported and actually unitized with the neck. I am thinking that allows pretty good tweaking of the finger-board contour on or off the body -- yes/no?

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

As Ken mentioned like the Taylor, this neck bolts on and off. I did do a leveling pass on the fret board with the neck bolted on to the body including bolting on the extension for all of the reasons mentioned by Hesh, except intentionally adding a compound radius. On this one I did tweak the neck angle a touch, I also sanded the bass a touch thinner than the treble as is often done on a classical guitar. I did not sand any relief as I used a truss rod to dial in the relief after setup.

Once my fret board was ready I pull the neck and fret. I just like the convenience of not having the guitar on the other end when pounding on the frets.

_________________
http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com