Building a Telecaster styled guitar: The 1st of the Final Products

Wow, I just noticed that I haven't posted on this blog since March 21. I guess it's been a few months since I've been in the guitar shop, which is usually the way things go once spring arrives. Designing and building in the shop, close to the wood furnace, is one of my winter comforts. I bought enough hardware and electrics to complete my #2 Tele. As you may recall, we had each made two necks and two bodies, the thought being that we would use our lesser quality neck and body blanks to perfect our method and work out the bugs, and then move on to our #1 blanks for the final product. Seemed to make sense, as many of the processes are very painstaking, and are rife with places to screw-up. It turns out that for the most part, all four have turned out not half bad, and the one I completed this week is my #2.

Vintage '59 Tele re-creation. Butternut body w/ yellow birch neck. The distressed look used on the top was created with the sparing application and removal of dark blue latex stain.

Where this is my #2, I didn't go whole-hog on the hardware. I opted for good quality, medium grade, mostly from Stewart-MacDonald. I am very pleased with the Slick pup's from guitarfetish.com. They are recreations of the origional "Fullerton" alnico pickups used by Fender. I used a Japanese (gasp) Gotoh "Wilkinson" compensated bridge, and very nice Klusen tuners.

Vintage '59 Tele re-creation, showing the figuring of the butternut on the back and the flush ferrules.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar: Fret Press

Fret Press

Hot off the bench, a Fret Press. The 7 1/4" radiused maple block has a piece of aluminum (soffit) attached (with two sided tape) to the bearing surface. The opposing concave surface is lined with a piece of leather to avoid marring the back of the neck. The two 4" pressure-wheels are made from 3/4" baltic birch plywood. The two 3/8" nuts are pressed and glued (gorilla glue) into recessed holes in the top surface of the pressure-wheels.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar: getting closer to the finishing shop

 . . . . and Roger, what have you been doing to keep out of trouble this lovely New Brunswick winter. Well . . . .

Quad Tele's

Quad Tele's again

My two are on the right (top pic) or at the top (lower pic). The other two are Paul's. Notice the reversed neck on the bottom one (lower pic). Jimi would be proud of us. All are top notch! Things have gone well (so far). Some fretting to do, then out to the finishing shop. Getting anxious.
ps - Not that I am bragging, but the necks fit so precisely in the neck pockets on all four that we can (carefully) pick them up relying only on the friction of the fit to hold them together.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: Completed Yellow Birch Neck

Yellow Birch Telecaster neck complete with frets and dots

Building a Telecaster styled guitar: Progress Report

So . . . things have been progressing nicely. No major problems as such, but many opportunities to learn. We have given a lot of attention to specs and detail which is paying off in the quality of the product. Interestingly, we had a plan to build at least two necks and two bodies each, thinking that we would each have one that would evolve as the keeper, and one would become the also ran. To date (and I repeat "to date"), all four are keepers.This project has gone well!
I have started to fret my yellow birch neck. Yellow birch is not a traditional neck-wood for fender, but none the less, I used it for one, and it is working out extremely well. As near as I been able to glean from the fonte of all knowledge (Google) it is tradition, and not characteristics that have led Fender to use maple over yellow birch. Until I discover a reason to rate yellow birch as inferior for this purpose, I will give it equal footing with maple.

My Twin Teles - ready for frets and finish

The Dots

Fret Wire Bending Jig ver 2 - fully adjustable

This fret wire bending jig will uniformly bend fret wire through any desired radius.

Use two or three successive passes to achieve the desired radius.

Youtube of Fret Wire Bending Jig ver 2

Fret Wire Bending Jig ver 2 unassembled

Fret Wire Bending Jig ver 2

Fret Wire Bending Jig ver 2 - side view

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: shaping the back of the neck

. . . and the fun begins . . . freehand shaping . . . maybe my favorite part. I started shaping my necks, the birch one first, then the maple one. The birch is my #2, so I will take what I learn from it to my #1. So far, both necks are guitar quality, so this project is headed toward being over budget by a factor of two, but who can say no to a couple of custom shop Tele's. Shaping is a do-or-die process. I used my standby 10" round/flat Nicholson rasp and a really handy four-faced rasp from Lee Valley that has since disappeared from recent catalogs. With rasps, save some money and go with quality first. You can't go wrong with either of these brands. It is important to use a jig to stabilize the neck so both sides can be worked freely and easily without imbalanced rasping from one side to the other. Like they say when carving a duck, start with a block of wood and remove anything that doesn't look like a duck. Simple enough.

I like a neck that is asymmetrical, being fuller on the lower side and thinner on the upper side under the hook of my thumb. Also, I chose to taper (thin) the neck about 3/32" as you go up the frets to the heel. The roasted maple skunk stripe blended perfectly with the lighter coloured wood in both cases. Shaping is best done a bit at a time . . . shape . . . sand . . . shelf . . . do something else for a while . . . lather, rinse, and repeat. Being over aggressive can make expensive firewood.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: using hide glue to set the truss rods in the routed channel

We moved on to setting and gluing the truss rods in place with the help of a Lee Valley hide glue pot. This is a really handy gadget which made using hide glue much less onerous (read messy) than in my previous efforts.

Glue was spread on the maple wedge that is fitted on the truss rod, as well as on the steel ball and the sides and bottom of the channel where there is contact with the wedge. Masking tape was used on the surfaces adjacent to the channel to shield neck wood from squeezed out glue. The glue starts to gel in about a minute, so time must be used efficiently. A heat gun can be used to keep the glue pliable for another minute or so. A 1/4"(minus) strip of maple was used with screw clamps to force the wedge to the bottom of the channel. 

I fitted the roasted maple skunk stripe into my #2 (birch) neck as shown below. The strip was fitted as neatly as possible and glued with white wood glue. The glue was first mixed with very fine sanding dust sanded from a scrap of roasted maple. This paste was used so a couple of very very tiny gaps between the skunk stripe and the maple channel would fill with the paste squeeze-out.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: fitting and placing the truss rod

Fitting the truss rod is a precision operation. Since our truss rod channel is routed in from the back side of the neck, strict attention must be given to the depth of the (headstock end) truss rod anchor ball. Too deep and it goes through the fret board . . . too shallow and it comes through the surface when shaping the back of the neck. We also chose to mig weld the 3/8" dia ball onto the threaded end of the truss rod, then grind the sides so that it will slide into the 1/4" wide routed channel.Since thr truss rod is 3/16" dia, there isn't very much left on the sides when the welded ball is ground down to fit in the 1/4" channel. 

To beef-up the solid surface area that the truss ball will bear on, we chose to make the maple insert (shown below). These will be hide-glued into the channel on the final fit-up.

The truss rod pushed into place (shown below). Note the string is used to enable easy removal during the fit-up. It can be seen how thin the skunk stripe will be, given that some will be removed when shaping the back of the neck. By choice, these necks will be on the thicker side at the headstock end, so the thin skunk stripe will work.   

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: using the radiusing jig

We set the jig up for a 7.25" radius. It performed very well. In total, we shaped the fretboards on 7 necks, ranging from the first couple that will ultimately heat the shop as firewood, to the last few that will become parts of guitars. The idea is to lead each process with the cull necks, so as to be half decently proficient by the time we get to the good ones.

 

the jig adapted for radiusing a 7.25" neck

We used a 1/2"D 1/2" shank router bit to shape the arc on the first neck. Although acceptable, we decided to change to a 3/4"D 1/2" shank bit for the remainder. The larger bit worked better. The resulting arc was very consistent, with some very minor ridging that will be removed with a 7.25" sanding block. Overall, this phase of the project exceeded expectations.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: the fretboard radiusing jig

This fretboard radiusing jig is designed to use the same jig frame as the truss rod channeling jig.

Youtube of fretboard radiusing jig

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: bandsawing the blanks & routing the truss rod

Things are rolling along famously with the Telecaster necks. We have seven blanks in total, four are mine, and the rest are Paul's. I had two maple blanks, and I sawed the additional two out of yellow birch, which is remarkably like maple in density and general appearance. Both maple and yellow birch have a pinkish hue. From the reading I have done, birch will make a neck of similar quality to maple, but the use of maple is buoyed by tradition. Our plan is to come up with three or four (at most) good, useable necks. The lesser quality necks will become fodder to the process. Having a few to make "first cuts" on has proven to be a good idea.

YouTube video explaining the process to shape the blanks & route the truss rod channel.

Building a Telecaster styled guitar neck: the routing jig

Truss rod routing jig assembly.

The (wood) router carriage slides on the (two) arced side rails. The side rails are arced at a 147" radius for a telecaster neck. The convex arc identifies this particular setup as a jig for routing the truss rod from the back of the neck. The back-routed truss rod is used for necks with a non-capped fret board.

This jig assembly is made from a combination of high grade 3/4" baltic birch plywood and miscellaneous 3/4" douglas fir plywood scraps. The baltic birch is used in areas where a flat, straight surface are desirable.
Baltic birch machines better than coarser, lower grade plywoods.
Accuracy is very important, and a minimum of "play" in the components
is a must.

YouTube

telecaster truss rod routing jig video clip

Building a Telecaster styled guitar Phase I : The Neck

This road will ultimately lead to one or two completed Telecaster styled guitars. The first phase of this long and winding road is to craft a selection of necks, taking them all the way from rough-stock blanks to the finished, ready to attach, neck. Three or four will be built in the hopes that one or two will be of usable quality. We have chosen to build a non-capped fret-board style with arced truss rod channeled in from the back side, with adjustment accessibility through the heal. To add a challenging piece of complexity, telecaster uses an arced truss rod channel, curved to a radius of 147". Building top-drawer electric guitar necks and bodies is all about the design, quality, and functionality of the routing jigs. Good jigs . . . good outcome.
Roasted maple will be used for two of the necks. The remainder will be maple. Roasted maple is currently the rage. "Roasting" is a process that torrifies(sp) the wood to stabilize it and to help it transmit better tone. It has been used recently on acoustic guitar tone wood to give the wood the same characteristics as naturally mature tone wood. This is my first experience with neck torrifaction.