Necks Best Thing
This month Alex Bishop eschews technology and turns his attention to hand-carving a pair of guitar necks
The wonderful thing about a hand-crafted guitar – especially an old one – is its uniqueness. It might be the addition of a flash of colourful veneer, the particular profiling of a brace, or the tactile transition of a heel: these details all bear the hallmarks of an instrument’s creator. Occasionally in the workshop I lazily delegate the background music to the algorithms of my mobile phone. Every now and again I will catch a piece of music I’ve never heard before, yet still be able to identify the musician from the idiosyncrasies of their playing. I like to think the same is true of a good guitar maker; you don’t necessarily need a label or fancy logo to tell the world who your guitars are made by, but the pattern created by your design decisions and craftsmanship can form an unmistakably unique and identifiable set of instruments.
Nowhere else does a guitarist more intimately notice the mark of a luthier than with the feel of the neck. Given that some of us might spend several hours per day clutching that carefully shaped baton of wood, the handiwork of some luthiers is pretty much encoded into our brains. It is not uncommon for clients of mine to request that the neck profile on their next dream guitar is matched exactly to another guitar in their collection, one with which they have an unsurpassable familiarity.
That said, on paper guitar necks are remarkably constrained in their available sizes, varying only a few millimetres in width or thickness at the extremes. This bears testament to the sensitivity of the human hand and its ability to perceive tiny differences that might render the instrument uncomfortable to play. When constructing a guitar neck from scratch, the first crucial pair of dimensions to consider are the width of the neck at the nut and at the neck join. For a steel-string acoustic guitar I go for a 45mm at the nut: any less than this and I’m heading into electric guitar territory (43mm is typical for a Stratocaster). Next, the width of the neck at the 12th fret – or body join – is to be considered. 56mm is my standard, and this gives a gentle taper to the neck, fattening out slightly towards the body to offer a bit of extra strength but still retaining a slender feel.
Get In Shape
The thickness of the neck is crucial, too. This is generally measured at the 1st fret and somewhere around the 10th fret using a pair of callipers, or anywhere just in front of the heel. Including the thickness of the fingerboard (but not the fretwire) I like this to transition from 21mm to 24mm, although there is a trend for more modern acoustics such as Taylors to thin the upper end, reducing the amount of taper for an almost parallel neck. I find players with smaller hands will prefer a bit less wood in this orientation, so I’ll adjust accordingly.
When it comes down to hand-carving I work in a logical step-by-step way, preferring to ‘box in’ the neck before profiling it, carefully shaping the neck down to these dimensions by using a bandsaw and then working with planes, chisels and files to form a precise, tapered oblong. It’s really once I’m profiling the neck that the fun begins, and the character of my work begins to show through. Given the choice, I have a tendency to aim for a smooth ‘C’ shape profile – not too flat on the back like a ‘D’ shape but not a harsh ‘V’, either – but everyone has their preferences.
I use a coarse rasp for the initial shaping and then increasingly soft files. As the deep scratches in the wood begin to blend away into a smooth surface, something magical happens. It must be the joy of seeing the neck reveal its flowing three dimensional form that compels me to pick it up and touch it. It’s not until I hold the sculpted wooden form in my hand and run my fingers along the wood grain that I can feel when my work is done.
“The pattern created by your design decisions and craftsmanship can form an unmistakably unique and identifiable set of instruments”