Tag: #Woodworking

Feeling Better

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So, after about a month of dealing with this bug I’m finally starting to feel like myself again which means that I want to jump right in and start working on everything I haven’t been able to touch for the past several weeks. The weather isn’t cooperating completely, which does limit a little of what I can do, but I’ve already gone for a couple (extremely disappointing) runs, gotten some writing done and made some progress on a couple guitar builds that have been collecting dust for way too long. I’ve also queried a couple more agents for My Life As Death and will try to submit to at least one more today. All in all, it’s been a pretty productive couple of days, and I still have a few more before I have to return to work.

And now that I’m feeling better, I hope to update this blog a little more often. And hopefully I’ll have something to report in regards to an agent before too long. In the meantime, feel free to check out my completed guitars for sale: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RileyCustomGuitars

3 String Guitar Build Part 1: The Neck

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In messaging with a customer, I realized that I have not posted a full 3-string build, so now is the time. I’m starting with the RG-10, solid body design and then I’ll walk through the RG-9 acoustic/electric body style, but they both start with the same neck/head:

To build the neck, with a 15 degree scarf joint, I use a compound miter saw and a simple angled jig:

Using this jig, I cut two two smaller (~8″) pieces 1″x2″ maple that have been thinned down to 0.60″ thick. These will be glued together to make the head. I also use this jig to cut a 15 degree angle on the end of the neck. I tend to work on multiple guitars at once, hence the 4 pieces:

This process can be sped up a little, but starting with a single piece of 1″x4″ but I tend to have more 1″x2″ laying around.

Once the head pieces are glued up, I then sand and place them until they are perfectly smooth. Then I glue them to the neck

The neck and head joint usually requires just a little more sanding/planing before the piece is ready fot the head shape to be cut.

I usually draw the head shape on, using my template, then start with the band saw to get the rough shape:

An oscillating drum sander helps dial in the final shape, before I drill the tuner holes:

Once the holes are drilled, I start to shape the neck. A 45 degree router bit gets me a good shape to start with:

From there, I use rasps, files, a belt sanded and a mouse sander to get the shape I want:

I don’t spend too much time on getting it perfect just yet, because there will still be a lot more work to do once we add the body.
This is the basic neck I use for both the RG9 and RG10 guitars. From here the processes take drastically different paths.