Preparing neck blanks

Vacation is well under way, weather's nice and humidity is quite high in the workshop. So I won't glue the tops on the resos yet. Instead I'll prepare hhe neck blanks, a whole bunch of them. I have a new idea of how to reinforce them, and how to cover up any visible traces of that reinforcement. They don't need that much extra strength on account of the string pull but I want some insurance against movement of the wood. I figure a slot, a feather and the glue will give me that. 

First I plane the face of the headstock, getting it flat and roughly square to the upper face of the blank. 

I check with my wee engineer's square. 

Then I plane the upper face. There is something going on here more difficult to show in pictures, I keep checking the length of the upper face to see that I have around 190 mm there. If it got too short when I did the headstock then I push down at the nut end on the upper face. If it gets too long I return to the headstock to shorten it (the aforementioned upper face). 

If it's too long it means I'll have to chop the blank off at the heel end and that might make the heel too small for the barrel bolt. 

The pic shows me checking for gaps and divots against a goose neck led light. 

I scribe a line exactly at the angle to define it. It can be hard to see without the line. Then I scribe a line at the heel end, at 186 mm from the angle. This will give me what I need, a shelf for the nut where the nut itself hides the edge of the headstock overlay. I can't be arsed doing a nut slot between the fretboard and the overlay, that's too fiddly and I don't care for the vulnerable edge of the overlay. 

I have a couple more to make but the pile grows rapidly. 

The mahogany one is for me. I plan to treat myself to another Argapa, about bloody time I'd say.