Planing the neck blanks

This'll be a short post but I only managed to steal a few short moments last night and this morning. I do it the same way every time. First I plane the mating surface for the fretboard so it was flat and true. Then I work the headstock so it only shifts in the one direction, a pair of winding sticks on the heel and headstock should still be parallel. 

Planes in this picture are numbers 6 and 4 1/2.

I then measure the top surface from the nut location to the heel. I need 185 millimetres for 13 frets, and if the top surface is overly long I take more off from the headstock. If it's too short I plane it down some more, focusing on the nut end. Of course the thickness of the headstock must be such as to allow this, but it usually is from sawing the blank with some margin. 

When I've got my 185 mm where I want them, checking so I have enough meat left in the heel for the barrel bolt, I scribe lines. Usually I make a centreline too but I don't need that with the skunk stripe. 

Planes in this picture are numbers 6, 4 1/2 and 3.

Three more resonators started

I picked out three sets of wood to go with three of the new skeletons. One alder, one ash, and one that I can't really remember what it is. Maybe something called olive ash? I think it came from America when I bought wood from a luthier who was relocating and emptied his shop. But maybe it was that other bloke. I've collected from many. 

In the first pic they're sanded to thickness. 

And here they're sawn out. I've decided to use the neck parts that are destined for lamination for these three so I made center strips of cherry for them. Laminating will make them strong enough so I can skip the carbon fibre rod, which I've come to dislike - it's hard to shape and I'm not fond of epoxy. 

These three resos will share some common features and I'll build them parallel. I might throw in a koa soprano or two at the same time so I don't get too narrow minded but this is what I'll focus on. 

Sawing neck blanks

I have had a large piece of alder lying around for a while, and since my stock of neck blanks is depleted I decided to turn it into usable chunks. 

First I sliced off a couple of thick strips on the table saw. The blade wasn't high enough so I finished the cuts with my Pax rip saw. 

The first couple of pics show the layout of neck profiles. 

The two pieces I cut off will be used differently from each other. I want the grain orientation close to vertical in each neck, so on the first piece I drew the profiles on the newly sawn face and on the other one I drew them on the mill sawn face. 

Here are the blocks. Eleven soprano necks and and a few piccolo necks. The blocks weren't square so I jointed two faces on the power jointer. Now my problem was the band saw - it being up shit creek since a long time. The drive belt snapped a year ago and I can't find a new one of the correct length. So I made one of thread and gaffer tape which worked for some time but it has stretched too much now and just slips. 

But what now? I made a new shorter belt, of only gaffer tape this time. And it worked beautifully, took me half an hour to get through most of the pile. I will make the rest of them tomorrow before the saw starts acting up again. I am so happy, and now I can build whatever I want (in the scale of gentlemen, natch) during the fall. 

Stay tüned!

Edited to add a couple of more pics. The first is an attempt to show the gaffer tape drive belt. It is behind the wheel. 

And the last shows you all the necks; 15 one piece soprano necks (of which three are Spanish cedar), 3 to be laminated of two halves and a pin stripe, and 3 piccolo necks.