When building a guitar from the ground up, you need to build a neck. A neck blank is usually 30″ long. This is so that you can create an angled head on the guitar for the tuners (it usually angles down about 15 degrees from the fretboard side). Even after you use some for the headstock, the remaining neck blank is still too long for the actual neck. The material that is too long is cut off and pieced together to be glued to the bottom of the neck where it adjoins to the body. This makes the tenon or dovetail or bolt on location more substantial (making the guitar stronger) and makes a more complete connection to the guitar.
Well, I used Luthier Mercantile International (LMII) which based on the wood I got, really puts a lot of effort into getting quality wood for it’s luthier customers. The grains are gorgeous where they should be and straight and in the proper direction where they should be. LMII really does a good job. Unfortunately guitars are complicated beasts and so ordering all the pieces of wood you need for a guitar is also very complicated. LMII has done a very thorough job in creating a web based ordering system but because there are so many mandatory pieces and optional pieces in a guitar it is exceedingly complicated. Especially for someone who has built just one guitar. When I ordered the neck blank, I chose birdseye maple but LMII only sells it in 24″ lengths and I needed 30″ or at least a neck block blank in the same material.
Another missing element goes inside the guitar body. The sides are 2 very thin pieces of wood bent to the desired shape of the guitar. I’m going with an Orchestra Model sized guitar (slightly smaller than a dreadnaught sized guitar) and it’s going to have a cutaway for access to the lower frets. When you glue and assemble the sides, you have a block of wood at the bottom of the body and another one at the top of the body (where the neck joins the body). Both add structure to the sides but the top also is the material that you create a mortise for attaching the neck. I missed the top block in ordering my wood.
I have ordered the wood and asked for accelerated shipping so I can get back to my guitar project (though I do have a few small things to work on anyway including the rosette around the sound hole on the top and some jig components for when I do get to glue up). Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be back on track.
