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Hi everyone!

Fairly new and pretty inactive on this forum where I absorbe tons of priceless (thank ya'll!)info while slowly organizing a little shop, I haven't built yet.

So, I am wondering what are the pros and cons of quarter sawn versus flat sawn figured wood (flamed and quilted maple) when it comes to fender type neck. Would you recommand reinforcement with any of these, thus requiring a maple cap fretboard?

Also, any essence of wood to recommand- that will be quite similar to figure maple for practicing carving?

Thank you!

hmmm, I don't know what kind of wood you could use to give you the feel for carving curly maple, well except for curly maple. I've found it to be a bit softer maybe than eastern rock maple, but it doesn't really make it easier to carve. I'd say it's really a pain to carve with the grain moving up and down, it's really prone to tearing it out. I've only made a few necks with laminations of curly maple but I've found that doing a real rough carve with cutting tools like a hand plane or a spoke shave, followed by rasps, files or abrasives is the way to go (unless you have a cnc which I'm assuming you don't). When I did my first neck I was going to do a full mock-up to try and get a feel for the process but I had a lot of people say that they didn't really think it was worth it. The consensus seemed to be that nothing was going to give me the feel for doing it quite like actually doing it and if I was going to go to the trouble of gluing something up to whittle it back down I may as well try and have a usable neck when I got done!

My advice would be to just make one but do your planning carefully. If you're going for a fender type bolt on neck it'll be easier than what I started with which had a stacked heel and a scarf joint.

As far as quarter sawn versus flat sawn I can't offer you too much advice from personal experience but I have read on this and other forums people thinking that sometimes the strength associated with quarter sawn, particularly with maple is a bit overstated. I think fender has made thousands of necks out of flat sawn maple and not had a real problem with them, so take that for what it's worth.

I understand the apprehension associated with getting started building, my first build was originally conceived as a kit build from warmoth, but as I got closer to getting started some goading from friends as well as finding these great online forums convinced me to aim a little bit higher. Before I knew it I was making everything for my first and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I think one thing you have to consider is you will make mistakes and even experienced builders end up with firewood. There's always a value in the work though, even when you make mistakes you learn how to avoid them the next time. Good luck!

If it's one thing I can say..... What I found is i should have saved a lot of my really nice wood until after I have learned a lot more. There are a million and one design/details to figure out as your learning to build/work with tools. The less figured wood is typically much easier to work and shape. Unless you have a basic knowledge how wood responds to various applications, most of the time try to keep it simple.

Most builders will say that quarter sawn wood is better. I would tend to agree, however this is just an opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. Fender didn't build thousands of electric instruments necks they've built millions globally including the cheaper models and the bulk of these have been done with flat grain maple.

Can you say double acting truss rod?

Aloha
David

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