Official Luthiers Forum!

Just thought I'd share a newly carved guitar neck. The front of this neck face plate has a beautiful piece of Cocobolo...but the back was terrible bland. So I carved it up. The small scrolling, carve design on the back of the peghead was topped off with stippling from a 16P finish nail set. This leaves a interesting..almost fish scale or reptile look. I could actually see using this larger stippling to spice up a bland (uninteresting wood) back of the peghead (without a carved design) or even a determined small section of the heel to match peghead ...much like a gunsmith does areas of checkering on a gunstock.
I use a small round grinding bit on my flex shaft to cup out the end of the nail set so it leaves a nice round edge indention in the wood. I attach a round dowel handle to the nail set and use palm pressure to create the stippled effect. In soft woods, it only takes minimal pressure to do the stipple. In hard woods, you may need to slightly rock the nailset when applying pressure to get a good stipple. Also.....if you apply too much pressure and crush the wood fibers , the dome of your stipple can pop off leaving a circle stipple without the dome top. Use just enough pressure to do the stipple and no more. Practice on a scrap. Grain direction (for example) on a heel stipple will also change what pressure is necessary.
I usually use smaller nailsets for background stippling around my carving...but the larger stippling area and a simple carved design was good for a larger stipple.

The hand does get tired doing this.....especially with a small nail set on a large area and age is a factor.

Yes...I left room for the tuners to be mounted and not cover the carved area.
Happy Luthiering!!!!!
Kent

_________________
Wood Creations by Kent A. Bailey
EXCELLENCE IN SCULPTURE, CARVING, LUTHIER, ARCHITECTURAL MILLWORK AND DESIGN

http://www.kabart.com

Wow Kent! Really exceptional work. Does the stippling go all the way up the neck?

-J.

No... the stippling goes just past the carving on the heel/neck area.

I also (USUALLY) keep the carving confined a bit more to the heel area and not so far up the neck. However, the carving is shallow the further up the neck and does not not hinder my playing. I have done a few with more carved area on the neck as display guitars to take to woodcarving shows and have on site when doing demonstrations. I had a "HOW TO" video done about 2 months ago on "decorative instrument carving" but it needs to be completely redone..as quality was not good in doing the editing and reviewing the final product. I'll make that video available to the forum when it gets redone.

Kent

_________________
Wood Creations by Kent A. Bailey
EXCELLENCE IN SCULPTURE, CARVING, LUTHIER, ARCHITECTURAL MILLWORK AND DESIGN

http://www.kabart.com