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While reading my bass building book today, I was a little confused. Until today I understood that the surfaces of the piece of wood I was using for my thru neck would make up the front and back of the neck. An illistration I examined today made it look as if I am to cut the side profile of the neck out of the surface of the board then glue them together so that the surface of the original board will make up the left and right sides and the edge grain will make up the front and back of the neck. Which is it? was that unclear?

Does it matter?

Sort of unclear. Normally you orient the wood so you have vertical grain in the neck.

It will depend on two things in your case ....

1 - is the board wide enough that it could be used as one piece, for the fingerboard to be glued upon ???

2 - is the board quarter or flat sawn ... to check, look at the end grain of the board. Does it look like this =====, which is flatsawn, or like this lllllllllll, which is quarter sawn ???

Preferably, you want the neck to be made from quarter sawn stock. If the board is quarter sawn, but not wide enough , you will need to laminate for width, and possibly thickness at the neck joint, and headstock ends. If the board is flatsawn, then you will want to cut the neck shale in profile (ie side view), turn these pieces 90 degrees and glue them up for width to get a neck blank that is now quartered (as you have turned pieces from the flatsawn board 90 degrees, thus making the grain vertical, or quratered). As well, if ythe stock will allow, cut the pieces in mirror image, so that the grain will be opposing on each piece when glued back together - this helps eliminate warp and twist.

If your board is somewhere inbetween as far as grain, then you need to decide which way will get you closest to being quartered.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

It is a little unclear but the grain should run lengthwise of the neck so that you see the endgrain at the neck/body joint.

In the picture you are seeing end grain


and in this picture (from cncguitarparts.com)you can see the grain running the length of the neck in the same direction as the lines running down the middle.

There are lots of ways to build a neck; in the cnc guitar parts picture you've got laminated mahogany with maple and rosewood in the middle. Another way is to laminate the neck heel and attach a headstock with a scarf joint. Then of course you could just carve it out of one solid piece of mahogany(or whatever). However it's done, the grain always runs long-ways up the neck for strucural reason.

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Jeremy Douglas

so, you're saying I just wanna make sure that the end grain is perpendicular to the surface of the body or as close as possible?

You want quartersawn grain orientation, the endgrain thing is a consequence of that. In that mahogany neck heel, if you could see it, the grain lines would be running vertically from your view. This should explain it clearly enough:

http://musikraft.3dcartstores.com/assets/images/Dscf1681a~1.jpg

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services