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Of course!

Of all the things about building instruments from scratch, which for me amounts to only 3 guitars and 2 ukuleles, I've had to redo necks twice now from scratch on the guitar builds and I've never truly liked the shape and feel of the output on any of them. I also bought some sapele from the local lumber store and practiced on three scarf jointed blanks. I've used the spoke shave method, the microplane method, the rasp and file method. Using the facet method, the template method, the contour gauge on a neck I like method. In the end, they all sucked. It's also the most stressful portion for me it seems, because you have to get the neck blank really far into the process before you carve the shaft and if you screw it up, that's it.

I'm not a purist in anything I do. I don't feel compelled to do it all myself come hell or high water. I also get very little shop time and if I can get a good result with less time for not a ton of money I will do it every time.




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I understand. Life's too short to mess around with things that are not working out, and there are reasonable alternatives.

The one thing I would say, though, is that after you let some time pass, maybe getting back on the horse would be good. Teach that stick of mahogany who's boss, that sort of thing.

I like it, and will do it for sure. I'm coming from zero woodworking experience so it's all new and very rewarding. Even the bad necks were engrams needed to get to that future point where the stick will learn it's lesson.


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I buy my necks from Andy Birko. Cnc. Awesome. If any part of a guitar was meant for cnc, it's the neck. If I took on neck building it would be via Cnc. But for me, why bother? Andy does such a good job at a great price.

If you're coming from zero woodworking experience, then I would not batch build

I would, however, advocate that you get some low cost wood and practice those challenging processes. THAT is where batch work will benefit you!

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Nobody would batch build with zero experience. I hope. But it is a good technique for regular builders.

Zero is probably heavy handed describing me, but for sure only a few instruments experience into it. I've been around tools my whole life with my father being a carpenter.

My expectation is that the batch, even if just two in the batch, will develop a little bit of muscle memory. My personal goal is to allow some of the tasks to become more intuitive. Right now I go back to the books / videos for every little step because of lack of confidence and I'd like to get to a point where I trust myself.


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For necks I used to start with a spoke shave, chisels, and files. Now I rough out the necks with a table saw, jointer, and router with a 1 inch roundover bit. They get me closer to a finished product in much less time. I still use hand tools to refine the work and take it to final dimension but the machines eliminate a lot of the work. CNC necks can be very nice, and I suppose if I had one I would use it, but at some point the process becomes less hand made by an individual craftsman and more machine made and hand assembled. We all have to decide for ourselves where to draw the line.


" I'd like to get to a point where I trust myself."

As soon as you do you'll make a mistake!