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Fingerboard Radius Technique

I bought a bass neck that had been removed from an old Hofner Senator guitar. It has been sanded vigorously. On close inspection it looks like the person who sanded it may have used an orbital electric sander as there are tiny circles on the wood.

The fingerboard has a radius. I built a fret bender and started installing frets, and that's when I hit problems. The sanding has been done by hand and has introduced a compound radius into the fingerboard, so that there's a large radius in the middle but it slopes off at the edges. Bending frets to fit this profile would be impossible (or extremely difficult) and as it is, they don't sit fully in the slot at the ends.

I'd like to finish the neck but don't want to spend a lot on tools in case it all ends up in the skip. Does anyone have experience of making a radius sanding block ? Our kitchen bin is a 7-inch radius straight cylinder and I'm thinking of sticking some sandpaper on that to make a 7-inch radius block. I've seen YouTube videos of similar but wondered if anyone on here had tried it.

Grateful for any advice :-)

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Permalink Reply by JL on October 17, 2014 at 5:31am

a 10 in radius block can be made (CAREFULLY) if you have a 10" table saw. run the block sideways across the blade taking a tiny tiny fraction of an inch per pass. google "cove cuts on a table saw" for a lot of how-to's.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on October 17, 2014 at 9:29am

7" radius is pretty tight. Most guitar fretboards range from 9-12" radii. You could build a radius form out of plywood, and line it with sandpaper. There's some YouTube vids that show necks being radiused by hand this way at Gibson, and at one of the Hawaiian uke manufacturers. They're very quick to use.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on October 17, 2014 at 11:59pm

Here is a homemade block and the fingerboard made with it

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Permalink Reply by Diglydog on October 18, 2014 at 4:07am

Thanks for the replies, guys. I don't have a big table saw, or a bin with a bigger radius. That block looks good, Michael, and should be possible with the bandsaw. I'll have a go at one of them.