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First laminated neck and wider headstock... advice needed...

I've been making gits for 3 years now, and have over 70 under my belt.. I have yet to make a laminated neck, or a wider headstock... but would like to on an upcoming build.

I have been doing a bit of reading on grain, crowning, etc.

With my cabinet saw, I can make pretty accurate cuts, but I don't have a planer to get the strips perfect.

Where would YOU start? I have access to maple, oak, mahogany,etc. (mostly flatsawn)

Just looking to up my game a bit...

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Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on October 7, 2016 at 9:04am

I often use a bench top jointer to even up the strips for a neck like this. They run around 100 bucks for the cheapies. In lieu of that a hand planer would be my next choice. If you have a high quality blade on the cabinet saw you might be able to get by without either of the above. I love laminated necks for the beauty of contrasting wood and the added strength.

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Permalink Reply by Regan on October 7, 2016 at 9:58am

I agree with Wayfinder, works great! I use that probably more than my planer due to noise and dust. A hand plane helps too. You can joint with a router table too, works fine for wood this size.

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on October 7, 2016 at 10:08am

What about grain alignment? I typically start with a 1x2, flat sawn (read cheap). Any pics would help...

Or am I over engineering this...

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Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on October 10, 2016 at 6:22pm

Nicely done! Good design too.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on October 7, 2016 at 8:18pm

Stewmac.com has a lot of instructional videos on site that you can look through and watch. Very helpful. Also Youtube videos can be very helpful as well.

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Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on October 7, 2016 at 8:56pm

For laminating necks a planer and thicknesser are great (but expensive) tools, but everything can be done by hand. All you need is a decent bench, a good sharp plane, a long steel straightedge and a good try-square. I made my first couple of hundred guitars with mainly hand tools, apart from a cheap pillar drill, it just takes longer to do, that's all. Quite often I'll take a 6 foot length of timber, cut it in half, flip the timber so the grain of the two parts of the neck are as near symmetrical as I can get it and use a contrasting centre stripe. Use plenty of good cast iron C clamps when glueing up. Glue a 1/4 inch hardwood fretboard on top and you'll have a good looking and strong neck. It's really worth seeking out a good woodyard and building up a working relationship with them - my local one will cut and plane to size free.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on October 8, 2016 at 12:21am

Adding contrasting laminations under the fingerboard can also help with increasing the break angle over the nut/raise the saddle and make your build more interesting

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Permalink Reply by Fomhorach on October 10, 2016 at 6:25pm

If I attempted that it would be disastrous. That's truly skillful.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on October 11, 2016 at 7:07am

It ain't really,it's just layers of contrasting timbers

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Permalink Reply by JL on October 12, 2016 at 3:28am

The factory faces aren't too bad for laminating up a headstock, I take the neck cutoff, split it and glue factory face to either side of the headstock.