Moving my focus back to the neck, as I want the neck size sorted before finalizing the body template around the neck areas. To tidy up the neck after rough shaping (and get a feel for how it is before adjusting it), I go through the following process:
- Shading whole neck with pencil (see picture above)
- Start standing back the neck, the high parts will loose the pencil marks first
- Keep going until all areas are clear of pencil marks
- Repeat
The birds-eye maple seems to suffer from tear out a lot more than normal maple, so I’m having to sand more than I normally would. Maybe if you kept the spoke shave razor sharp it would reduce this.
The theory is the high spots will be touched first and you sand until all pencil is gone. Each time you repeat the process, there should be less high spots, until it all comes off evenly.
I use a large sanding pad with 80 grit on it. I’m still frustrated by my neck shaping process for being too adaptive and not feeling like I can guarantee the end result. I remember feeling this with the past two necks and have yet to find a good solution.
To blending in the headstock, I tapped a spirit level onto the neck to provide a rough angle at which I need to present the neck to the sanding bobbin to get an even result.