Neck build – April 2020

Posted on April 21, 2020 by gryder
Firstly, I have a new router. The little Trend T4 has done remarkably well for many years. It had one big limitation, it’s plunge depth just isn’t deep enough for working on guitar bodies and I had to improvise an number of times.

That wasn’t enough to warrant changing it, however, the bits started to slip. At best I’d end up with cuts I can’t control the depth of, at worst a 20,000 RPM spinning blade fired across the garage (!)

I spent a long time trying to decide which router to replace it with and have decided to jump up to a 1/2″ router. This is a lot heavier and is taking some getting used to. The hope is the wider variety of bits I can use with it.

I’m hoping the investment is worth it, as I use a router a lot in my build process, probably more than any other tool. As you can see I’ve gone for a Festool 1400, which means it works nicely with my existing dust extractor.
As with most routers, it comes with a side fence for cutting parallel channels. I didn’t really do that many practice cuts with the new router and that was an obvious mistake!
We got to the end result ok, but the first pass went pretty far off straight. Luckily it improved for the deeper cuts. While the router is powerful enough to cut deeper, I need to stick to my old habits of taking off a little in each pass. This allows for more control, which stopped it wandering.

A change for this build, I cut a wider channel at the end for the truss rod using a 1/2″ straight bit, instead of counter drilling by hand later in the build (which is always tough to get right)

I’m sure as I get used to the router, I’ll get a feel for the speed and depths of cuts that work well with it.
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