Inletting the ebony strip on the neck-back

[Stephanie Reiser]

I know, I know - make a 3-piece neck.
But I really wanted to do this one the old-fashioned way.
Only thing I can come up with is to get my neck profile pretty much exact while the rest of the neck is still in the square. Then bend the Ebony strip on my hot pipe to match the heel, and then scribe first and chisel out the excavation.
In the old days, I'm sure they must have used some sort of router jig system, but this will be the only one I do as a one piece neck.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks ahead of time.

[Gail Hester]

Stephanie, it’s nearly impossible to cut the channel by hand and get it look right since it needs to have the perfect look of a 3-piece neck. Having done this I recommend that you cut the channel with a couple passes on the table saw or with a router table and then glue in a perfectly sized strip of ebony while the neck is still in block form such that when you cut and shape it some of the strip remains.

[sunburst]

I actually got a respectable looking center strip into an existing neck by jigging it into a radial arm saw once. If you can get a clean, even width kerf some way, any way, it will look right.

I wouldn't bend the ebony if you want it to be like the old Gibsons. They were pieces of wood with grain running parallel to the neck shaft so the canter strips were showing end grain at the neck heel. (Of coarse, they weren't ebony either. They were some sort of softer, light colored wood dyed black, I assume, though they are mostly sort of greenish brown now after fading all those years. I find I can dye poplar wood to match and use it for splines to reinforce broken neck heels on those things. Cut out the strip in the heel of the neck, glue the broken heel, glue in the dyed spline to replace the removed part of the center strip, touch it up with shellac, and you can't tell it was done. Dyed poplar could give you the original look.)

[Gail Hester]

John, good idea, I wish I had a radial arm saw (note to self, put radial arm saw on birthday wish list).

I use dyed poplar for the back of headstocks but I’m not sure how you could use dyed wood for the strip since you would sand off the stain shaping the neck and I wouldn’t want to try to dye it after it was finished, big mess if I was doing it.

[Stephanie Reiser]

Those are some good thoughts, folks.
Gail, I have a radial arm saw that I'd be happy to trade you for your duplicating machine. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[sunburst]

For the record, I don't have a radial arm saw, and I would think of some other way to make the cut now, but it worked at the time.

[Hans]

Stephanie, I guess if I wanted to do it one time on a one piece neck, I'd do it just the way you describe. i think I would be inclined to use some dots of cyano to hold the strip in place while I scribed along the sides, then cut it away and chisel out the channel. If I were to do this in a purist way, I think I would also want to do the dyed wood strip rather than ebony.

[Bill Snyder]

I think this begs the question - Why not just do a three piece neck?

[sunburst]

Original post, second line:
"But I really wanted to do this one the old-fashioned way."

Reason enough for me...

To me, the real question is:
Why didn't Gibson just do a three piece neck?
That is, if they wanted it to look like that. I prefer a one piece neck.