Quote Originally Posted by Archy View Post
Hi Ben

Nice to see your work. I'm in talks with Dean at the moment regarding a CNC machine for me to make jazz guitars. A similar process in some ways to a Les Paul.

I noticed you have a lot of tooling marks left on the neck and further bits to sand, could I ask why that is?

I'm hoping that I can do necks with less work left after machining but I might be unrealistic about what I can achieve.

Issues for me would be that jazz guitars don't have have wings glued to the headstock and the heel is taller.

So without sounding like an arse, are the issues (you may not see it that way) you have purely down to lack of experience, or is it simply as you state, easier for you to do more post sanding. I'm hoping to do asa little sanding as possible as this adds in a margin of error and lack of repeatability.

Also how well did carving the top of the body go? Did you have to do a lot of post sanding to get rid of tooling marks or was it pretty much good to go?

Cheers
Hi Archy,

That neck was finished with a 1mm steover parallel pass. I could have quite easily set it to something lower but it would increase machining time. Hell, I could have set it to 0.1mm stepover but personally I dont see the point. You are going to be sanding the neck anyways, It may appear to you like there are alot of machining marks, but 120 grit sandpaper will have that neck smooth in a matter of minutes. Plus, with something like a neck it is going to be refined further before completion, the shoulders of the neck will need blending with the fretboard as I have left the neck a little wide to give me a bit of wiggle room when glueing the fretboard on.
The top carve went really well. I believe on that I ran a "Morphed Spiral" operation from fusion 360 and in that instance set my stepover to 0.5mm as the top is maple so a bit more effort to sand. At 0.5mm stepover you would have needed a magnifying glass to see the scallops.

regards

Ben