Quote Originally Posted by fender3x View Post
That sounds about right to me. The difference between your neck and a standard scale F neck should be about 19mm. Half of that is the nut closer to the body, so the bridge would only need to be ~9.5mm closer to the neck pocket with a standard rout. A difference of 2.5mm should be well within the saddle travel of a Tele bridge.

One piece of advice that I have gained through hard experience: Don't do the final placement of the bridge until you have (a) routed the neck pocket, and (b) dry fitted the neck. You want to make sure that the strings line up properly along the neck and over the pickup. And you will want the saddle for the high E string to be 24.75" from the nut. Of the two measures I generally find getting the strings lined up over the fingerboard and pickup to be the more challenging of the two. There's usually enough adjustment to move the saddle forward or back a little, but there's no easy way to adjust the bridge laterally once you've drilled.

TD has a lot of experience with this, and I have only cut a new one once. But I have the neck pocket a hair or two off axis a couple of times. It is much easier to move the bridge a little than it is to compensate for a route that is slightly off. In turn, I try to get the neck, bridge and pickups to line up first. Then the pickguard, then the control plate to get things to line up as well as possible.
Yes as fender3x stated - I usually route and set the neck first. Then place the bridge to ensure the strings are parallel to the sides of the neck, add the pups so the pole pieces sit under the strings and then add pickguard/control plate.