Not a pain in the neck...

[McCreed]

...but my hands are a bit sore!

So today I de-fretted this neck and re-radiused the fretboard from 14" to 9.5".
My old-man hands (particularly my thumbs for some reason) are a bit grumpy. Minor arthritis doesn't help.
The coarsest grit paper I had was 120. 80 would have made a better start, but oh well, I used what i had.
It came up really well though. Regular checking with a straight edge and radius guide, all nice and even.

Yesterday I worked on reshaping the heel. I think the plan is to use it on standard strat body with a standard pocket/neck joint. The new profile gives it a better transition in hand from neck to body without modifying the body.
I still have a bit of tidying up there, but Ill leave it that way for now and if I start hacking into the body, the heel shape will change again.

The neck is currently finished in acrylic lacquer, which I've decided I dislike, so I'll be scraping it back and refinishing with satin poly. Of course that's after I install new frets. Got a stack of fretwire already so will hopefully get to it this week.



edit to add better radius pic

[McCreed]

Got the neck re-fretted earlier this week and sprayed some shellac today.

I had wiped a few thin coats of shellac before re-fretting just to seal the timber which also made todays coats build quicker. I also am using the shellac to get a bit colour before applying the poly.

The latest batch of flakes I got are quite pale with a 1lb cut, so I added a bit of yellow resin dye to tint it a wee bit.
It's a very subtle tint but got me where I wanted with multiple coats. I used FW Golden Teak on my recent tele project but wanted to go just slightly darker than natural maple and not as prominent as I got with the FWGT.

The second photo of just the headstock is a better representation of the tint than the full neck shot.



I'll give the shellac a couple of days of drying then give it a light scuff and spray the poly.
I think I'm going to go satin all over this time instead of gloss on the front of the headstock. It's a shame that shellac isn't more durable, because it feels great and has a very nice natural amber colour.

[robin]

Beautiful looking neck Macca, love the colour.

rob

[McCreed]

Thanks Robin. I like the subtlety of colour that the shellac gives.

The re-fret went really smoothly too. All the frets seated in nicely and didn't have any problems. (except when I accidentally raked my friggin' bevel file across 3 frets - OUCH!!!)

I may have been able to fix them when I did the level & crown, but I have plenty of fret wire so I just pulled them and replaced them.

[Rodc]

Will you replace the bridge and nut for a 9.5" McCreed? Looks great btw!

[McCreed]

Will you replace the bridge and nut for a 9.5" McCreed? Looks great btw!

Thanks Rod.
I'm not sure what it will be going on yet (possibly a scratch body???) but it will have a strat-style 6-saddle bridge, so that is completely adjustable to any radius.
As for the nut, I will need to slightly tweak the string slot depths but as I've gone down in radius size (added more curve) the old bone nut will be fine. I will likely need to re-profile the top of the nut afterward. None of that will take much doing.

If I had gone to a flatter radius (????) the slots would require filling and re-cutting or replacing the whole nut or shimming.

[Rodc]

Of cause, I'm still in fixed bridge mode. (Face palm)