Day 8: Fitting and fretting.

Chuck's guitar building process is an exacting one, designed to produce repeatable results. The various jigs and templates used during the separate construction of the body and neck help ensure that when joined, they are aligned in the intended manner.  The fundamental fit must be close. There is some room for adjustment but not much. This is further complicated by the fact that the end and top of the guitar are curved where the neck will be attached. 

The top is sanded flat where the fretboard extension will lie and a mortice recess routed to accept the fretboard extension block. The heel of the neck is marked and chiseled to the shape and angle needed for a snug fit with the body and holes are bored for threaded inserts for bolts. Most builders now use bolt on necks which can be easily adjusted throughout the life of the guitar. Traditional glued dovetail joints tend to gradually shift with time and a neck reset in this case is a major repair task. High temperature softens glue and with the constant tension from the strings, a slight shift in the set of the neck over time can result in the guitar's action or playability being compromised. According to Chuck, one hour at 120 degrees can destroy a guitar, a situation which could easily occur if it is left in a car trunk in summer in Texas.

The neck is bolted onto the body for the first time of many checks and minor adjustments. A jig is used to check alignment between the axis of the neck and the center line of the body - it is good. A straight edge is used to project the line of fretboard to a temporarily attached bridge to ensure that the tilt of the neck is accurate so that the 'action', the relationship between strings, fretboard and bridge can be set to close tolerances. The parts are disassembled and minor adjustments made with chisel and sandpaper until everything fits just right.

Now it's time to put the nickel silver frets in the fretboard. Here again Chuck doesn't do things by half. His approach involves filing and polishing the fret ends to a hemispherical shape rather than the more common flat taper. This involves cutting and preparing the frets to an accuracy of 0.005" before hammering them into the fretboard. Because of the taper of the fretboard, each one is different so this is a slow process which takes me approximately six hours.

Finally the neck is bolted to the body, this time just for effect. It's beginning to look like a guitar!