Cello week 7 – The neck

The neck and scroll

Before I did anything I roughly cut out the neck profile to give the wood a few months to settle.

Rough cut the neck to allow the wood to settle
Rough cut the neck to allow the wood to settle

Now with the plates nearly done I levelled the top and squared the sides (they had actually moved appreciably in the intervening 4 months) before cutting the profile more accurately on the bandsaw. I then filed/scraped the outer scroll outline and drilling  the peg holes on the drill press before sawing the scroll sections and then started carving.

Just starting to carve the scroll
Just starting to carve the scroll

After much filing, carving and scraping I got here:

Basic scroll and pegbox carved
Basic scroll and pegbox carved

Next I rough carved the fluting with chisels

Fluting rough cut on the scroll
Fluting rough cut on the scroll
Fluting rough carved
Fluting rough carved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fingerboard

I bought a pre-shaped blank which reduced the amount of shaping required substantially.  First back to the drawing board to get the profile right.  I started with the string profile over the end of the fingerboard with a 20 degree break between strings and string heights over the fingerboard from 4mm (A string) to 6.5mm (C string) as I am going to use Larsen steel strings on this.

Fingerboard length will be 5/6 of string length = 580mm but added a few millimetres for luck.

Then extrapolated to get the bridge profile.

Plans are here: fingerboard profile

1st job was to plane the edges straight and take the twist out of the blank.

Then made a template for the fingerboard profile at the end and started planing away with the jack plane to get a rough shape.  It is quite hard to check for flatness using a straight edge so I just laid it on a flat surface with a light behind and looked underneath for the dark spots.

Once the rough shape was there I used a scraper to fine tune and get the 1/2 string diameter scoop measured with feelers.

Ended up with 8mm sides with a slight scoop on the edges to keep the wall height in the middle.

Fingerboard ready for finishing and gluing to neck
Fingerboard ready for finishing and gluing to neck

After cutting the outline of the neck root ready for fitting to the body I tacked on the fingerboard with a few dabs of weak glue – just hope I will be able to break the joint later!

Gluing the fingerboard to the neck
Gluing the fingerboard to the neck

After fitting to the body I carved and filed the final neck profile and finished off the chamfers on the scroll. Note the chalk on the neck joint from fitting to the body.

Neck nearly ready for gluing to the body
Neck nearly ready for gluing to the body

 

 

 

 

 

 

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